Sunday Worship Service August 18, 2024

Prelude
Call to Worship 2 Timothy 1:9a
Hymn JBC # 104 There shall be showers blessing
The Lord’s Prayer
Hymn JBC # 92 Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee
Offering
Scripture Nehemiah 7:72b～8:8
Prayer
Sermon “The people understood what was being read”
Prayer
Hymn JBC # 260 Set my soul afire, Lord
Doxology JBC #676
Benediction
Postlude


Today's Bible verse is a scene from the Old Testament book of Nehemiah. This year, 2024, I am giving message from the entire Old and New Testaments in the worship services starting in April and continuing throughout the year.
The messages from the Old Testament, which began in April (it was only four months, though), will come to an end next week with the book of Malachi.
However, the Old Testament is also very important for Christians.
Jesus Christ does not appear directly in the Old Testament. The Old Testament contains the message of God's choice and salvation of the Israelites long before Jesus was born as a man.
The many messages and stories in the Old Testament point to Jesus Christ, the Messiah (Saviour), who would come in time. Therefore, we (Christians) still read the Old Testament, as well as the New Testament, as God's message through the light of Jesus Christ.

　The time of Nehemiah is the end of the Babylonian Captivity, when the Israelites had their nation destroyed by the Babylonian Empire and many were taken into captivity to Babylon.
The Babylonian Empire declined, and now the Persian Empire became the ruling power of Israel.
The king of the Persian Empire (Cyrus) released the people of Israel from captivity in Babylon and allowed them to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem, which had been destroyed by the Babylonian Empire.
This is a bit of a long quote, but let me read from Chronicles 36:22-23.

22 In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, in order to fulfill the word of the Lord spoken by Jeremiah, the Lord moved the heart of Cyrus king of Persia to make a proclamation throughout his realm and also to put it in writing:
23 “This is what Cyrus king of Persia says:

“‘The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and he has appointed me to build a temple for him at Jerusalem in Judah. Any of his people among you may go up, and may the Lord their God be with them.’”
Thus, the Bible states that the Lord God moved the heart of King Cyrus of Persia so that Cyrus released the Israelites and allowed them to build (rebuild) the temple in Jerusalem.
Historically, the Persian Empire is said to have been tolerant of the respective religions of the regions and nations it ruled. This may have been due to Persia's political considerations in ruling over other countries.
However, the Bible tells us that “the Lord moved the heart of the king of Persia so that the Israelites were released from Babylon and allowed to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem.

In other words, it was all God's arrangement and God's grace.
I hope that we, too, will live with gratitude for all the good things we receive as gifts and blessings from God.
When I was a company employee, I was often involved in business contacts and negotiations with overseas business partners.
I was involved in discussions and negotiations to resolve problems when they arose, as well as negotiating the details of contracts regarding the purchase of products and other matters.
When negotiating a business contract in which both parties' interests were at stake, I sometimes spent long hours, days, or even months negotiating the details of the contract because both parties wanted to make the terms as favorable as possible to their own companies.

During such negotiations, when we were able to reach an agreement that was favorable to my company, I would be happy and somewhere inside I would think, "This was done because I had excellent negotiation skills.”
　But looking back now, of course it was not. My power was nothing. For it is God who can change and move the hearts of men.
Therefore, if I had succeeded in concluding a contract in favor of my company, I now know that it was God who had changed their minds in that way.
Christians are those who have been set free from the thoughts that he or she has accomplished something by his or her own strength or ability (a mind that is proud of oneself).
It is God, and His grace, that we boast in. Our true joy is to boast in God.
　Let us not boast in ourselves, but in the one true God.

　　After the Persian Empire gained supremacy, the Israelites were allowed to return to their land and rebuild the Temple. The story is told in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah.
Ezra was the teacher of the law and also a priest. Nehemiah was a cup bearer, a very high position responsible for the food of the king of Persia.
Nehemiah would also later be appointed as Governor of Judah. (Chapter 5)
Ezra and Nehemiah led the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem and the rebuilding of the city walls. Today's passage is based on this background.

