Eternity in Our Hearts

During the days of Nehemiah and Ezra an unusual discovery was made.

1. •    For 70 years the people of Israel had been a captive nation, their Temple destroyed, Jerusalem’s walls utterly broken down, their towns left in ruins.
   

1. •     At that time the nation’s prophets (Jeremiah) had declared that God would restore them to all they had once known, the nation would be rebuilt, and the people would return again in their hearts to God and again experience his blessing and favour.
   

1. •    Now through Nehemiah and Ezra (Nehemiah 8) the words of those prophets were being fulfilled.
   

1. •  Ezra was overseeing the restoration of the Temple and it’s worship, and Nehemiah was leading the rebuilding of Jerusalem’s walls and gates. This was restoration, revival and return to God’s blessing for the nation.
   

During these days an unusual discovery was made. Nehemiah 8:13 – 18

Picture this … The discovery was of a forgotten celebration ... found in ancient scrolls of the Pentateuch.

Once a year everyone was commanded to leave their usual houses and live in shelters that they called  ‘booths’ or ‘tabernacles’ for a week.

Think about this: for one week every year …

1. •They left their houses and possessions.
   

2. •They became unattached from all the trappings of regular life.
   

3. •They stopped working, they interrupted the progress of their careers.
   

4. •They disconnected themselves from all their stuff (furnishings, appliances, cars and fashions, etc)
   

And the mood and emotion of that week was that of great joy … they celebrated … they made offerings with their harvests of oil and wine  … they feasted … they did it with laughter, song and dance.

1. 1.    They were reminding themselves of a truth they lived by … that God had something far better for them than all the houses, the luxuries and material possessions that the wealthiest of the wealthy could acquire.
   

This “God has something better” truth even went as far as the physical bodies we spend so much time caring for -  that there was coming a day in which God would give them bodies far better than the healthiest of the healthy could ever know.

They were enacting something Paul later helped us understand when he wrote ... For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens  (2 Corinthians 5:1)

1. •     As Christians we possess this great hope … I’m going to leave this body, and in the resurrection live in a brand new glorious body, one that is part of a kingdom of which the things of earth are only a dim shadow.
   

2. •       In Christ I’m richer than the richest of the rich.
   

3. •      God has something far better
   

2. 2.    They were declaring to God their glorious unattachment to the world and all it had to offer – they might own houses and possessions, but those things did not own them. It was a significant examination of their personal value system.
   

Remember the rich young ruler? Of him we read he went away sorrowful for he had

great possessions (he did the calculation)

1. •     He was attached ... these Israelites were saying ‘we’re unattached’ – this world is not my home.
   

1. •      I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us.
   

3. 3.    They were reaffirming their belief that come the end of their lives, they would take nothing with them (except their character, their God-blessed relationships and the fruit of their lives).
   

   

          As regularly as once per year ... God wanted them continually reminded, this all comes

          to an end and only that which is of eternal qualities (gold, silver, precious stones of the       

          soul) remains.

Here they were sitting in their little makeshift house, like a bivouac, everything that the world called precious was somewhere else. Living like a cyclone had blown everything away.

Ecclesiastes 3:11

He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that (or ‘without which’) no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end.

God was putting eternity in their hearts.

They were declaring (1) God has something far better (2) we are unattached to this world (3) we can take nothing with us. Great joy – for eternity was in their hearts. (Celebrating and anticipating a glorious day to come – one that they lived for)

 

When the people of Israel went into captivity it was because they had lost that awareness, they lost that eternal perspective – the things they owned in the world had become their world ...

David Livingstone is one of England’s most renown missionaries...

1. •     At the age of 27 David Livingstone set sail for Africa and ventured into the interior regions where no explorer had ever been. The year was 1840.
   

1. •    Livingstone was an evangelist and a medical doctor and made many journeys into unexplored Africa with the gospel of Jesus over the next thirty three years.
   

1. •    His inspiration had come from hearing the missionary, Robert Moffat, who had served along the coast of southern Africa, challenge an audience in Britain to share God’s love in “the vast plain to the north where I have sometimes seen the smoke of a thousand villages where no missionary had ever been.”
   

1. •    On his last trip, David Livingstone disappeared for seven years in the jungles of Africa; seven years without the companionship or encouragement of a fellow countryman or fellow missionary.
   

1. •    When found by American reporter Mr Stanley, Livingstone though ill, weary and aging refused to leave. He wrote in his journal, “My Jesus, my King, my life, my all. Once more I dedicate my whole self to Thee.”
   

1. •     Two years later, on May 1st 1873, David Livingstone was found kneeling by his bed in a posture of prayer ... he was dead. (Retuned to England and buried among the Kings, Queens and great heroes of the nation in Westminster Abby)
   

When God puts eternity in the heart of a man or a woman, it seems such a small thing to them that they would go out to the mountains and bring palm branches and the branches of leafy trees and make booths ... then leaving all that others call precious behind ... make that their life! Listen to the words of David Livingstone ...

      “Forbid that we should ever consider the holding of a commission from the King of kings a sacrifice, so long as other men esteem the service of an earthly government as an honour. I am a missionary, heart and soul. God himself had an only Son, and He was a missionary and a physician. A poor, poor imitation I am, or wish to be, but in His service I hope to live. In it I wish to die. I still prefer poverty and missions service to riches and ease. This is my choice.”

When Jim Elliot and his four friends were speared to death on the banks of the Currary River they had rifles with them in the plane ... but of those rifles Jim Elliot had said, “we will not use them to defend ourselves against the Auca,  for we are ready for eternity and they are not.”

It’s this fundamental truth:

1. •the reality of the brevity of life,
   

2. •the fleeting nature of possessions
   

3. •and the truth of eternity and all it’s wonders
   

that God led his people to recalibrate their lives by year by year during the feast of tabernacles.

No doubt, you (like so many as we move out of one year into a new one) will pause to reflect. Make it a reconsideration or an affirmation of your eternal values – for all the rest of the things of life only find their proper and most fulfilling place in that light.