The Christian life is hard work. There is no doubt about that. Even the Bible recognizes that it is hard work by describing it as a battle (“Fight the good fight of the faith,” 1 Tim. 6:12), a race (“I have finished the race,” 2 Tim. 4:7) and a sacrifice (“I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s merc
3. We must be a biblical community. This leads to the third necessary ingredient for an effective Christian presence in the city. Not only must we be in the city and be a community, we must also be Bible-directed. In other words, we must be the kind of community God wants us to be. What kind of a co
E. V. Hill tells of what happened in Los Angeles on one occasion. One man had been so put off by the captain of the block in which he lived—she was always inviting him to church and other religious meetings—that he decided to move. He decided to move the whole way across Los Angeles. The truck came.
The fourth characteristic of Nehemiah's effort to revitalize Jerusalem was that he had a religious base. The chapter begins with an account of how one in ten Jewish lay persons was chosen to relocate, but little is said about them. The bulk of the chapter (and the next chapter) detail the families o
At first glance, the list of names and places in Nehemiah 11 seems even more tedious and uninteresting than the earlier lists in chapters 3, 7 and 10. But the list actually reflects a great strategy. It highlights several parts of Nehemiah’s plan. 1. Repopulation. The first and most obvious step in
I do not need to prove the accelerating urbanization of the world in this century. At the time of Jesus Christ there were only about 250 million people in the world, about equal to the current population of the United States. It took 1500 years for that to double to one half billion at the time of t
5. Dedication of the firstborn (v. 36). The law declared that the firstborn of every household, as well as the firstborn of all the flocks, belonged to the Lord. In practice the people generally redeemed the firstborn by payment of a redemption price, but the practice reminded them that all life is
2. The Sabbath (v. 31). The second specific commitment of the people on this great covenant day was to the Sabbath, to keep it by abstaining from all commercial activity, and to observe the seventh year Sabbath of the land in which the fields would not be worked. The requirement has precedent in God
The third striking characteristic of this covenant is the people's strong sense of responsibility. Nothing in the covenant looks to other people to do what they should do. Nothing sets some of them apart from these responsibilities, or assigns specific tasks to one group and other tasks to another.
Change for the sake of mere change means nothing, of course. What matters is the direction of the change. So, before we examine the specifics of the covenant, it will be helpful to see its characteristics, which indicate where the people saw themselves to be heading. There are three of them. We will
Things changed in Jerusalem under the governorship of Nehemiah and the pastoring of Ezra, and they did so radically. I have been calling it a revival, because that is what it was. Revival means coming to spiritual life again. The people had been spiritually dead. Now they revived, and the changes th
Today we begin with the third part of the Levites’ prayer.3. An appeal for God’s mercy in the present distress (vv. 32-37). As the litany of the people’s sins has built to a climax, so have the repeated affirmations of God’s patience, goodness and mercy. It is to these blessed characteristics of God
The second, major part of the Levites' prayer is a review of Israel's history. It begins with God's calling of Abraham (vv. 7-8), as Genesis does. The people must have been thinking about the actual text of Genesis at this time, for Nehemiah 9:7 contains the only Old Testament reference after Genesi
It strikes me that this is the exact opposite of what most people do today. When the Jews of Nehemiah’s day confessed the sins of their fathers they acknowledged their guilt for their fathers’ sins. Otherwise there would have been no meaning to confessing those sins. This meant in its fullness that
In yesterday’s study, we concluded by observing that when the people expressed sorrow for sin, Nehemiah and the Levites directed to people to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles.I find two very interesting things about this. First, Nehemiah did not take advantage of the people’s first outburst of sor
The first evidence of a true movement of the Holy Spirit is an awakened conscience, leading to genuine sorrow for sin in God's people. It is only after this that revival comes. This is what happened in Jerusalem in Nehemiah's day, and it is why it is proper to speak of this as having been a true rev
4. Sorrow over sin (v. 9). The result of this anticipatory prayer, the reading of the Law of God and the explanation of the law was revival. And the first evidence that revival was truly on the way was grief over sin. It was intense grief, though the story does not dwell upon it. It says only that “
In yesterday’s study we looked at the first two steps to revival as seen in our passage. Today we consider the third step.3. The explanation of God’s Word (vv. 7- 8). One of the most important parts of Nehemiah is the statement in verses 7 and 8 of this chapter that the reading of the law was accomp
If we are to see a spiritual recovery in our land today, it will be helpful to review the steps to revival as revealed in these activities. 1. Ezra began by prayer (v. 6). This is the first appearance of Ezra in Nehemiah (cf. verse 1), and his prayer preceding his reading of the law, which is not ev
In the eighth chapter of Nehemiah we see the starting point for any true national renewal. It is the Word of God. Verses 2-12 tell of a great public assembly in which Ezra the priest read the law of God to the people and of how they were affected by it. The people showed extraordinary reverence for
Nehemiah had come to Jerusalem to rebuild the wall, and he had been successful in doing it. But we discover now that the rebuilding was far from all he had in mind. Nehemiah wanted to rebuild the wall, but beyond that objective he had the far more significant objective of rebuilding the nation. Up t
The final action taken by Nehemiah in his attempt to consolidate his earlier work and prepare for the tasks to come was to provide for those who would now be working in the temple. We find this in the last verses of the chapter. “Some of the heads of the families contributed to the work. The governo
2. Jews who were laymen (vv. 8-38). This is a long and numerically significant list, as might be expected. It is in two parts. The first part lists eighteen individuals from whom the then living descendants came. The second part lists twenty towns in which the returning exiles settled. The introduct
Nehemiah's first step after having completed the rebuilding of the wall was to make a few key appointments. The first verses of chapter 7 tell us about three general categories of appointments (gatekeepers, singers and Levites) and two specific ones: his brother Hanani as the civil leader of Jerusal
