Overcoming Silence

Nehemiah 11-12 Welcome! Today we have our next-to-last message in our sequence of messages on Ezra and Nehemiah. To understand the context of today’s passage, let’s first turn back to Nehemiah 7:4:

Now the city was large and spacious, but there were few people in it, and the houses had not yet been rebuilt. – Neh. 7:4

It has been about 100 years since the first Israelites had come back to Jerusalem after enduring the seventy years of captivity in Babylon. Things that were destroyed close to 200 years ago are still destroyed. This is a really long time. If you wander around South Carolina, you won’t find very many signs of life from nearly 200 years ago. There are exceptions, of course, places that were never abandoned, like Charleston. But abandoned places can become really “ruined” after only a few years. Look at pictures of the parts of New Orleans that still have not been rebuilt. Or just look at what was the Holiday Inn on Highway 123 here in Clemson.

Overcoming Failure

Nehemiah 9-10

Today, we are going to cover Nehemiah chapters 9 and 10. If you remember from last week in Nehemiah chapter 7, the wall had been completed in 52 days, a miracle of the Lord in the face of great opposition. God's blessing on the Israelites was so clear that it even demoralized their enemies. Then in chapter 8, the people of Israel had gathered together and Ezra read the Book of the Law of God from daybreak until noon. And, the people were weeping as they listened, but Nehemiah, Ezra, and the Levites stopped them and encouraged them to celebrate. The next day, they read of the feast of tabernacles or the feast of booths. Hearing that this feast should occur during the seventh month, they went out and prepared booths. Nehemiah 8:17 said “From the days of Joshua son of Nun until that day, the Israelites had not celebrated it like this. And their joy was very great.”

And so, the Israelites celebrated the feast with great joy through 8 days. According to Numbers 29, the feast would begin on the 15th day of the seventh month and last 8 days ending on the 22nd day of the seventh month. Now, we pick up at the beginning of chapter 9, just a couple of days after the feast.

Overcoming Depression

Nehemiah 7-8

Welcome! Today we continue our series on Ezra and Nehemiah, focusing on Nehemiah 7 and 8. The walls of Jerusalem are rebuilt! This is what we saw at the end of last week’s message. Despite the persecution, despite the threats, despite the many devious plots against them, the walls and gates were finished. Jerusalem was once again a walled city. As we read last week,

So the wall was completed on the twenty-fifth of Elul, in fifty-two days. When all our enemies heard about this, all the surrounding nations were afraid and lost their self-confidence, because they realized that this work had been done with the help of our God. – Neh. 6:15-16

Overcoming Oppression

Nehemiah 5-6

Welcome! Today we continue our series on Ezra and Nehemiah, focusing on Chapters 5 and 6. The year is 445 BC, and the location is Jerusalem.

In Nehemiah 1 and 2 we were introduced to Nehemiah as the cupbearer of the Persian King Artaxerxes. Nehemiah learned of the state of disrepair of the walls of Jerusalem as well as of the downcast “defeated” mindset of the people there, and he wept and prayed for them, praying specifically that God would use him to help the situation. After several months of prayer and fasting, through a miraculous series of events, the king decided to send Nehemiah himself to take charge of rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem.

Christ the Overcomer

Before we talk about Christ the Overcomer, we ought to briefly talk about why Christ needs to overcome at all. And what must Christ overcome?

After seeing the horrors of the twentieth century, the Jewish Holocaust preeminent, but the many other wars and the devastation that man has brought against man, it is apparent that evil abounds. Not only that, but the decay of ethics and integrity continues. The housing bubble and the economic collapse of 2008 and 2009 in large part was due to the greed of everyone who thought that they could get something for nothing. Scandal after scandal seems to befall those in political office. The continual increase in sexual sin, and I'm not just talking about the rise of homosexuality. The rise of sex outside of marriage and the increase of promiscuity. More and more children born out of wedlock. More and more broken marriages and single parent homes.

There's road rage and murder-suicides and suicide bombers and child abuse and child pornography and modern-day slavery. Problems and problems and more problems. There is a whirlwind of bad news every day. It just keeps coming. There is something wrong with our society. There is something wrong with our world.

