Last night was gutting. The leader of my church stepped down (in person, not via Twitter).
For those of us involved with Conversations the last two weeks have been something of a blur. The pace at which decisions have been taken has left our community pretty shell-shocked as we look to the future.
That future includes Sally, Scott and I joining the Steering Team alongside Ben, B and Adam. And we’re committed to the same reasons that motivated Dave to kick Conversations off in the first place. His stepping down as leader doesn’t alter our vision statement.
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.”
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.
This is the monthly round up of the things I’ve written. A quieter month of writing than July because it’s been the school summer holidays and it’s a wonderful dividend… Read more: What I wrote in August
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
