Lesson 2 - Nehemiah 1

[Music] [Music] we began our study of nehemiah last week my means of a brief introduction to the book and we read chapter one now the introduction focused on explaining the regional political realities pardon me about a little persistent cough here the regional political realities at the time of Nehemiah because only with this information and context can we understand why the Persian king was so accommodating of Nehemiah in order for him to journey a thousand miles from the Persian capital of Shushan to rebuild the broken-down walls of Jerusalem in summary I think we can say that when King Artaxerxes agreed to send his personal cupbearer Nehemiah to Jerusalem with his blessing it was because it was to his and to his empires benefit the Persian Empire was now so vast take a look at this map so vast some of the larger nations that made up the Empire had become very difficult to control Egypt for instance had a heritage of being a superpower in its own right and it always held dreams of creating its own empire being subjugated to a Persian king whose capital was a thousand miles away whose culture was so fastly different from Egypt well that was just intolerable so Egypt was in a nearly constant state of rebellion and they possessed the means and the ambition to be quite a problem for our desert season but in addition to Egypt other nations in and around Judah especially immediately across the Jordan River to the east the area called the Transjordan they took Egypt skew and they were in a rebellious mood and they - constantly challenged Persian Authority however the Jews of Judah were generally friendly towards the Persians and King Artaxerxes badly needed to maintain and even strengthen the loyalty they showed towards him after all the Jews had been rescued and released from their captivity in Babylon by the Persians the Persian monarchs tended to be more enlightened more tolerant of their subjects than the Babylonians and so generally they gave most of the kingdoms and nations in their empire enough latitude to continue speaking their own language continue worshiping their own gods and as long as Persian law was obeyed they could even Institute their own cultural traditions and customs a few years earlier it was artaxerxes who had sent Ezra to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple to reestablish the litical priesthood mostly funded by the Persian Treasury and so this show of generosity and kindness to the Jews created very good relations and as has been the case really for more than three millennia the fortress city of Jerusalem was established in a strategically valuable location that is why has always suffered attacks and been at the center of the ambitions of foreign potentates from Jerusalem a strong military presence could deal with Egypt the nations of the Transjordan Arabia even the territories of the further of the the former northern tribe tribes of Israel and at the same time an enemy that gained control of the city of Jerusalem could create major problems and routing them out would be difficult and costly in terms of lives and resources you know even today although on the one hand the battle over Jerusalem is about religion on the other hand if strategic location remains politically important because even though the names of the nation's surrounding Israel have changed since the Bible days the dynamics of desire for power and regional dominance by those nations has remained the same due to the advancement of military mobility and rapid deployment using modern technology Jerusalem can control a huge area from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jezreel Valley to the east beyond the Sea of Galilee to the south to North Africa and Egypt so the importance of who controls Jerusalem is at least as significant now as it was a nehemiah's day these thoughts had to have already been in artaxerxes mind well before Nehemiah's request to go to Judah it's only that Nehemiah who was a trusted and capable member of the King's inner circle desiring to go to Judah rather to Jerusalem into to direct the rebuilding of the defensive walls suddenly presented King Artaxerxes with the opening he was looking for wisely he lept at the chance and he offered nehemiah every means of his support chapter 1 is short so let's reread it to get our bearings for today turn your Bibles to Nehemiah chapter 1 that's page 11 31 if you have a complete Jewish Bible the words of Nephi Mia the son of Hachiya it was in the month of Kislev in the 20th years I was in Shushan the capital that Hana nee one of my kinsmen came out of Judah with some men and I asked him about the remnant of Judah ins who had escaped the exile and about yerushalaim and they answered me the remnant of the Exile left there in the province are in great distress they're held in contempt the walls of Jerusalem are in ruins and its gates have been completely burned up and on hearing this I sat down and wept I mourned for several days fasting praying before the God of heaven I said please Audra and I God of heaven you great and fearsome God who keeps his covenant and extends grace to those who love and observe and love him and observe His commandments let your ear now be attentive in your eyes be open so that you will listen to the prayer of your servant which I am praying before you these days day and night for the people of Israel your servants even as I confess the