Nehemiah - An Introduction

  • David Fairchild
  • Feb 1, 2009
  • Series: Nehemiah

From Creation to Nehemiah: The Story of the Bible

 

Creation: A Home for His People

 

As the play of history opens in act one, the main Actor, God, begins this drama by creating the entire universe.  As the Author and Ruler, God calls everything into being by His sovereign word. 

 

Each creature He makes plays a part in this grand drama and is declared by God to be "good."  God's creative work climaxes in the creation of human beings who are made in His image and are designed with a purpose of loving Him above all else, loving one another, and caring for the world as His stewards.  After creating Adam and Eve, He is pleased with His work and says that all He made was "very good."    

 

God gives Adam and Eve a home by placing them in the Garden of Eden.  They will be His people, and He will be their God and Father.  The earth was created to be a place of blessing for them to inhabit, to develop and cultivate, a place where they could walk with their Father in intimate relationship. 

 

All the earth is good, but Eden is chosen as a place that is better.   It is a place of beauty (‘pleasing to the eye'), provision (‘good for food'), security, and blessing.  It is a place chosen by God as their home where He would fellowship with them.  It is a place of communion with God. 

 

In this place, everything is right and good.  They not only know God intimately, they know one another in the deepest of ways.  They have no shame or guilt, and they have the amazing responsibility to care for their Father's work and show off His glory in all they do.  This is home.  This is the universal flourishing of shalom where everything is pulsing, moving, and thriving the way it was intended.   

 

Q-Have you ever felt a sense of home?  A place where everything is secure, right, and safe?  A place of loving relationships?  A place you miss if you're away from it?

 

The first act of God's drama closes with shouts of joy like the angels who sang when God created this world (Job 38:7). 

 

Fall: Kicked out of Our Home

 

Act two opens with great anticipation of the many ways God's children will continue to flourish.  They have everything they need; their lives are rich and full as they delight in God and the gifts He has given. 

 

God places a reminder of His authority by giving them one restriction:  they are not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  They can have whatever else they want, but God wants them to trust Him and learn to live by His word.  This will teach them to submit to God and always remember the joy of living under His care, through His word.  He wants them to remember that it is ultimately His home and they are to share in its blessing as they consider it their home too.   

 

But Satan offers another word, a lie, by which Adam and Eve can live.  In a horrifying twist, they listen to the lie of Satan and turn from God's command.

 

This act of treason and lack of trust in the character of their God sends shock-waves throughout the whole creation.  Adam and Eve's rebellion corrupts everything they once enjoyed.  Instead of walking together in the garden, delighting in God's presence and gifts, they hide from God and feel shame and guilt.  They no longer desire to be in God's presence the way they once did.

 

But the real problem of our rebellion is that God is holy and perfect and will not be in fellowship with sin.  God excludes us from fellowship with Him.  We are cut off from Eden.  We are kicked out of the place of God's blessing, our home.  They are sent east of Eden and the entrance to the Garden is blocked (Gen. 3:23-24).

 

The effects of their sin begin to grow and their son Cain, filled with jealousy and rage, kills his own brother Abel.  Cain moves further from the presence of God and is sent to live in the land of Nod, further east of Eden (Gen. 4:16). 

 

Mankind continues their movement east of Eden as sin and grows and grows.  Home is now the distant memory of a far off land. 

 

In the movie, Garden State, the main character, Largeman, says this about home:

 

"You know that point in your life when you realize that the house that you grew up in isn't really your home anymore? All of a sudden, even though you have some place where you can put your stuff, that idea of home is gone. 


"You'll see when you move out, it just sort of happens one day and it's just gone. And you can never get it back. It's like you get homesick for a place that doesn't exist. I mean it's like this rite of passage, you know. You won't have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start; it's like a cycle or something. I miss the idea of it. Maybe that's all family really is: A group of people who miss the same imaginary place." 

 

That is a great description of what many of us rightly have felt.  We feel homesick.  We have a place where we can put our stuff, but it's not home.  We're a group of people who miss the same place.  Eden echoes in each of our memories.

 

Except this place isn't imaginary; it's real.  And we're not going to get it back by trying to create a new home for ourselves.  That is what all of humanity has attempted to do.  We've all tried to create a place where we can say, "This place is right and good and is finally home."  Oh, we might feel that for a short period of time, but our souls cry out for Eden.  C.S. Lewis says this about our "true country."

 

"Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same."

 

The desire we try to satisfy is a desire for home, where we can walk with God in His presence, unashamed, fully secure, flourishing the way He intended.

 

Yet this story tells us that sin just pushes humanity further from home, further from Him.  The further man is from God, the more He desires to rebel.  Genesis 11 tells us the story of Babel.  Humanity comes together and builds a great tower in defiance of God so they can make a name for themselves instead of making a name for God as they were created to do.  Satan's lie is still believed. 

 

But God made a promise in Genesis 3:15 that He would not let sin remain forever.  Not only does death come as a result of our rebellion, but God in His incredible grace and mercy declares a promise that He'll send a child through the seed of the woman who will come to crush Satan. 

 

Genesis 11 ends in this continued rebellion, but Genesis 12 begins with God's promise, the promise of God coming to heal the world by giving a home to His people.  This is strange, but God begins to deal with one family, Abraham and his children. 

 

Promise:  Home in the Presence of God

 

The story begins with God calling Abraham to leave the land where he lived and God promising to show him another land (Gen. 12:1).  He is called to trust God and obey Him, and through Abraham God is going to bless the nations.  Even though God gives His redemptive promise to Abraham, the promise is for all nations.  He is blessed to be a blessing. 

