Skip to content

Tag: ruins

Living in the Ruins

Last Sunday we began looking at the story of Nehemiah. Well, that’s not entirely true. We actually didn’t quite get to the story of Nehemiah. Instead, we looked at the history and the background to the story of Nehemiah – which I think will come in handy as we go through this series.

But basically, we started way back at the formation of the nation of Israel. When God brought the Israelites out of Egypt, he made a covenant or an agreement with them. In that covenant, we saw how God promised that He would pour his blessings on them if they followed his ways and obeyed the terms of the covenant that God had made with them. On the flip side of that, we also saw how, if they choose to abandon God – going their own way and breaking the terms of the covenant –  then God would send curses upon them and they would uprooted and exiled from their land.

So with that in mind, we took a quick snapshot of the history of Israel, and we saw both sides of those promises coming to pass. When Israel and it’s kings obeyed God and followed His ways – they enjoyed peace and prosperity on every side. It was the golden years of Israel. However, as Israel & it’s kings choose later to abandon God and worship idols and do things their own way – calamity overtook them. They ended up being invaded by other nations, defeated, uprooted from their homes and exiled into captivity – just as God had promised.

However, this was not a surprise to God. In fact, as part of that original covenant, God also promised that when all this would happen (as he knew that it would) – that when they found themselves in exile because of their disobedience, if they were to turn back to God – if they were to confess and repent of their sin – then God would forgive them and would restore them to their land.

And this is exactly what is happening in the lead up to Nehemiah. While in exile in Babylon, the Israelites began to see how they had sinned and had turned away from God – and so they confessed their sin and began to repent. And as a result, God kept his promise once again and began to restore them to their land.

The Bible records three major excursions of Israelites from Babylon back to Jerusalem.  After 70 years in exile, the first group of Israelites was led by a guy named Zerubabbel. He brought about 50,000 Israelites back to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple and to once again worship and serve God there – just as God had instructed centuries ago. So that’s what they did – they resettled around Jerusalem and then they rebuilt the temple.

80 years after that, another group arrived – a much smaller group – probably around 2,000 people – and they were led by a scribe named Ezra. Ezra’s main purpose in returning to Jerusalem was to teach the people the Word of God – which is another thing that hadn’t been happening for centuries. Back then, not every person had access to a Bible like we do, and so without a teacher like Ezra to teach them, much of what God had said in his Word had been neglected and forgotten. And so Ezra was actually commissioned by King Artaxerxes of Persia, to return to Jerusalem and teach the Israelites the ways and the laws of God.

Then so that brings us to Nehemiah. Nehemiah would arrive with a third group of Israelites about 13 years after Ezra – but that’s getting ahead of the story. We’ll probably get to that part in couple weeks.

But now that we’ve got the big picture of what’s going on, I want to start looking specifically at Nehemiah. How did he get involved in all of this? What’s his story? So to find that, we’re going to start reading in Nehemiah chapter 1.

Leave a Comment

Weeping for the Lost

Today we begin a new series of messages from the Book of Nehemiah. I’m guessing that most of you wouldn’t list Nehemiah in your top five favorite books of the Bible, and in fact, there could be some of you who couldn’t even tell me who Nehemiah was. So before we take a look at the Scriptures for today, I want to give you just a brief history and background of Nehemiah.

After the time of Solomon, the nation of Israel was divided into two kingdoms. The northern part with 10 of the 12 tribes kept the name Israel. The southern part with 2 of the 12 tribes was known as Judah. Jerusalem, the capital and the location of the Solomon’s temple, was part of the kingdom of Judah.

All of the kings of Israel were evil. Because of their continued sinfulness, God allowed the Assyrians to invade and defeated Israel. The people were deported and scattered over the face of the earth – never to return.

Judah had some good kings, but the majority were evil. Because of their continued sinfulness, God allowed the Babylonians to attack and defeat Judah. They destroyed Jerusalem, including the temple, and deported many of the people to Babylon. Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were among those who were deported.

Seventy years later, the king of Persia (who had since conquered the Babylonians), allowed several groups of Jews to return to Judah to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem.

The story of Nehemiah picks up about 95 years after the Jews are allowed to return to Jerusalem. The temple has been rebuilt, but the rest of Jerusalem is not in good shape.

Nehemiah 1:1-4

So things are not well for those who have returned to Jerusalem. The walls have been destroyed and the gates have been burned. And Nehemiah weeps.

When I first read through this passage, I had a hard time understanding why Nehemiah was so worked up about the broken walls of a city nearly 1,000 miles away. I don’t think Nehemiah had ever been to Jerusalem before – so why does he spend days mourning over it’s broken walls?

3 Comments