[Sunday School] Nehemiah 1

Alright, so you all have wandered up here into Nehemiah Sunday school.

What are you in for?

Um I'm I mean, I mean we'll find out what the Holy Spirit uh you know has laid out.

But I think before we go dive in, we we've got some slides here today, and and you have Al and I here today, which I I think if nothing else, that that really should have been a warning light.

And you all um I don't know, I don't know if it I don't know if this is coming to the circus side tent, the the the sideshow of the carnival, or um or or you know, or if you all really love studying it, but I I think before we kind of dive into some of the meat of this, um somebody three weeks ago was in the Fijian study asked me why are we doing Nehemiah?

And who was that?

Somebody in here?

Um who did?

I I I think it wasn't, and maybe someone who's just running a little behind right now.

Okay, if if I'm remembering correctly.

And and as my wife could tell you, three weeks ago for me to remember conversation is is a long time.

Um so um, but but I I think that's a good question.

Like, like, and and I think even in the classroom, I I think when I have to teach something, I try to tell my students why we're doing it.

Um, and sometimes it's the answer is somebody made me.

Um with the students.

Um it's not, however, this time.

And so I think at least and I'll speak just for me, like what why Nehemiah?

Like, like the Bible's filled with books, it's filled with lots of things we're studying.

Why this book that you know, maybe I've heard one sermon series on it in in my life, at least live in person.

I I'm not sure I've ever sat through a full Sunday school covering the entire book before.

Why do this thing?

Um years ago.

Yeah, years and years ago.

Um and some of it, I think, as far as Hickory Grove, I I think we're we're looking in a similar time frame, I think, to where Jeremy had done a successful uh um, you know, study studying um no, so that I'm a stutter.

Um, you know, do doing through Esther.

Uh and so going back to some of the exile, look at things were going um that were going on, but from an another perspective and in another place, um, had some benefit uh for me personally.

I think having just done a couple New Testament studies, and since joining this church, I've never taught the old.

Um and so I think that.

Uh, but but I think more personally for me, I I think Holy Spirit's been leading me to a lot of points to think a lot about this book.

It's meant a lot to me personally for years.

Uh, some about who Nehemiah is, what he's doing in this book, and I think a lot of its practical applications, I think for me personally in my life, about how God leads people to do things way beyond themselves, sometimes through very difficult circumstances, and also provides through that, I think are timeless and applicable to large numbers of people, no matter your walk in life.

And uh I I think this is a book that has ministered to me uh in long ways, and I've often learned, I think, when I do Sunday school things, if God's ministering me uh through something, you know, other people need to hear that.

And um and so uh you know, somebody asked me, What do you think, dude?

So like I don't know, this was one place I I think it just for those reasons it kind of ended up here.

Um, and so it wasn't, you know, we didn't flip a coin or or draw lots or you know, it wasn't arm wrestling.

I don't know.

Al, did you have any comments on this?

I do, I do.

So uh I was raised in a denomination that said, well, the Old Testament has got some good information, but it's not, you know, if it's not in the New Testament, by the golly, we don't need to get too excited about it.

In fact, we have a lot of Old Testament stories, and I loved uh the stories in the Old Testament.

And uh but Paul wrote, you know, these this Old Testament essentially paraphrase was written for our instruction, which meant the Holy Spirit organized the events for our instruction.

If we had to write about it as well.

And so uh that's that's the reason why I mean these richness and how does this apply to me?

So as we go through Nehemiah, how will it apply to you?

Have it apply to us as a church, us as families, uh, there's really good uh good lessons with that.

Nehemiah was, you know, well, Jason can tell us who Nehemiah was, of course, but uh you know he was uh it's an interesting character.

All these guys have really good uh stories and really good connections, and uh as we go through there, we'll figure out what's the gospel connection as well.

What is the gospel connection?

Yep, always that.

So what did he look like?

Um I I think I think he was dusty most of the time.

Um you know, I think he he probably had a donkey coming behind them and he was always looking for a group of people.

You know, physically what he looked like?

Um probably not much.

Um not even ten minutes in.

We got we we get we got two puns.

Alright.

Um we do have a bit of a slideshow today.

Um, you know, uh I was gonna joke about there uh being a test at the end, but um you know uh you know, we're all Presbyterians, y'all would make an A anyway.

So I was asked how many persons have read Nehemiah completely?

Uh Julie's on Julie's honest.

I can just say though, I'm glad we're doing books that are a little more obscure.

You know, I feel like sometimes we preach on just the big ones.

Okay.

