God's Man, God's Assembly

Just in the text from our sermon we saw David called “the man of God” twice (Nehemiah 12:24, 36) and we saw a reference to “the assembly of God” (Nehemiah 13:1).

The description for David connects not just with his character but with his organization of the liturgy for singing and praising God. So with the description of the assembly, which isn’t necessarily that they were all pure in heart, but that they knew that there was only one God who deserved their worship.

“Man of God” is a label, with a specific use in the Bible, but it has significance for more. The “assembly of God” is also an objective description, with personal implications.

A man who is God’s man is a man who thanks God. A godly man is a man who thinks about God during his days, compared to a worldly man who thinks about the world and the things of the world rather than about God.

An assembly who is God’s assembly is an assembly who praises the name of God. A godly assembly is an assembly who, by comparison, desires nothing more than God, and then by integration, cares for nothing that isn’t for God’s sake.

This is what the death and resurrection of Jesus has enabled. In Christ, we have died to sin and the world, in Christ we’ve been raised to walk in newness of life. We boast “in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to [us], and [we] to the world” (Galatians 6:14).