These are my sermon notes from last night (Wednesday September 14th) shared with the community at Conversations. We’d had some difficult news in the preceding week relating to the future of the church and its leadership which makes our series on Nehemiah feel helpful and timely. You can read a bit more about that in my other post from today.
Let’s start with a bit of context:
The events of Nehemiah 1 take place 1,000 years after Moses and 400 years before Jesus.
Israel is in a desperate state – the Babylonians have conquered Jerusalem.
When they did that they deported almost everyone from the city – for 70 years Jerusalem was a ghost town. Potentially set to be forgotten to history.
The Jews began to make homes for themselves in Babylon. They settled and although they continued to follow God, they didn’t hold onto the idea of a Promised Land.
Some of them ended up in prominent places – Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-Nego leaders in Babylon; Esther a Queen in the courts of a Persian king.
After those 70 years they had the opportunity to return home, to the Promised Land. Only 50,000 out of 2 or 3m returned. And that’s what the book of Ezra is about: rebuilding the temple and laying a spiritual foundation for Israel.
So, Nehemiah starts 15 years after the Book of Ezra ends, about 100 years after the first exiles return to the Promised Land and about 150 years after Jerusalem was destroyed.
The walls are still ruined.
They’d tried to rebuild them in Ezra 4:6-23 but had been stopped by their enemies. No-one thought this could be overcome so the walls lay in ruin and the people exposed to the danger of an unfortified city.
The book of Nehemiah is about a man who left a place of safety to put it all on the line to defend his city. To go to a place he was called to love, and to love it back into full strength and rude health. It cost him, but it glorified God and it transformed that city.
1 The words of Nehemiah son of Hakaliah: In the month of Kislev in the twentieth year, while I was in the citadel of Susa, 2 Hanani, one of my brothers, came from Judah with some other men, and I questioned them about the Jewish remnant that had survived the exile, and also about Jerusalem. 3 They said to me, “Those who survived the exile and are back in the province are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been burned with fire.”
Nehemiah 1:1-3
Nehemiah hears about Jerusalem.
We find out he lives in the citadel – that means he’s important.
Nehemiah’s heart is in Jerusalem. He wants to know how the city and his people were doing. His heart was not on himself, but on others. Jerusalem was special to God, so it was special to Nehemiah too.
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