1.13 Today's Wood Gatherers

Nehemiah 10:34 (NIV)

"We the priests, the Levites, and the people, have cast lots to determine when each of our families is to bring to the house of our God at set times each year a contribution of wood to burn on the altar of the Lord our God, as it is written in the Law.

There are two things about today's verse that caused me to stop and think.  First, I see in this verse a compelling argument for the need of a close association between God's children.  In a word, there is value, from God's perspective, in having us participate in a local church. 

I know, I know.

It would really be easier if we could just do as much as we are comfortable with and nothing more.  But that's just not the way it works.  Christians do not have the option of seclusion.  God's people were to meet together in the Old Testament, and that did not change in the New.  Participation in a local assembly is assumed to be the natural course of things.  Chores are to be divvied up.  Corporate worship is a regular activity. 

If you look back a few verses in Nehemiah, you will see that the performance of God's work is not necessarily neat, safe, or enjoyable.  I mean, what is fun about building a wall around a city with a sword in one hand and a tool in the other?  They had to work shoulder to shoulder amid the rubble of a ruined city to rebuild a wall and an altar and eventually the temple, all the while keeping a lookout for the hostile enemy who would try to knock down their work, and kill off their people before God's mission could be completed.

If comfort was what the people wanted, they would have stayed in Babylon.  But they didn't.  As soon as the proclamation came down that the Jews were free to return to Jerusalem, a bunch of them went back.  It was not easy, and for the rest of their lifetimes it never did get easy.  Yet, they did what they were tasked to do. 


Together.

And we can't even drag our sorry backsides out of bed in time to make it to church on Sunday mornings without complaining over the inconvenience of having to rush our breakfast hour.  And having made it there, don't expect me to do anything I don't want to do!

Which brings me to the second thing I noticed in today's verse.  The woodgathering.

Back in the days of Joshua, a people group called the Gibeonites, tricked Joshua into making a treaty with them to keep from being destroyed.  God had told Joshua to utterly rout all the people groups in the Promised Land, and after Jericho fell, the Gibeonites knew that they had no chance of victory against Israel so they came to Joshua to ask for a treaty.  To make a long story short, the Gibeonites pretended their country was so far away that Joshua probably wouldn't encounter them in his march across Canaan, and Joshua bought the lie and didn't think to ask God about it before he signed the treaty of peace with Gibeon.  When Joshua learned the truth he was in a bind.  He had to annex Gibeon into Israel because God would not let him break the treaty, but in doing so, he ordered that Gibeon would become the wood gatherers for the altar of God from henceforth to forevermore.

So, the wood gatherers were to be the descendants of Gibeon.

Yet here we are in ruined Jerusalem rebuilding the altar of God as job number one, and there evidently are no Gibeonites in the party.  Still, they needed wood for the altar, therefore, they divided up the chore between the families.  No, wood gathering was not their job, but they all did it anyway.

Each contributed a little to make the altar fire burn the way God wanted it to.

Don't we do that in church too? 

Sometimes, for the benefit of everyone, we have to do things we would prefer not to have to do.  We give money instead of spending it on ourselves.  We participate in activities even though we would rather stay home and watch television.  We bend and stretch and give and take and yield and push... whatever is needed to do the work of God in our generation for the saving of souls and the strengthening of the saints.

That's called church.

And we go.  We participate.  We love one another as Christ loved us.

Together.