We live in a society in which right and wrong have become largely a matter of personal opinion. All individuals are seen as a law unto themselves, and what is right for one person is not necessarily right for anyone else. Indeed, if any person tries to impose their ethical standards on another, the response is usually defensive anger. "Don't try to impose your middle-class morality on me," goes the complaint. "I know what is right for me, and you have no business trying to meddle in my life!"
The result is that there is no common standard of conduct that governs our lives. The country is split into a multiplicity of little groups, each pursuing its own values and setting its own ethical agendas. Frequently there is conflict, each little group trying to gain power for its point of view and scorning the standards and lifestyles of other groups. Vainly, government and media and schools try to return to a basic set of "American values" or "family values," but relativity reigns, and everyone does his or her own thing. A sardonic statement at the end of the book of Judges could apply to our society: "In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes" (Judges 21:25).
In some sense, we might see that as the situation of the Israelites when they returned to Jerusalem in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. after the Babylonian exile. Their religious traditions and knowledge of God's directions for their lives had been forgotten, and they were left with nothing but their own desires and wisdom to reconstruct their shattered community. A community that has forgotten its founding story and common ethic cannot be a community, however. It can only be a conglomeration of competing groups and interests, as our society often is, and apparently the people in post-exilic Jerusalem in the fifth century B.C. were wise enough to realize that.
According to our text in Nehemiah, the people of Jerusalem all gathered in a square of Jerusalem, and "they told Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the law of Moses which the Lord had given to Israel" (v. 1). They demanded to hear the Torah.
We would not want that, would we? If someone wanted to read us a story that contained commandments for our lives, we might quickly leave the scene. Our pious excuse, of course, would be that we are Christians who are saved by faith and not by some law. But the Jews in Ezra's time had a different understanding of the Torah than we have, and they wanted desperately to hear it.
What follows in our text is therefore a worship service in a square in Jerusalem. Ezra mounted a pulpit and when he opened the book of the Torah, all of the people stood and listened attentively. As Ezra read portions of the first five books of the Old Testament, Levitical priests standing beside Ezra translated the Hebrew words into Aramaic, the language of the day, and explained the meaning of the words to the people, so that they understood them. When the people heard laws that they had forgotten, statutes that they had not observed, explanations of the Word of God, they wept, not for sorrow at their sin, but for joy at hearing once again -- and some of them for the first time -- the directions of God for their community and individual lives. They not only heard commandments, however. From the Torah they heard the old, old traditions of how God had delivered them from slavery and entered into covenant with them. They were prompted to remember how God had led their forebears through the wilderness and given them the promised land. And through it all, they heard the voice of the Lord, guiding them, forgiving them, accompanying them in his law, and pointing out the way they were to walk as his people. To it all, they said, "Amen," and they wept for joy.
Now why? Why should a reading of commandments give us joy? We can understand how it would be good to review once again God's saving acts on our behalf, as they are told in the Pentateuch and the rest of the scriptures. But why should we rejoice over laws and commandments? Isn't that legalism?
No, it is not. The commandments that are given us in the Bible, such as the Ten Commandments, and all of the instructions that Jesus and Paul and the other writers set down for us in the New Testament are expressions of God's love. You see, God has delivered us from slavery to sin and death, as he delivered Israel from Egypt. And in Jesus Christ, God has given us a new life. As Paul writes, "The old has passed away, behold, the new has come" (2 Corinthians 5:17) -- all those sins and guilts of the past, all of our inabilities to do the good, all of our despairs and anxieties that we have gone through. Those are now done. God has forgiven us in Jesus Christ and lent us his Spirit that we may walk in newness of life and in the goodness that God intends.
Having redeemed us in Jesus Christ, however, God does not just let us stumble around in the dark, wondering what to do in this new life we have been granted and making up the rules as we go along. God does not desert us any more than he deserted post-exilic Israel. No. God continues to go with us and to guide us, and he does that by giving us commandments. God points the way, which is the basic meaning of "Torah." He says, "Here is the way to walk. Here is the way to abundant life. Walk in it, and so choose life."
God points the way to abundant life by means of his commandments, because he loves us and wants only good for us. Both Old Testament and New tell us that. In Deuteronomy 4:29, God yearns for his people's good: "Oh that they had such a mind as this always," he says, "to fear me and to keep all my commandments, that it might go well with them and with their children for ever!" God wants it to go well with us! God wants us to have good. Similarly, in the Gospel according to John, Jesus tells his disciples that if they keep his commandments, they will abide in his love (John 15:10) and then he adds, "These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full" (v. 11). The Lord wants us to have joy! And so he instructs us in the way to abide in fellowship with him and to have a joyful life.
That is what Israel knew when she heard Ezra read the Torah to her in that square in Jerusalem and wept tears of happiness -- that following the Word of God was the way of joy and life. So her Psalmist could write that the Torah was more to be desired than gold and sweeter than the drippings of the honeycomb (Psalm 19:10). And every faithful Christian who walks in the way of Christ's commandments knows that sweetness and that treasure that come from walking in God's way and not in our own.