I like learning about the small ones.

Gotcha, gotcha.

I you know, I often feel the same.

I also think that's the benefit of having you know long semesters, you know, that we do here in Sunday school.

Um, because we're hoping to go, you know, through the whole book.

Um so all right, uh, we'll walk through this again.

Uh the expectations.

We've got there's a few discussion questions on them.

He's not necessary.

Uh probably today, at least depending on how you see time, we really just kind of an introduction to this book.

There's some history behind this that if you were a reader of Nehemiah in this time, that you're kind of assumed to have known that isn't necessarily immediately apparent.

There's a few names to figure out.

So we're actually our our goal kind of here today is is to preview some of the gospel context of this book to kind of put it in context of the rest of the Bible.

Uh we may get to like a few specific verses in it, but but just kind of a preview of it, like our first real dive into the meat of the text is probably next week.

Um, and so uh hope no one's too disappointed by that.

But I think uh understanding where this fits in with Ezra S there, just the rest of the Old Testament and with what's to come, I I think is important.

So who is Nehemiah?

And we're starting here, and by this with Nehemiah, we mean the person.

So uh review since a lot of you read this before.

Uh he's the cupbearer to King Artis Xerxes I.

While there is some scholarly debate on this, uh and and so we have to kind of say maybe a bit, uh, with some of the history of this.

This is probably the son of the King Xerxes who is an Esther.

Um he is particularly a lay person.

I mean, he gives his father uh in the opening of the book, but uh he is otherwise not recorded anywhere else in the Bible.

He's not from a priestly line, um, he's not a prophet.

Um in fact, uh, I know when Al and I were talking over this one point, he really sticks out like Nehemiah is on a certain level, you know.

I mean, he's gonna be blessed by those.

He's on a certain level just a guy.

You know.

Uh really sharp guy.

A sharp guy.

Um, you know, he's next slide's gonna talk a bit about this, but you know, I Isaiah had a vision of God in heaven, you know.

David, while the seventh son was anointed to be king, you know, Samuel is raised in the temple and has God speaking to him from a young point.

Nehemiah is an exile and he's he's on a certain level of guy.

He's he's gonna perform no like direct supernatural miracles.

His closest analogy would be that Daniel.

Not exactly Daniel, but in terms of being a king, and uh but not a not a prophet like Daniel.

Yes.

And I mean, you know, Daniel is has has a lot of supernatural things associated with him.

Yeah, I mean, but time period-wise.

Yeah, Nehemiah probably about we'll get to this like it's probably two generations of exiles younger than Daniel, a generation younger than Esther.

Um, and so he's he's coming really around the end of this.

Um and so the events of this book probably start around 444 BC.

And so this is coming near the end of the exile period.

Um, any discussion uh of this, and Val again added something to this.

Why is it why do you think it's relevant that he's not a prophet?

God chooses ordinary people?

What else, if anything?

Well, they have a very important part of the government, you know, as at least with access to the king.

So there was obviously something about him that put the trust people with their trust and trust in.

We have a little more on that next slide.

Yes.

Hey, Leslie.

I think it's one thing for me, spirit of the prophet, is that you you not that all prophets know exactly what's going to happen.

A lot of them just have the word Lord living, but he he doesn't know.

Like he has no visions of the future for what's going to happen.

While he is seeing a lot of time praying, he he is throughout this book living every moment for day to day, hoping God will provide.

And that's really it.

Um and he has no moments of you know, water coming out of a rock, red sea parting.

Um he needs he needs God and also people with him, forces above him that are not that are not Jewish or believers of God.

He needs forces in general in the world to move for things to work out.

He is in that level, I think, someone for whom if you want to operate in the realm of doing something for God or caring about, like who a lot of people can relate for.

You know, and for that, I think for someone whose name is on the front of the end of an old testament book, like he he's I think he stands out, you know.

Um any more just sort of comments on this?

Again, people just comment in, this is just on first slide, you you've missed nothing.

Yeah.

So um there's two levels of being a prophet, in my mind, as I listen to you.

One is the functional side, which is what you're talking about.

But there's also the sense of which there are three offices in Israel prophet, priest, and king.

He's not a part of that, he's outside of that whole apparatus that's designed by God to run God's people.

But he is also a redeemer.

Like Jesus was a redeemer, he was not part of that uh the three offices.

So he he's gonna redeem his people in a way.

Uh, and he comes from outside.

All right, uh, next slide, turn this over to Alec.

So um, you know, we talked about the time period, you know, he's uh he's probably a generation or two younger than Daniel, and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

Um, probably at least a generation younger than Esther.

