The joy of the Lord is your strength (Nehemiah 8:10, NIV).
Most of us are in food comas now.
Be patient, as we have only one more day of celebration (and football games) before we get to our long-awaited diets and signups for the health club.
But on the first day of 2024, what Biblical concept should we focus on?
Let’s consider “joy” found in Nehemiah 8:10.
I’ve heard people say, “The joy of the Lord is my strength,” many times through the years. And I agree, but do we understand the context of Nehemiah’s joy?
The context of Nehemiah’s joy has roots in how the Jews celebrate their New Year. In the Bible, the Jewish New Year wasn’t January 1. For two reasons …
First: New Year’s Day (as we know it) was celebrated for the first time in 45 B.C., when the Julian calendar was introduced by Julius Caesar. Nehemiah lived about 450 B.C., or about 400 years before anybody knew about the Julian calendar’s January 1st.
Second: The Jewish New Year of “Rosh Hashanah,” meaning “head of the year” or “first of the year,” begins on the first day of the Jewish month of Tishrei, which falls on different days each year during September or October.
Today, we celebrate our New Year on January 1st because we have the Julian Calendar, and scientists now have an iPhone helping them keep the same day in January and not February or March!
Back to Nehemiah.
Moses spoke to the Israelites in Leviticus 23, commanding the nation to establish a Day of Trumpets. This feast forms the basis of Rosh Hashanah. In traditional Jewish New Year’s Day celebrations, they blow a ram’s horn or Shofar 100 times.
But in Nehemiah’s time, a trove of Old Testament manuscripts had been discovered by those returning to Jerusalem from Babylonian captivity. And while reading these manuscripts the Israelites discovered that they had not been celebrating the Day of Trumpets.
The people were grieved because of their disobedience.
This is the historical context of Nehemiah 8:10 — the Israelites were upset.
Then Nehemiah, who was the governor, and Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who taught the people said to all the people, “This day is holy to the Lord your God; do not mourn or weep.” For all the people were weeping when they heard the words of the law. Then he said to them, “Go, eat of the fat, drink of the sweet, and send portions to him who has nothing prepared; for this day is holy to our Lord. Do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength” (Nehemiah 8:9-10).
The message of “the joy of the Lord is your strength” passage — celebrated on the Jewish New Year but also relevant to us today on January 1st — is …
Realizing that we’ve been disobedient, we turn back to God. Let’s not be grieved about anything in 2023, but looking to God in 2024, let’s find our joy again.
A great New Year’s message!