Nehemiah is right on the heals of Ezra and I actually read that they were originally one book (like Luke and Acts) and weren't separated until well into the Christian church. But, like I said, it follows up on the same story line as Ezra. The people of Judah are still in exile, but a group has come back to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple because God put it in the heart of Cyrus to do it (Ezra 1:1). Now Nehemiah is governor of Jerusalem and the rebuilding process is continuing. They finish building the wall and all live in the city by the end of the book, which continues the theme that God has a passion for rebuilding what showed His glory. Now for a few notes.
There are quite a few good bits and pieces in Nehemiah. The first comes in chapter one, verse eleven, in Nehemiah's prayer. He calls the people "your servants who delight to fear your name." That is weird. I've understood that fearing the Lord is good, but I haven't really thought about being delighted by fear. I don't quite understand it, but it's there. Hopefully it comes up more later on so I can better understand it. The fear of the Lord comes up a few more times. In 5:15, Nehemiah says he didn't take the governor's portion of food or act as a lord over the people "because of the fear of God."
There are more instances in this book where God not only shows His control over physical things, but in the thoughts of people.
"And the king granted me what I asked, for the good hand of my God was upon me (2:8)."
"... what my God had put in my heart to do... (2:12)"
"Then my God put it into my heart to assemble the nobles and... (7:5)"
This subject is very weird to me, because if we just listen to the things that people flippantly say in the most basic, five-year-old prayers, this truth of God being in control would be obvious. Example: "Please help us to be safe on this trip." I am blatantly asking God to keep bad things from happening to me on this trip. He will do that in one of two ways. Either something will happen that could be harmful to me (a car comes flying through a red light to T-bone me) and God physically changes the circumstances and either moves my car, moves their car, pushes my brakes to stop my car, makes their car bounce off of mine or fly over mine, etc. Either He does that, or He intervenes in the decision-making of other drivers to keep the situation from ever occurring (when they person would normally not look up to see the light, God puts something in their mind that makes them look up and stop their car at the red light). These are the only two options when I ask God to keep me safe on the road. Most of the time we don't expect or ever believe that He does the first. Therefore, He must be changing the thoughts of people because of our prayers. If you say, "God doesn't actually have to intervene to keep me safe," then why in the world are you praying? If you believe that there is no actual effect to you asking God to keep you safe on the road then why do you even do it? For piece of mind? To make yourself feel better? Why would you feel any better if you don't believe that God is doing anything to help you? This is the most basic petition that anyone could bring before God and it screams, in the petition itself, that God is in control over all of creation. In Nehemiah 9:6 it says, "You are the Lord, you alone. You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them; and you preserve all of them; and the host of heaven worships you." God does not merely make everything and sit back to watch how it unfolds. He preserves all of it.
Chapter 5 is Nehemiah dealing with the oppression of the poor. He rebukes the people who are charging interest to the poor and putting them out of their homes. Now, most of you (along with me) are probably saying the same thing we do when we talk about the poor today. "It's their own fault. If we don't make them pay for bad money management and laziness, we are just compounding the problem and they will never learn." This one is my personal favorite (not because I hear people say it all the time, but because I say it), "Well God would provide for them if they were following Him." Well guess what? Nehemiah (God's servant) doesn't say any of that. He makes all of them give property back to the poor people. Then he says, "So may God shake out every man from his house and from his labor who does not keep this promise. So may he be shaken out and emptied (5:13)." Basically, '"God, anyone who doesn't return the property back to the poor, make them become poor and lose all their stuff. "And all the assembly said, 'Amen' and praised the Lord (5:13)." Did you catch that? Not just the poor people praised Him. All of them. It seems like these people get happy and praise the Lord at weird times. Like, at times that I would probably be mad.
Now, chapters eight and nine are really cool. Ezra gets up and reads the Law to all the people after they finish and dedicate the wall. First, there are some things that I need to note. He's not reading James and Ephesians and all these short, compact books full of theology and ways to live. He's reading the Law. You know, like Leviticus and Numbers. The people are standing in the courts, listening to Ezra read the dimensions of the Ark of the Covenant! To you and me this is boring stuff. It says that he read from the Law "from early morning until midday. (8:3)" Not only do they stand there and listen to it "attentively" (8:3), but the people are weeping as he reads (8:9). Ezra has to comfort them and tell them not to grieve "for the joy of the Lord is your strength. (8:10)" Then these people keep rejoicing as they are hearing the Law "because they understood the words that were declared to them. (8:12)" Not because they liked what they heard. Do we understand this? The Law is the biggest burden anyone could ever hear in their life and these people are rejoicing because they understand it. Their reaction to all of this is they start confessing their sins and praising the Lord.
Then Ezra goes into this long prayer/praise of God, basically recapping every thing God has done for Israel all the way back to Abram. As he's reminding God and the people of all these things, he keeps praising God for them. For His "steadfast love" through it all. He finishes it off by stating their current situation: in slavery to another nation. So all of this leads up to 9:38-10:39 (which apparently is just chapter 10 in the Hebrew Bible). They make a covenant with the Lord to "walk in God's law that was given by Moses the servant of God, and to observe and do all the commandments of the LORD our Lord (literally, Yahweh our Lord) and His rules and His statutes. (10:29)" So their response to all this crap that has happened is not asking God to make things better. Their response is to tell Him "we're going to follow you now." Wow!
After this, there seems to be a little break. It looks like Nehemiah goes back into the service of King Artaxerxes for awhile. When he comes back to Jerusalem, everything is a mess. Some guy is living in the temple; they stopped giving the Levites their portions; people were working and buying and selling on the Sabbath; they intermarried with other nations again. But Nehemiah fixes it all and restores order back to Jerusalem.
We've got to go back to the intermarriage thing again though. First, listen to what he says to them when he hears about their repeated sin of intermarriage. "Did not Solomon king of Israel sin on account of such women? Among the many nations there was no king like him, and he was beloved by his God, and God made him kind over all Israel. Nevertheless, foreign women made even him to sin. Shall we then listen to you and do all this great evil and act treacherously against our God by marrying foreign women? (13:26-27)" He pretty much says "Even the great Solomon was caused to sin by foreign women. Do you really think we should listen to you?" Now hear what Nehemiah did when he heard of this. He went out and found them "and cursed them and beat some of them and pulled out their hair. (13:25)" I wonder if this is a big issue in God's eyes.
That's it for Nehemiah. Yes, I realize that the summary I wrote is longer than the book itself, but it's a good book. I hope this encourages you, but it seems like Nehemiah brings about more challenge than encouragement.
All for His glory,
Mitchell
1 comment:
Seconded! One of my favorites. I did an article a while back on him.
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