Uh her age is a little uncertain, so maybe two.

Um he's at least to a certain extent, as we can tell about his background, he has at least a high knowledge of scripture and God's promises.

Not everyone in exile did.

Um Travis, he's at least trusted enough to be the king's cupbearer as a foreigner exile.

And he was, and the text notes this, he was trusted enough to serve the king in the private presence of the queen.

So he was trusted enough to be in the king's presence when perhaps other people wouldn't have been.

Uh, and so um it tells us some about his character, how he was looked at.

Um, and we'll see kind of next week, you know, what eventually gets the king to start Nehemiah on this project.

It's like when Nehemiah's slight facial expression seems to have changed, the king then goes so far to notice it, and it it starts Nehemiah on this journey he goes on, where he's eventually gonna end up a governor several chapters later, um, when it starts with him looking sad one day.

Um, and so um that's something here.

All right.

Alright, a little background here.

Yeah.

So um one of the things that I think is always important to do is understand kind of the world and the context of whatever we're talking about.

Uh it may be important to me, maybe not everybody else.

Like Bill may not care.

But I think it's um I think it's helpful to do that.

What's that, Bill?

I I can't.

Okay, Bill cares, just making sure.

So uh one I understand about the the world that uh that Nehemiah is operating in that he inherited became groups.

So here we go on the slide there.

Another pretty slide.

Okay, thank you, thank you.

So any good slides I'll take credit for.

So um so Nehemiah is in the uh the exiled world, but actually, exile actually had ceased.

But so we had the United Kingdom originally, which uh blew apart.

You see uh down there with uh the northern kingdom became uh Israel.

They got scattered starting around 734 BC.

The Assyrians were the king of the dog pile there, had two uh two major attacks and didn't know what happened to the northern kingdom.

Poof.

Where did the people go?

Lost tribes there.

A lost tribe, they went all over.

Some stayed.

And you know what those people who stayed they were called?

Samaritans.

Samaritans, they they uh kind of got mixed up with other peoples as well, and kind of uh secrets as well.

So that was that's what happened to Northern Kingdom.

The Southern Kingdom had several attacks.

So right after Israel's attacks, a couple decades, let's go after Israel, you know.

Hezekiah said, Oh, you know, prayed.

The Syrians didn't make it, and then you had a couple of attacks by the Babylonians, which were conclusive, like 605 BC, uh 597, 586 was like the last time they were around there.

And uh so they took all the good people, that's kind of what they phrased it, took all the you know, the smart people, good people, working people, they went to Babylon.

The Babylonians uh took those away.

Uh they left kind of poor people, so there were still some people kind of hanging around there, but it wasn't really as populated as it was before.

Uh so the big question is how is the fate of the northern kingdom relevant, maybe, to the discussion of uh of the book of Nehemiah?

Any relevance there?

Uh yeah, when Jesus was on earth, he talked to the Samaritan woman at the well.

He did, he did, he did.

And uh eventually, uh oh, what did Jesus tell her that there's coming a time when God is going to be worshipped in spirit and in truth?

Yeah.

Which means, you know, the gospel, God's covenant's gonna go out to all people peoples of the earth.

So, I mean, yeah, the northern kingdom was conquered and scattered, but eventually their descendants and whoever else from around the world would be, because of Christ, could be cracked back into the covenant.

I think it's very true, very important.

But I was thinking about uh more in connection with Nehemiah himself.

Is there anything maybe that would be relevant to the time of Nehemiah and what he might be thinking about?

Um I I guess I think of you know, there are people, even though the two uh kingdoms are split, who were still in the land, not exiled, who would have had those stories of the kingship and the temple and the commandments, and just the history of the people perhaps shared in that region.

There would have been a sense of ownership of that region.

That's true.

That's good, it's good.

Anyone else?

Was Neymar part of the his heritage, his ancestry?

Was he part of the North?

Southern.

Very southern, yeah.

Southern, you know, southerners are, you know, anyway.

As a southerner, I mean.

I've heard that.

Yeah, got that.

Got that as well.

I think uh I think one of the things that I was uh thinking about with this um uh in the discussion with Jason is Nemi would have known and would have seen you know what happened to the Northern Kingdom, and you can talk about his love for the people of the city, and that kind of motivated him.

He really didn't want to have happen to them what happened to the northern kingdom.

I mean, if the people didn't stay together, think about when the Israelites uh went to Egypt, right?

They stayed together, they didn't intermingle as much with the Egyptians, a little bit of going on, but they didn't intermingle, so they want to stay a people.

