God loves for His people to celebrate. Now, I know there are people who think that God is a big ogre in the sky getting ready to push the “Smite” button the minute we do something we shouldn’t, but that is simply not the case. Don’t get me wrong; God hates sin, but He loves us. He wants us to be filled with joy, and to celebrate together. In Deuteronomy 14:22-29, the people were commanded to take a tenth of their produce each year and use it to have a big party, to share it and be blessed by God in all the work that they did.
In Nehemiah 8:1-10 the people of Israel had recently returned to their own land after seventy years of exile in Babylon. They had rebuilt the temple, and just days before the one described here they had finished rebuilding the wall around Jerusalem. On this day they gathered to celebrate the Feast of Trumpets, a day of sabbath rest and holy assembly. In those days, the people didn’t have their own copies of the Word of God at home; they only had access to it at the temple. So on this day of holy assembly, the people asked Ezra to bring out the law of Moses, their Bible, to read to them. The people who were gathered there had come from all the cities of Israel, and they included men, women and children who were old enough to understand. They stood for possibly six hours listening to the priests read and explain the words of God to them, and they were eager to hear it. If you’ve gone to church on a Sunday morning, you’ve probably noticed people sitting in padded seats becoming restless if the service goes one minute longer than expected. That was not the attitude of the Israelites on this occasion. They had been living under the rule of the Babylonians in a foreign land for seventy years, and now they were back home. They wanted to know the law that God had handed down to Moses and their ancestors.
The reading of the Word of God at this assembly was the beginning of a spiritual revival for the Israelites. They took the message that they were hearing so seriously that they began to weep. (Nehemiah 8:9) But Nehemiah reminded them that this was the Feast of Trumpets, a day for celebration. He told them to go and eat choice food, drink sweet drinks and to share with anyone who had nothing. No one was to be left out of this celebration. No one was to grieve. This was a day to focus on God, and to be filled with joy.