“Stand up and praise the LORD your God, who is from everlasting to everlasting.” Nehemiah 9:5
The backstory: The Israelites, previously exiled to Babylon because of their sins of idol worship, have been miraculously brought back to Jerusalem. Under the leadership of Nehemiah and the teaching of Ezra, the people have re-discovered the Word of God’s Law. There is much weeping as the Law is read aloud, for the people who are supposed to be God’s chosen haven’t been keeping the Law, and they know it. They see all their sins and repent in sackcloth and ashes. They hear about the festival of booths, which they are supposed to keep in remembrance of their days wandering in the wilderness. They hear the Word and do it (James 1:22).
Paul, writing to the Galatians, says that “For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God….I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!”
So what does that mean? The Israelites were keeping the Law all for nothing?
No. The Law of the Old Testament was precursor to Christ. It pointed to Him — Jesus said in the Gospels that the Law and Prophets spoke about Him. Paul also writes in Colossians that Jesus came to replace the festivals, the New Moon celebration, and the Sabbath. Jesus is our rest — and that’s why we still observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. These things were just a shadow of those to come (Colossians 2). Because of Jesus Christ’s perfect life, and his perfect, substitutionary atonement, acceptable to the Father, we can have complete freedom. Jesus came to fulfill the Law perfectly, which we could never do.
So…what do we do now? We do the same thing as the Israelites did. We repent of our hard-heartedness. We repent of loving other things more than God. But instead of putting on sackcloth, we put on Christ. His perfect robes of righteousness replace our filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6). We rejoice in our salvation, because “the joy of the LORD is our strength.” (Nehemiah 8:10).