That's the only way they preserved their heritage from the time they were in Egypt coming out.

And Nehemiah, even though he's in uh Susa, um, you know, hanging out with the um with the others, I mean, he works with these guys, but he still loves his people and his culture to the extent, I mean, we'll read about the book, what happens with that?

So I really think that he wanted to make sure, as much as he could personally, he didn't want to happen what happened to the Lord of the Kingdom.

He didn't want to see that.

And in a city that's undefended with no walls at that time, you know, like you know, that's technically an open city, yeah, and uh bad things could happen.

Yeah, it wasn't it.

William?

Uh on this outstanding graphic and timeline, where would you place uh Isaiah?

Isaiah was around the early 700s, he was around the time of Hezekiah and uh prophesied with him too.

So Isaiah, prophesying ahead of time about what's going to happen, was around the time of that uh destruction.

Jonah was a little bit before that.

We talked about the story of Jonah.

He was before the destruction because he talked about the time box with him.

So he was from the northern kingdom state.

He was, he was.

Okay.

So uh anyway, no one caught my jump though.

Are you sure it was?

United Kingdom to the Untied Kingdom.

Bill I said for you.

What are the A, A, and B, B C D?

Assyrians or Babylonians?

Ooh.

Oh, sneaky didn't put a legend on there too.

We'll go to the next slide if that's okay.

So this is uh from the exile to uh to Jesus.

The exiles we talked about for uh Judah started uh right before 600 and kind of continued on for a little bit.

And they stayed in the land for how many years?

70 years.

70 years, that's right, says the lady who studied Nehemiah recently.

And uh so then those returned to the land.

What it did put on here is that many chose to stay in Babylon.

Many chose to stay there for a long time, I mean for centuries uh as well.

Uh if you think about the the we talk about the Talmud being written.

Talmud wasn't exactly written at this time, but uh they started writing, and a lot of it was written in Babylon, not in Jerusalem.

So certainly a very, very important sphere uh for Judaism was in in Babylon as well.

And what did the Arabs mean?

Does that mean Babylon absorbs?

It means it uh it means it continued in that direction.

So if you see in the land here, uh this is past zero BC, so you know they were still in, they were in Judea.

Uh-huh.

Babyland is there as well.

And Babylon started before this time.

So we got Babylon did the conquest, did the exile.

And uh not long after that, who came along?

Persian or Medes and Persians.

The Medes and Persians, right?

Remember the story of Daniel about boom, you know, they they take over, and he's working for uh Darius and a few other folks as well.

So the Persians were starting earlier, and uh so in fact Cyrus, right, was the king who said, Well, you know, these people are gonna go back to their place, and I'll give them back some of their treasures, and you guys can do your stuff.

You know, so he was Cyrus was actually pretty cool.

He was uh uh pretty cool deal with that as well.

Uh so you had uh Xerxes coming along there, um, and we have the time of Nehemiah.

Because uh Jason is referring 444 BC and others.

So um Nehemiah was clearly in this time, uh, but not long after that, 330 BC, Greece.

You've heard of Alexander?

Anybody?

Yeah, the Great, that's what he called himself.

But yeah, no, I got a breaking problem to work out too well for him.

And so Greece continued along in this area, and then come along about 146, I think the Romans finally conquered uh Greece, and you know, the six of the world was was like that as well.

So this is the time of the Emma.

Greece is on the ascendancy.

And uh, if you remember, do you remember a dream that Nebuchadnezzar had?

What did he dream?

He dreamed, and Daniel had extra dreams about that as well.

I think he talked about a little ram that might have been Greece going on there too.

So this is the world that Jeremiah's living in, but also Art of Xerxes is living in this world as well.

So there's a lot, uh there's a lot going on.

So um, so Jill, why were the four kings important?

Well that's what it was represented by the statue with the weakening.

It was, and it talks about the kingdom that's ultimately going to be fulfilled down there, which um disciples might have been thinking about.

They're like, okay, we have that one at early reached Rome, huh?

So the means of kingdom is supposed to be set up.

Jesus, are you coming here to set up your kingdom?

And uh Jesus had a different view than theirs uh exactly about how that's set up, but um anyway.

So those four things are important for that.

So I don't know that Nehemiah had that in mind, but he knew that he was going to have to help preserve his people.

Well, actually, at the end of the exile there before you start in the land, is the end of the sacrificial system of the Jewish people, and all of a sudden they no longer have the uh uh history of sacrifice as everything was sacrificed, so they had to find a new way of living.