I will read from chapter 7:72b to chapter 8:1 at the beginning of today's passage.
When the seventh month came and the Israelites had settled in their towns,
all the people came together as one in the square before the Water Gate. They told Ezra the teacher of the Law to bring out the Book of the Law of Moses, which the Lord had commanded for Israel.
The temple and walls were rebuilt. And the people came together "as one (man)," it says.
　The temple is a place where people worship and encounter God. Now that the temple has been rebuilt, the people have become like one people. That is to say, they were made one by the same desire and hope.
　They asked Ezra to bring the Law of Moses (probably the so-called Five Books of Moses, including "Genesis" through "Deuteronomy") and read it to them.
　After the temple was completed, they came together as one because they had a desire and hope to "hear the Word of God.”
We desire to hear the Word of God. It is God's Word that strengthens, encourages us and makes us alive.
The purpose of our coming to church is to worship God and to hear His Word in worship.
We always want to gather at church with hope and expectation, praying and asking God to speak to us through worship.

There was a time when the pastor of my mother church, when he was young and just started his ministry as a pastor, were including stories movies and novels into his sermon messages. He was being more conscious of the young students who were coming to church than the people (members) in the church.
Then, a missionary from the U.S., who was serving in the church with him at the time, came into the pastor's study, and as soon as he entered, he said, "No one wants to listen to your story. Everyone wants to listen to the Word.”
　The pastor was surprised at the frankness of the missionary, but he recalled that he was very grateful for the missionary's comment, because after that, his thinking and attitude regarding preaching was changed.
We come to church with a desire to hear the Word of God, the Word of Christ. We gather with the desire to be strengthened by the Word of God and transformed by the Word of God.

　I ask that you will always pray for such a Word of God to be spoken in our churches.
Ezra and the other priests read the Law of Moses. How did they read the words of the Bible? We will read verse 8, the final verse of today's passage.

8 They read from the Book of the Law of God, making it clear[a] and giving the meaning so that the people understood what was being read.
The Japanese Bible translates, "They translated the book of the law of God.” The English translation (NIV) reads, "making it clear and giving the meaning.”
The original Hebrew word for "making it clear" (parash) also means "to translate”.

Why did the words of the Bible need to be translated? The Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew, the language spoken by the Israelites.
However, as Israel was conquered by other nations and the Babylonian captivity lasted long, the Israelites gradually lost the ability to speak and understand their own Hebrew.
　The Israelites began to speak Aramaic, a language more widely spoken in the Middle East at the time, rather than Hebrew, and Hebrew gradually became less and less spoken.
Therefore, for people to understand the Bible, it was necessary for people like priests who maintained their Hebrew understanding to read the Bible and translate it into Aramaic, which the people could understand, and to speak it to them while clarifying its meaning.
In this way, the words of the Bible were read and, if necessary, translated into a language that the people could understand, and the meaning was clarified and spoken to them.
We at Beppu International Baptist Church basically conduct our worship services in two languages. We also have English translations of the worship message for each service.

　Our church is blessed to have many people who serve as sermon translators, and the one who serves as its coordinator.
　Such work has been cherished at our church because we have been given the desire and hope to "share the Word of God and worship together as much as possible, even with those who have difficulty in understanding Japanese.”
It is God's grace and gift that has given us such a desire. We hope to continue to cherish that gift.
As I prepare a Japanese/English message together with the translators every time, I have the feeling that "I am preparing each message together with our translators.” I have received blessings that I could not have received if I had prepared the messages on my own.

God's Word is addressed to all people. God's Word is Word of grace that is to be shared with people of all nations and regions.
In the history of evangelism, the Bible has been translated into various different languages, and such translation work continues to this day. We pray that we will remember the work of translating the Bible into various languages.
Let us also give thanks for the grace and blessing of being able to read the Bible and hear the message in a language we can understand.
Let us continue to share with one another the blessing of hearing God's word, the blessing of being encouraged and kept alive by God's word, and let us share this blessing with people around us.