 

God promises to give a land to Abraham and his descendents.  A time will come when the people of God will live in fellowship with God in a place of blessing and dwell with God forever. 

 

In spite of human rebellion, God doesn't abandon His plans for His world.  The rest of Genesis tells the stories of the ups and downs of this promise.  The promise is given to Abraham, then to Isaac, then to his grandson Jacob. 

 

Dangers threaten God's promised plan along the way: impotence and barrenness, foreign kings and their harems, natural disasters, hostility with surrounding people, and the unbelief of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  Yet through all of this, God shows Himself to be mighty and true to His word.

 

At the end of Genesis, Joseph, the 11th born son, shows God's faithfulness and control of history as He manages to preserve a people through whom God will bring salvation to the world (Gen. 45:5; 50:20).

 

The book closes and we're left wondering what happens next.

 

Exodus opens and it has now been four hundred years before this story resumes.  Abraham's descendents, now known as Israel, grow in massive numbers in Egypt. 

 

The reigning Pharaoh of Egypt begins to feel that Israel is a racial threat, so he reduces Israel to slavery.  The life outside the place of God is a life of slavery, threat and tyranny.  Exodus 1 ends with a decree from Pharaoh that every male child is to be drowned in the Nile.

 

In this scenario of intense pain and suffering, God chooses Moses to liberate Israel from the rule of Egypt so that Israel can return to God.

 

In a series of amazing events, ten plagues bring God's judgment upon Egypt's gods, and Israel is miraculously saved from the powerful Egyptian army as they cross the Red Sea.  Finally Israel arrives at the place where they will meet God: Mt. Sinai.  There God meets Israel in an awesome display of lighting and fire. 


Why has God chosen this particular people?  Because God has a job for them to do.  They are to be a nation and kingdom that function like priests.  Their task is to mediate God's blessing to the nations and to act as a model people attracting all peoples to God.

 

Exodus 19:4-6: "You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself.  5  Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine;  6  and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel."

 

This is the calling that will shape Israel form this point on: they are to be a showcase people and model to the world what God always intended for humanity.  They are to show the world what it means to be set free from slavery and walk with God. 

 

After giving them this task, God gives them the law to guide their lives, and the people of Israel commit themselves to living faithfully as God's people as they move to the home-land they were promised.

 

However, Israel slips into unbelief again and is required to spend forty years in the wilderness before arriving at the threshold of the Promised Land. 

 

Entering the Home-Land

 

The book of Joshua tells us how God keeps His promise to give Israel the land.  God gives them the land and distributes it among the twelve tribes.  The book ends with Joshua's pleas for Israel to be faithful as God's people. 

 

Judges opens with Israel's disbelief and disobedience as they refuse to rid their land of idols.  This cycle of disbelief, rebellion, judgment, cries to God for mercy, and God's rescue, repeats itself again and again in the book of Judges.

 

The people cry out to God for a king to deliver them from this mess (Judges 21:25).

 

Kings and Prophets

 

Samuel is the last great judge, as well as a prophet and priest.  The books of Samuel tell of a time of change within Israel as a nation.  God gives them their request for a king, but shows them that He alone is the true king as Saul fails miserably to lead God's people faithfully. 

 

God then appoints David as a king, and David serves God by defeating Israel's enemies and calling the people to live faithfully under God's word.  David moves God's people to Jerusalem.  David has a son named Solomon, who builds the Temple where God's glory dwells and reminds His people that He is their true King. 

 

Solomon begins to rule well, but eventually gives himself to foreign gods and he starts to oppress God's people, just like Pharaoh.  The tribes of Israel break into two, the tribes of the north (Israel) and the tribes of the south (Judah). 

 

From this time on, the two have their own kings.  Their story is a downhill slide into rebellion led by unfaithful kings.  Far from being a showcase to the nations, God's people fall back into their original rebellion and God kicks them out of the land.

 

Yet God sends them prophets to call them back to repentance and love for Him.  God promises that if Israel returns to Him He will be gracious and continue to work with them.  He warns them that if they continue in rebellion, He will bring judgment and send them into exile. 

 

As Israel's situation becomes more incurable, the prophets promise that God is faithful and promises He will send a future king who will usher in a reign of peace and justice.  This promised king will achieve God's purpose for His creation. 

 

The people refuse to listen, and so, the first citizens of the northern kingdom (722 BC), and then the citizens on the southern kingdom (586 BC) are captured as prisoners by the ruling empires of the day. 

 

The tribes are scattered to the corners of the earth.  The two tribes of the south go into exile in Babylon. Exile is a devastating experience for the Israelites.  What happened to God's promise and purposes?  Had he given them up for good?  During this exile God continues to speak to them through prophets like Ezekiel explaining why this crisis has come and assuring them that they still have a future. 

 

Eventually, the way is opened for Israel to return to Jerusalem.  Some return, but most don't.  In time, Zerubbabel, Ezra and Nehemiah lead those who returned to rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple. 

 

Nehemiah begins with a cry of repentance and a prayer to God that God would work through His people once again.

 

 

Key Dates (BC)

465    Artaxerxes I becomes king of Persia

458    Ezra returns to Jerusalem

445    Nehemiah returns to Jerusalem (Neh. 2:1)

433    Nehemiah goes back to Persia (Neh. 13:6)

    ?     Nehemiah returns again to Jerusalem (Neh. 13:6)

 

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