Are You Hungry? A Homily on Nehemiah 8:1-12

Are you hungry?

Well, in just a little while, when we are finished here, we will all leave to go have a meal to satisfy our hunger. Some of us may eat burgers, some of us fish, others of us even pizzas. Maybe some green beans or broccoli. The meals that some of us eat will taste better than the meals that others of us eat. But I doubt that many of us tonight will have a meal that we would call a feast.

But the good news is that we don’t have to wait until we are done to eat. We have already gathered together for a meal right here. And not just any meal. We are gathered together for a feast! “A feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine.” A feast of “fat” and “sweet wine.” A feast on the Word of God, Jesus Christ.

Though this sounds really good, you might be tempted to ask, “What does it mean to feast on Jesus Christ?” Or perhaps, “How do we do it?” These are the same type of questions asked by the people when Jesus spoke to them a few hundred years later in Capernaum.

You may recall His words to them from John 6. Jesus told them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” Then they responded by saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”

I believe we can answer these questions by spending a little time looking into the Holy Scripture we have read today. As we do so, we can learn three things about how we can feast on Jesus in worship.

The first point is, if we are going to feast on Christ, we must gather together because we are hungry.

Nehemiah 8:1 says, “And all the people gathered as one man into the square before the Water Gate. And they told Ezra the scribe to bring the Book of the Law of Moses that the LORD had commanded Israel.”

We learn in this verse that the people had a strong desire for the Word of God. The people were not forced to come listen to the Word. In fact, it was the people that told Ezra to bring the Book of the Law with him! The people were hungry for the Word of God. They were so hungry that they stood there, attentive to it, from “early morning until midday.” That’s hungry.

But why were they hungry? The answer comes from looking at verse 9: “For all the people wept as they heard the words of the Law.”

They wept because they had not living in accordance to the Law of God. They had not been obeying all of God’s commandments. They had not been worshipping God as he had commanded. They had not been living properly in the land He had given them.

Ezra’s audience that day was mostly exiles, Israelites who had only in the last few years returned to Jerusalem. So even though they were hungry, and had thus asked for the Book of the Law to be read, they did not really know why they were hungry until the Scripture was read to them. It was only then that they fully realized their sinfulness, their disobedience to God. It was then that they realized their tremendous need for God, for His forgiveness and for His faithfulness.

Along these lines, we also learn that the people had gathered together. When they realized they were hungry, they didn’t eat a meal in their homes. They came out and joined together so that they might have a feast!

Have you ever been to a feast? If you have, you weren’t there alone. Think back to an Easter or a Thanksgiving with your family. The table was filled with so much food and so many table settings that you could hardly find room to eat. But eat you did, with all your friends and family around you.

This is the same thing the people of Israel did. They might not have known exactly why they were hungry, but they knew they were hungry enough that they needed more than a simple meal at home. They needed a feast. So they came together to feast on the Word of God, Jesus Christ, in the Book of the Law.

So also must we feast on Christ today. We must have a desire to feast on Christ because we are aware of our sins, of our disobedience to God and His Word. And we must come together as the family of God to partake in this feast together. We are feasting on the body of Christ, His church. And the church is made up of all the saints. Feasting on Christ is not something we can do alone.

The second point I’d like to make today is that to feast on Christ is to rejoice in Him through the understanding of who He is, and what He has done for His people.

As I have said, the Israelites did not understand at first why they were hungry. But through the teaching of Ezra and the Levites, they came to understand their hunger. And they wept because of it. But this was merely the setting on the table. The true feast came when the Levites told them in vv. 9-11 that they should not weep, but rejoice, and go and feast and “eat the fat and drink sweet wine.”

We can feast like this only if we understand Who God is and the great works He has done for His people, and it is difficult to do this sitting at home alone. Only as we come into God’s church, feast at His table during communion, experience His body and sit under the preaching of godly men called by Him, can we truly understand the Word of God and what it teaches us about Him.

Now, let’s don’t think that this is some academic lesson for us to learn and pack away in the back of our minds. It is not. In fact, we must remember that we are at this very moment engaging in this feast. So God has some delicious food in store for us right now.

