Nehemiah 12

Nehemiah 12 ends the building in a flood of music — two great thanksgiving choirs walking the finished wall from opposite directions until they meet at the house of God, and the joy of Jerusalem heard a great way off. After the lists of priests and Levites, the wall is dedicated. Nehemiah appoints two great companies of them that gave thanks, one going right along the wall, one going left, the singers and the players following, until both companies stood in the house of God. Notice the instruments in their hands: the musical instruments of David the man of God — the harps and psalteries and cymbals David appointed for the ark’s return, brought out again on a wall built under threat of the sword. They dedicate the new work with the old man’s instruments, and the singers are the sons of Asaph still. Nothing about the tune had to be invented; it had only to be picked up again. The finished wall becomes a platform for praise — the stones labored over under threat of the sword are now the high road of a singing procession.

The dedication is loud and glad on purpose. They offered great sacrifices, and rejoiced: for God had made them rejoice with great joy: the wives also and the children rejoiced: so that the joy of Jerusalem was heard even afar off. The joy was heard afar off — the same city that Sanballat mocked as a heap of rubbish now rings with a praise that carries beyond its walls; the work that the enemy swore to stop ends in music the enemy cannot help but hear.

The two companies meeting at the house is itself a picture. From opposite ends of the broken circle, the redeemed converge on the place of the Name, and there the singing becomes one. The redeemed converge on the house from every direction — the walls enclose not a fortress only but a worshipping people, and the point of the whole circuit is the meeting at the temple, praise gathered to the centre.

And the chapter notes the careful provision that sustains the joy — portions for the singers and porters, every day his portion, set apart by the people for those who minister. Sustained worship needs daily provision — the joy is not a one-day burst but a settled order, the ministers supported day by day so the praise does not fall silent. The dedication is the high point; the daily portions keep the song going after the procession ends.

The finished wall becomes a road of praise, two companies meeting at the house — and the joy of a worshipping people is heard even afar off.

Amos 4

Amos 4 is built on a refrain that tolls five times like a bell, and each toll is a missed chance: yet have ye not returned unto me. Two words carry the chapter, and they are worth holding apart. The refrain is ye have not returned unto me — shuwb, the word that ran through the whole of Hosea. And the sentence at the end is prepare to meet thy God — the word for an appointed encounter, face to face. A man returns, or a man is met. There is no third option, and the chapter is the closing of the first door.

Yahweh recounts the disciplines he sent to turn Israel back — and each one ends the same way. I have given you cleanness of teeth in all your cities, and want of bread in all your places: yet have ye not returned unto me. Famine sent to turn them, and they did not turn — the empty stomach was meant to be a summons home, and the summons went unheard.

The bell tolls again and again through the chapter. He withheld the rain, sent blasting and mildew on the gardens, pestilence as in Egypt, the sword on the young men — yet have ye not returned unto me. And again: he overthrew some of them as Sodom, snatching them as a brand from the burning — yet have ye not returned unto me. Every mercy-in-disguise refused — drought, blight, plague, sword, even the brand plucked from the fire; five disciplines, five refusals, the patience of Yahweh exhausted on a people who would not read the rod as a summons.

So the refusals leave only one thing ahead, and it is the most solemn sentence in the prophets. Therefore thus will I do unto thee, O Israel: and because I will do this unto thee, prepare to meet thy God, O Israel. Prepare to meet thy God — when the disciplines meant to turn them home have all been spurned, the only meeting left is the encounter with Yahweh himself in judgment. The God they would not return to, they will now meet face to face.

And the chapter grounds the warning in who he is — the one who formeth the mountains, and createth the wind, and declareth unto man what is his thought… that maketh the morning darkness, and treadeth upon the high places of the earth: Yahweh, the God of hosts, is his name. The middle clause is the most unnerving line in Amos. He does not merely know a man’s thought; he tells the man what it was. The God they are to meet is the one who will say aloud the thing they never said to themselves — which is what a judgment seat is. The God they must meet is the Maker of all — not a local idol to be managed but the Creator who knows the thought of man before he thinks it. To meet such a God unprepared, after refusing every summons home, is the end Amos sets before them.

Five times the bell tolls — yet have ye not returned — and the only meeting left for those who spurn every summons is to prepare to meet thy God, the Maker of all.

2 Timothy 1

Paul’s last letter opens from a prison with a charge to courage, and at its heart is the gospel that has drawn the sting from death: Christ has abolished death and brought life and immortality to light. He recalls Timothy’s unfeigned faith, handed down through his grandmother Lois and mother Eunice, and stirs him to stir up the gift of God that is in thee. For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. Not a spirit of fear, but of power and love and a sound mind — the very courage Amos’s Israel lacked, given to those who will not be ashamed of the testimony.

The ground of the courage is the gospel itself, stated in a phrase that overturns the fear of death. Christ hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. Both verbs repay opening. Abolished is katargeō — not annihilated but rendered inoperative, put out of commission, its power broken while the thing still stands; men still die, and death has already lost. And brought to light is phōtizō, to illuminate what was there in the dark — the word for bringing a hidden thing under the lamp. Immortality was not invented at the resurrection and it was not native to us; it was shown. Death is abolished, immortality brought to light — not that men always had immortal souls and merely learned of them, but that life and immortality, hidden before, are now brought into the light through the gospel; the deathlessness that is God’s alone (as Timothy’s first letter said) is offered to men through the One who conquered death. The grave is not the last word, because Christ has emptied it of its power.

So Paul is unashamed of his chains. I am not ashamed: for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day. He has committed all to One able to keep it against that day — not what he has believed but whom; the confidence is in a person able to guard the deposit until the day of resurrection. The reward is future — that day — and the keeping is sure.

And the charge follows: hold fast the form of sound words… that good thing which was committed unto thee keep by the Holy Spirit which dwelleth in us. Guard the deposit by the Spirit that dwells in you — the truth handed down through Lois and Eunice and Paul is a trust to be kept, not improved upon; held fast against the day, guarded by the Spirit, carried courageously by a man not ashamed of the testimony or of the prisoner who taught it.

Death is abolished and immortality brought to light — so stir up the gift, take the spirit of power and not fear, and commit all to the One able to keep it against that day.