There was a period of about 400 years between the last prophetic Word of the Old Testament, and the first apostolic Word of the New Testament. During this time, like the 400 years of captivity in Egypt, the people of God experienced a dry season without any new Word from God. One picture of the authentic practice of preaching in the faithful covenant community, just before that inter-testamental period, is recorded in Nehemiah 8: All the people assembled as one man in the square before the Water Gate. They told Ezra the scribe to bring out the Book of the Law of Moses, which the LORD had commanded for Israel. So on the first day of the seventh month Ezra the priest brought the Law before the assembly…He read it aloud from daybreak till noon…in the presence of the men, women and others who could understand. And all the people listened attentively to the Book of the Law. Ezra the scribe stood on a high wooden platform built for the occasion...All the people could see him because he was standing above them; and as he opened it, the people all stood up…The Levites... instructed the people in the Law while the people were standing there. They read from the Book of the Law of God, making it clear and giving the meaning so that the people could understand what was being read…Then all the people went away to eat and drink, to send portions of food and to celebrate with great joy, because they now understood the words that had been made known to them (Neh. 8:1-12 NIV).
Here the authentic practice of the people of God is seen as they gather to listen to the formative Word of God read, sung, prayed, and preached, and then go out and worship God with their lives. This event occurred in the 5th Century B.C. Yet it is a model of Spiritual formation that could be contemporary with Moses through to Saint Paul, or with Saint Clement through to Martin Lloyd-Jones or any emergent leader today. The public proclamation of God’s Holy Scriptures is the historically authentic way that God’s Word continues to form, reform and transform his people.
As in the historic case of the Josian reformation (2 Ki. 22-23), the people of God gather and God’s book is brought out. It is read aloud. They listen. God’s leader (who has been formed himself through listening to the text, meditating on the text, and exegeting the text) explains the meaning of the text and applies it to their existential context. Then the transformed people of God respond in worship. Besides the Josian and Nehemian reformations, the authentic faith community is always reformed and rejuvenated whenever God’s text is faithfully heard, exegeted, preached, and applied.
This picture in Nehemiah 8 also introduces the practice of developing “targumim” as instructive, interpretive commentary on the Scriptures. The habit of the faith community at public gatherings during the Babylonian exile was to read the text of the Scriptures at synagogue in Hebrew, and then to give a paraphrase and an application of the text in Aramaic (the language of their contemporary culture). These renderings were also written down. Here another type of biblical, exegetically based, expository sermon can be seen as a vital part of the life of the faith community.