In these verses today, we are called to be feasting on the “the joy of the Lord.” Joy has a divine origin. Try as we might, we cannot find joy in the simple table food we eat, in the clothes we wear, in the cars we drive, in the houses we live in, even in the relationships we have. Though these are all gifts from God, as long as we are seeking joy in these things alone, we are seeking it in vain.

Instead, today the Lord is instructing us to find joy in feasting on the body and blood of Jesus Christ, through faith in Him as our personal Savior. While Christ’s gift of salvation is a family affair, it is based on a personal relationship with Him as our savior. Without that, God is not our Father, and we are not a member of His family, invited to partake in the feast.

We find our joy in Christ when we realize that He has made it possible that we—those who were aliens, cut off from our inheritance, and without hope, were suddenly invited to the family feast. We find our joy in the fact that the Father, the Creator of all heaven and earth, now calls us His children, and has set a place for us at His table. We are His sons and His daughters! We find joy in our Father’s power, protection, wisdom, guidance, faithfulness, grace and mercy. We find joy that these gifts are now ours, because we are part of His family. We also find joy in the blood of Christ, shed for us, that has displaced our wickedness with His eternal righteousness. And we find joy in the body of Christ, which He gave up for us, that brings us into the communion of the saints, and allow us to share in the fellowship of heaven right here in this fallen world. We don’t have to wait until we die and go to heaven to feast on Christ – we can feast on Him right now!

This leads me to my third and final point.

We feast on Christ in this world only as we use His joy as our strength to live the lives He has called us to.

In v. 12, we learn that “the people went their way to eat and drink and to send portions and to make great rejoicing, because they had understood the words that were declared to them.” They understood what v. 10 tells us, that “the joy of the LORD is your strength.”

That verse reminds me of the crippled beggar at the temple gate in Acts 3 who was healed by Peter and John. After being healed, he leapt “up [and] stood and began to walk, and entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God.” I love that passage. I wish I lived like that all the time. But I must admit that I don’t always do a good job of living it out in my life. Too often I get weighed down by challenges of the world around me.

But living under those weights is really a cop-out. The world of Ezra, Nehemiah, Peter, and John was just as fallen as our world is today. There was pain, sickness, suffering, and death then as there is today. We are reminded of this each and every day, as our bodies grow old and frail, as we lose loved ones, as we see crime and immorality all around us. Yet just like the Israelites of 2500 years ago, we can go out from our feast today and face all of these things with the strength that comes from the joy of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And we need to remember that our joy isn’t dependent on being healed like the beggar at the temple gate. We can face our trials today with joy because Christ’s joy strengthens our soul. And we can receive His joy right here and now in this feast on Christ, a feast which revives our soul. As we feast on Him who is strong, how can we help but become strong like Him? In fact, as we continue to feast on Him, we will become like Him!

His joy gives us strength that not only allows us to handle adversity but also to avoid temptation. The world can offer nothing to us that we do not already have if we have the joy of the Lord.

God’s joy also gives us strength for service. And in fact, as we engage in service, we will find more joy in Him! For we are told that His table is not yet full. There are more to be invited. And our feast will not be complete until everyone is at the table. We are not to sit at the table engorging ourselves, but to eat and be strong, so that we may “send portions to anyone who has nothing ready.”

We must remember that at one point in our lives that we were not interested in eating at God’s table. We did not care if we ever feasted on Christ. But God, in His great mercy, sent many from His table with His Word, so that we might taste of it and understand our need for it. Before we rejoiced in Christ, we first wept and mourned just like the Israelites did.

Our joy will not be complete until everyone whom God has chosen is sitting at the table of the feast. And that day will not come until we have gone out and taken the portions to those who have nothing on their plates.

Are you hungry?

Then let us feast on Christ this day. Let us go forth from here and lead lives that reflect the fact that we have been invited to His table. Let us prepare ourselves for the day when all peoples will come to His mountain to enjoy a feast of rich food and well-aged wine. Let us join in with the communion of the saints so that we may understand the Word of God, and rejoice in Him and what He has done for us.