So which which are you talking about in the um in Babylon?

Yeah, oh yeah.

No, before the Babylon, when you show the exile like that.

At the end of the exile, when they came back, it's when the temple was destroyed, and in essence, the people were rebuilt, all of a sudden didn't have the sacrificial system to depend upon.

Didn't have the stuff to work on, yeah.

And so you've got all of this turmoil going on about what do we do now because we don't have the sacrificial system that we've used for centuries.

So you had Ezra go in?

Yeah, it's sort of a known unknown period of turmoil.

We're getting used to being still being Jews, but we don't have the sacrificial system.

Well, yeah.

So you can understand the power sources going on because there is not the one solid thing that they've had for years.

Yeah.

Yeah, my question to who's the high priest, too.

Yeah.

Thank you, thank you.

Any other comments on the slide?

Besides the beauty of the one other thing is it kind of points out my study probably that the rebuilding of the wall where Nehemiah's time starts the 70 weeks of Daniel's prophecy for when the Messiah would come.

Oh, looking ahead.

Oh, sorry.

Wrong slide.

Different book.

Okay, next slide here.

So, what's going on in the world of Art of Xerxes at this time?

Um think about who Nehemiah worked for.

Didn't he work for Cyrus?

No, Nehemiah worked for Arta Xerxes.

Cyrus has already been kind of gone there.

Uh the empire was a bit extended.

This is the biggest empire in the world now, right?

So they're pushing the envelope all around, mainly towards the west, a little bit uh little bit Africa, but mainly towards the west.

Uh they really kind of own the area as much as possible.

Um, but Artaxerxes' father, Xerxes I, was murdered in 465 by the commander of the Royal Bodyguard.

Now, who's more trusted than the commander of the Royal Bodyguard?

You know, that's what happened to M.R.

Sidada.

So, like that means it's not that you know, that's the let's think if you get to that guy.

Uh, and there's rumored his brother might have done it.

There's I mean, there's a lot of a lot of intrigue going on there as well.

And so that's like just 20 years before uh Nehemiah cunted the with the two.

Then um they had an Egyptian revolt, so they were only that area around Egypt, and you know, kind of that classic area.

Uh there were several Jews who had moved there instead of going to Babylon.

They're like, well, we ain't doing that, we're headed to Egypt.

Uh, you hear all the prophecies about Egypt and negativity of that as well.

So there was a revolt of Egypt, and they like beaten the Persian army and took them like several years, six years or so, to finally bring it under control.

And then you had also that intrigue between Egypt and Greece, you know, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and so uh there's and Greece wasn't just Greece at this time, by the way.

We saw that you know Greece kind of going there, but there's Athens and Sparta and people going against each other.

The first time they really got unified was around, I think, Alexander, who pulled them together.

Uh well, no, it was before that.

There was the Greece was unified when Persia invaded Greece from 49th 90, 480.

There was the battle of the Marathon, then 10 years after that, you had like a we also had the fightings between the Spartans and the Athenians.

Oh, there was Greece wasn't perfectly like one, it went just Greece.

But when Persia invaded, they were very unified.

Well, they didn't want the Persians coming in, no question about it.

That's a real an excellent part because, again, many men in my friend, and so okay, well, we gotta protect against the Persians.

So they held off the Persians at some point in Greece, but there's still this stuff going on with Greece, and you know, there's this conflict.

There was a civil war afterwards, the Peloponnesian War.

Yeah, Peloponnesian came up, and so uh there's also peace that was negotiated not fully, and just a few years before this as well.

So, question about this.

So, based on what's going on in the world, um, what do you think is important to Artiserxes?

Staying alive.

Staying alive.

He did like the VG sounds.

Yeah, he did like uh he did like a big fan of that as well.

That was he can dress?

Yeah, he's he's gotta have loyalty.

He's also thinking about how do I kind of protect um my empire with that as well.

Well, didn't uh uh Anazerxes actually go and fight the the Jews, I mean the the Greeks?

I don't know if he went personally, he may have gone, I don't I don't know that facts.

There's a a time frame in there on a four-year time frame, which seems nobody knows, but isn't that the time that they they were going into Greece?

But they were defeated.

Arta Xerxes was king at the first time at like the Battle of Marathon, where the Greeks defeated the Persians, and then Xerxes wanted to pick up where his father left off 10 years after that in 480.

But he wasn't successful in disaster.

It was an utter Persian disaster.

Yeah, they had this uh yeah, and that's why they had to negotiate uh peace treaties with them as well.