Overcoming Opposition

Nehemiah 3-4

Welcome! We are continuing our series on Ezra and Nehemiah, today looking at Nehemiah chapters 3 and 4. Last week we looked at the first two chapters of Nehemiah, and we saw Nehemiah, cupbearer to King Artaxerxes, learn of the state of disrepair and discouragement of the people in Jerusalem. After several months of prayer and fasting, the king asked Nehemiah why he seemed sad, and Nehemiah told him of the situation in Jerusalem among his people. In a miraculous answer to prayer, the king had profound sympathy for Nehemiah and sent him to take charge of rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem. 

Upon arriving in Jerusalem, Nehemiah looked over the walls one night, and then he spoke to the people and encouraged them to begin rebuilding the walls under his leadership. They agreed, and despite some initial opposition in the forms of taunting from several non-Israelite leaders of surrounding regions, they began to rebuild. This brings us to today’s passage.

Overcoming Inertia

Nehemiah 1-2

Good morning! We are about to enter the wonderful book of Nehemiah. Last week we finished the Book of Ezra, and it is helpful to know that these two books are really two parts of one story. In fact, in the original Hebrew Old Testament, as well as in the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament (a translation into Greek made about 2000 years ago), Ezra and Nehemiah were actually combined into a single book. The separation of the book into two separate works seems to have been first done by one of the early church fathers, Origen, who lived from 185-254 AD (plus or minus a year or two). He was an expert in Hebrew who studied and compared various translations of entire Old Testament. 

It is possible that the separation was never meant to be deliberate, but a simply a practical thing because he wrote on scrolls of fixed length. When Jerome, about 150-200 years later, translated the Old Testament into Latin, he continued this practice, and it became established to keep them as separate books. Regardless of why the split into two books came to be, the important thing to understand is that we are continuing the story of the history of the Israelites in Jerusalem after the end of the exile that had followed the destruction of Solomon’s Temple.

Leaving Behind

Ezra 9-10 

Welcome! Today we will look at the last two chapters of the book of Ezra. As a brief review, Ezra starts with the decree of Cyrus, after 50 or 70 years of exile (depending on from where you start counting), that allowed the Israelites to go back to Jerusalem. We saw how they overcame persecution and trials to rebuild the temple, and how, after a period of about 80 years after the decree of Cyrus, Ezra came with a group of exiles to Jerusalem to serve as high priest at the rebuilt Temple. Once there, they sacrificed burnt offerings at the Temple to the Lord, thankful beyond words for how the Lord had protected them (and all of the valuable artifacts for the Temple they had carried) and, more fundamentally, for how the Lord had given the Israelite people back what had been lost due to the forsaking of God by their ancestors some 150 years prior.

After these things had been done, the leaders came to me and said, "The people of Israel, including the priests and the Levites, have not kept themselves separate from the neighboring peoples with their detestable practices, like those of the Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, Ammonites, Moabites, Egyptians and Amorites. They have taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves and their sons, and have mingled the holy race with the peoples around them. And the leaders and officials have led the way in this unfaithfulness." – Ezra 9:1-2

Bringing Along

Ezra 7-8

Good morning, after a week off to take communion and have a sharing time, we're back to our series on the book of Ezra. Today, we get to meet Ezra, the man himself. Before we get started, let's take a moment and pray. I encourage you to take a moment and ask the Lord to speak into your own hearts. Let's bow silently for a minute.

Father God, that is our prayer. Speak Lord to us. We are yours. Thank you that Your Word accomplishes its purpose and that it does not return void. Bring the truth and lessons of Ezra to us in the present day. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Okay, let's go directly to Ezra chapter 7, and meet Ezra.

After these things … Ezra 7:1

Come to the Table

Welcome! Today we will remember the Lord with the bread and the cup, just as Jesus instructed His disciples to do about 2000 years ago. Following this, we will have a sharing time, where anyone can share what God has been teaching them, what God has been doing in their lives. In preparation for this time of communion, I have a short message today entitled, “Come to the Table.” Now, the table you may have in mind when I say this might be the communion table that holds the bread and juice, and on one level you would be right. But I also have another table in mind, one that fits in with our current series on the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. The table I have in mind is first mentioned in Exodus 25.

"Make a table of acacia wood—two cubits long, a cubit wide and a cubit and a half high. Overlay it with pure gold and make a gold molding around it. Also make around it a rim a handbreadth wide and put a gold molding on the rim. Make four gold rings for the table and fasten them to the four corners, where the four legs are. The rings are to be close to the rim to hold the poles used in carrying the table. Make the poles of acacia wood, overlay them with gold and carry the table with them. – Ex. 25:23-28