So yeah, I was thinking loyalty uh was important, but the empire, protecting the empire, was uh huge them as well.

So uh what would be a benefit of something strengthened in Jerusalem?

It'd be another kind of uh another kind of stronghold that he could uh help possibly create.

Wouldn't fool 100% with that as well.

But the you know, Israel, the Jews had a love-hate relationship with Egypt, and you know that was uh that was an issue.

Jews didn't want anybody controlling them, right?

They didn't want to have the Greeks coming in and run them over as well.

So it's possibly another outpost, not for certain.

But um, see the big thing out of this is there's intrigue going on in the court, there's intrigue with the kingdom, and uh he has to, he really needs loyalty, and people who are strong can can't support that.

I I think Al, you know, as we look ahead, that this is something also worth thinking of because this also feeds into one of Nehemiah's problems.

Artist Xerxes would also be really worried about betrayal.

And that this is something uh b because the Persian Empire is has conquered so many, they have a lot of governors and people who are made up of lots of other people of lots of different ethnicities.

And and that entire empire has a a history of promotion via assassination, lying, and intrigue.

Like his own brother.

Yes, and that's that is frankly a problem for Nehemiah.

The there is a lot of just the the more the the more assassinable he gets before God, the more lies he has to deal with as this goes.

And I'm sure that has no 2026 connections whatsoever.

Um I have one thing we we live in an age of satellites and instantaneous communication.

Everybody back then walked.

It might have taken four years to walk down to the border with Egypt to fight your war and then get back again, is what I was thinking.

But how to communicate, you're in charge of something and giving orders to people.

It takes months to just get a message out.

It does, and it takes months back, but I don't think it doesn't take four years to get from Jerusalem to Egypt, even back then.

And if you if you're the king and you want to send a message on a horse, you know, you you send a messenger on the fast horse to your next message station where that horse rests, you get the next fast horse, you send the next one.

Yeah, and it's you know, it still takes months, but that's you you wait the months because that's that's fast then.

You know, um you've you've appealed to the king and and you've appealed to the third.

That's kind of what happens in this book, uh, on some of them.

Um the conflict simmer, but it's you know uh but is it yeah, but I think the uh the distance in time too, you know, because DMI can't get instant responses, hey, they're saying I shouldn't bill, they don't like me, and like, well, and then you're competing with that, but you're also competing with Xerxes, are Xerxes' time frame, you know, what is he working on as well?

It's like, you know, anybody ignore that email for a few days?

So you know, and I think, yeah, it's like what what does he have going on at the same time?

Because there'll be lies sent, Nehemiah has to respond.

Yeah, um yeah, Jerusalem is not the top of Art of Xerxes' agenda.

But I mean I think it's also it's not like everything that we do now, and and and and often these hype issues is is settled immediately with lots of facts.

I've uh shoot, I I I finished an insurance appeal a couple months ago that took me 10 months of back and forth and sending the same documents over and over again.

I I I think Nehemiah had some of these uh uh allegations that he was rebelling probably settled in a short in a shorter time frame than it than it took me to get$250 or something refunded from Sigma.

You know.

Um faster.

What?

You should have used the sword, that would have been.

I should have used the sword and the Pony Express.

You know, and I'm uh and I was just you know emailing and mailing something to Chattanooga, you know.

It was hey.

Did you read any imprecatory songs?

Uh you should have um I should have.

Um so I think next slide.

All right.

So what is Nehemiah?

And I underlined it because uh uh a grammar lesson.

We're talking about the book at this point.

Um about um so uh a lot of you have said you you've read this, so perhaps uh to uh to keep this short then um for just a quick review.

Um it is it's about Nehemiah's return.

He does have some Jewish exiles with him, though it's initially not about um exiles coming back.

Um there have been two previous return trips already.

And so um initially, so if we go way, way, way, way, way, way back to like uh in the initial exile, it's not like every single Jew, it's like everybody in Jerusalem gets mostly exiled.

There are some people left in the countryside.

Um there have been two previous return trips of exiles at this point back to um back to uh back to Jerusalem.

Um one in the time of Cyrus the Great, um you get pro around that time, probably the Ministry of Haggai, they get the second temple rebuilt.

You have another one that comes back in Ezra.

Um however while that begins to fulfill the prophecy of it of it going on, we have some lingering problems.

Um while we do have the temple being rebuilt, what we'll see later in Nehemiah is the city itself is underpopulated.

This won't come out later into it.

Um a lot of Jews don't want to live in Jerusalem.

Um there are some security issues with this.

We'll see later in the book, there's actually some economic incentives for not living in Jerusalem.

Um, and so God has promised to restore them to their promised land, and you said some of them wanted to flee to Egypt, some of them would go off to Greece, but some of the Jews are like, they're coming back to their coach and they're like, uh, nope, we've done this.

It's like, no.

No.

Um so let's think about the minute.

Uh if you've read this before, what Nehemiah gets into the calling is he comes back.

This starts off as a wall building project.

Jerusalem has no walls.

Why do we feel it's significant that the city has no walls?

Why?

Why did I make it not secure?

Why don't I just have a few more guards?

They were surrounded by enemies.

Were they?

It's all Persian Empire.

He did have some adversaries.

A lot of those ethnicism, good.

They still don't like the Jews.

Persian Empire or not, they still don't like them.

And remember, let's think back one generation to Esther, even all inside the same empire, we have Haman trying to exterminate them all.

And they still remember when the adoption land when they're honest land.

So they didn't want that again.

And also this idea, I want to put up a city without a wall is not a city.

It can't defend itself.

You can sneak in, you can sneak out, you have you have no clear border, you can't enforce trade.

It's really just a village.

It's not really a place you can be protected, it's not a place you can safely raise a family.

You would much rather be out on your own farm in the countryside, a lot less people moving around your own land, generationally tied to it, um, than in an urban center, no clear protection.

Um, it's it's a problem, you know.

And you also have to, you know, one of the styles of warfare was to lay a siege.

Yep.

So you need to be enclosed and with enough food and water to outlast the food and water of the army that's against you.

Yeah.

And a city is not a farm.

Right.

A city requires support from the land around it, at least on a certain level.

And as we'll well, so getting to this, so and so it it had it was a traditional center of strife.

In the history of these people's grandparents and great-grandparents, Jerusalem had been sieged several times, particularly in the time of Hezekiah and on.

Now it doesn't even have the walls.

And so, in Nehemiah 11, they have to actually take lots.

This is after they've built the walls to get people to come back in and live the city.

They have to take, and they they and they say there was extra honor placed on the people who volunteered.

Um and there's a suggestion that daily life was actually more lucrative for the people who were still farming out in the countryside.

Of all these promises that God was going to restore them after 75 years, it happens, and they're like, ah, no.

No.

Um, however, they do do it.

Say this about this.

They do do it.

Um, why would it have been a problem if the people didn't want to live in Jerusalem?

That was a prophecy that they'd come back.

And God's word cannot be broken.

Well, they got the temple rebuilt.

But that's again really going back to the concept of a religion.

We built a temple that's we've done our responsibility.

It's not safe there, we're gonna Cyrus send back to the temple.

Lots of gold.

Lots of gold, treasures, things like that as well.

What do we robbing bandits like to get?

Lots of gold.

Lots of gold.

Well, attack someplace, and then that'd be like a place to go.

Hey, they got nobody's there?

No temple?

Man, but suddenly up.

Well, the people wasn't there.

I mean, it would be the temple's golden treasures, but that was yeah, that they might have had generational memory of they gave up all the golden treasures in before to lift one of the sieges from Babylon.

Well, the older people too could remember the original Jerusalem and that thing they built?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And no one that doesn't remember the I remember what the thing used to look like.

Now it looks like this.

I don't want to have anything to do with it.

And uh comparison and mockery, will be one of the one of the tools uh the the enemies use.

It's the first thing they do, they start making fun of whatever they're going to do.

Um send ballot uh will be his name.

Um anything else?

Why would it have been a problem if people didn't want to live in Jerusalem?

Well, it's hard to get people to fight for you, to defend them.

We just saw the uh young Washington this week, and there was a conversation between an English colonel and George Washington.

And the colonel said, Why do you fight so hard?

Why did you fight for your life for this?

And he said, Because I was born here, it's my land.

And the general colonel said, Well, I was born in England, it's not my land.

So one was willing to lay down his life for its land.

If you're not a resident, you're not going to be willing to lay down your life for what's yours.

Yeah, they they might otherwise defend their farms, they'd break up into a series of villages, they really wouldn't be one people anymore.

Um, and you know, God had promised something else.

Now, New Testament will teach us it's really the children of Abraham's promise who believed in these things.

But um, you know, God has been faithful to them continually, despite the Israelites' constant backsiding struggles.

We want to go back to Egypt, you know, back in the old days.

Now it's kind of like, okay, we got the promised land back, but you know what?

Never mind.

Um we'll just be, you know, we'll be Persian citizens.

Um their constant choice of some lesser form of citizenship and slavery over what God is given is giving them.

You know, it's just another version of it.

And um, you know, it's not it there's something 2026 for it there.

It's it's like it's like we we take the gifts of God and we go, you know, you know, thank you for the feast.

I'm happy just sitting over here eating the Samardies, or you know, or whatever.

It's just this is fine.

Um I thought you had another section.

No, no, I'm sorry.

Oh sorry, only two pretty graphs.

Sorry, my mistake.

Um we can't we can't saturate you all in in in the first week.

Um I don't know.

I know we're we're done a little early, but that's okay.

If it's like high school students, you shouldn't overpower point people.

No, that's true.

Yeah, yeah.

Is is there another way to answer that question?

On the level of you need a certain number of people to make a city work.

Because I just realized they don't have the agricultural, the food has to come in from outside.

Why stuff all that stuff?

You need a base of people, which is so far to my way of thinking, because I have you know population overload.

We are increasingly urbanizing American society.

Now, now American has had opposite impulses, some technology-based tell me right now, but yeah.

They have to take lots.

Like when they hit chapter 11, they move eventually not counting volunteers, but they move one out of every ten people who's living outside, moves into Jerusalem.

It's a big, you know.

Can you imagine?

Free city house.

It's like volunteer, and then everybody's like, mmm, nah, I'm gonna stay living in Carthage and Sparta and Columbia, and you know, uh, you know, I'll I'll stay living on the outside and thanks.

I won't go live in an empty Nashville.

Um there's no traffic.

Nah.

Um fast internet, nah, thanks.

Dixon's good enough for me.

Watertown, great, great place.

Um, got my farm, got my cows.

Um we're supposed to live in a land where we don't need walled cities.

Yeah.

That's you know maybe the firearms help too, but you know, we'll see as well.

I was gonna add uh one thing about besides um Nehemiah, so there's always this question within um um the Old Testament of which prophets were active and what were they doing uh at the time of this particular book.

And it kind of feels like Malachi might be the main one active around uh the time of Nehemiah.

And Malachi was the last prophet, right, that received the word of the Lord.

So you get this 400 years, 440, whatever, between Malachi and Jesus.

So Nehemiah, I don't think he mentions Malachi, but you know, is kind of operating around that same time, the last time that you have the word of the Lord.

Interesting that it comes around the time of coming back to Jerusalem.

That huh, that's intriguing.

And um, and also there's this interaction in Malachi of some of the props he talks about, or some of the things that Nehemiah was dealing with.

So, um, whether it's tithing and barn wives and uh spouses, things like that.

Uh so anyway, you might want to consider checking out Malachi.

We may, you know, interact with that as we kind of go along with relevant passages uh for that, uh as you get later in the book.

But uh that's one of the prophets that would be uh commend to uh to read and look at that.

So, not exact, but exactly when you wrote the book, Malachi didn't say, hey, I wrote it right here when Nehemiah was doing this, but you know, that's a it's uh it's uh it's pretty close, uh, close to that as well.

It's also for those of you who I know, a few of you in here like Bible trivia, um originally when the Jews compiled the book of Nehemiah and put them together in Jesus' time, if they took it out to read as a scroll, Ezra and Nehemiah were one large scroll altogether.

Ezra flowed into Nehemiah.

Um it was later when I I guess when when composing the Latin Bible, um, they uh it got separated into two different books.

I mean it reads, it it reads either way, it's still you know, it's still the text of God.

But if you like some Bible trivia, um when it it the first and second Samuel are the same, same fact, so or so is first and second chronicles.

Um but it was all originally it was like them.

It was it was it was one book.

Um or or if you like scroll um that that would have been read.

All right.

Um I think it's it's okay to be done a couple minutes early.

Um I don't know.

Well, this is a good example of other classes, actually.

Frankly, yes.

I won't say which one specifically, but um just uh in case anyone's I would say if we if we start getting done at 9 55, we'll get worship started actually at 1015, but you know.

That'd be great.

Yeah.

Um so we're good, we're good.

So let me close this in prayer.

Umly Father, uh, we thank you for your word.

We thank you for the uh the people who preserved your word through all those uh millennia generations uh with great difficulties.

We thank you for the uh blessing example uh that we have in the uh the person of Nehemiah, uh, who exhibits a uh a hope and a need for you and always relies on you.

And we ask that we consider that example as we go forward in the rest of this day and this week.

And we ask you to bless our worship to come in the name of Jesus.

Amen.