sins of the people of Israel that we have committed against you yes I and my father's house have sinned we've deeply offended you we haven't observed the mitzvot the commandments laws or rulings you ordered your servant Moses remember please the words you gave through your prophet Moche if you break faith I'll scatter you among the peoples but if you return to me observe my Commandments and obey them then even if you're scattered ones are in the most distant part of heaven nevertheless I will collect them from there and bring them to the place I've chosen for bearing my name now these are your servants your people whom you've redeemed by your great power and strong hand Auto and I please let your ear not be attentive to the prayer of your servant to the prayer of your servants who take joy in fearing your name please let your servant succeed today and win this man's compassion for I was the king's personal attendant the name Nehemiah Nemea in Hebrew means the Lord comforts it was not an uncommon name we're going to find a number of Nehemiah's in the Bible including two more in the Ezra Nehemiah scriptures the only way to sort about is by family ties if it stated and by the ear in which they lived the opening words of this chapter chapter make it clear the primary writer of this book is Nehemiah and EMI himself even though it is indisputable that at least one editor has been involved in creating this book in his final form like we have it today that probably wasn't completed until around the time of Alexander the Great about 330 BC the year our story begins is 446 or 447 BC and it's the 20th year of King Artaxerxes reign over the Persian Empire once we reach the 13th and final chapter of Nehemiah the time could be as late it's around 4:10 BC so as we discussed last time in Protestant Bibles since the early 19th century Nehemiah represents the end of the Old Testament timeline and so there's a glaring gap of information on the progress of the Jews the happenings in the holy lands from that moment until the opening of the New Testament now as I explained in our first lesson on Nehemiah this four century gap or the so called silent period was artificially created when the British and American Bible Society leadership decided to remove the 15 books of the Apocrypha which dealt with the time in between Nehemiah and the birth of Christ from Protestant Bibles I want to make it clear however that I can find no evidence that at any time in history has any group Judaism or Christianity regarded the Apocrypha as Holy Scripture nor as highly inspired is the Canon that we find in our Protestant Bibles today and I enthusiastically agree with that assessment that said Jews and Christians did regard it as somewhat inspired something more than mere literature as truthful and accurate and supremely relevant to the progress of the Jewish people and to the history of the Holy Land it is the relevance to the Jewish people and the insufficient relevance to the Gentile church as well as the position of the Catholics that the Apocrypha continued to hold a firm place in the Catholic Bible which seems to have led to its demise in the Protestant branch of the church but make no mistake it's not only the Catholics who have retained it most of the many Eastern Orthodox branches of the church have kept some or all of the books of the Apocrypha in their Bibles now although originally the books of the Apocrypha were scattered about in the Bible later this solution was usually to gather those 15 books together and make it a separate section of the Bible so that it is understood that it's not on the same spiritual level as the old and new testaments my position is that the Apocrypha is important it's relevant and it ought to be read by believers in Christ it goes a long way towards explaining the rise of Hellenism and the enormous Greek cultural influence over the Holy Land in messiahs era it explains how Judaism came to adopt many pagan eyes traditions and from that we can deduce how some of those traditions eventually found their way into Christendom this great cultural influence has also invaded the Western Church and it greatly colors the way we read the Bible today so we need to be aware of it that said there are some Jewish superstitions included in the Apocrypha and some twists on earlier biblical history that has to be taken with a rather large grain of salt but never should it be taken as infallible nor should it be taken as holy I recommend the English translation of all 15 books of the Apocrypha is written Edgar J Goodspeed is an accurate and readable text now we immediately run into a challenge in the very first verse of nehemiah as we're told it was in the month of Kislev in the 20th year of our tech services rain that nehemiah learned of the distress of the jews in jerusalem and the issue is that in the first verse of the next chapter chapter two we are told that after nehemiah heard this bad news from his brother Hanani he went to the king but that this occurred in the month of Nisan in that same twentieth year now for those of you who know anything about the Jewish biblical calendar Nisan is the first month of the year his lab is the ninth month let the math work on you a little bit so we have Nehemiah going to the king in the first month of the year knowing about the distress of the Jews and asking to be sent to Jerusalem which is eight months before his brother told him about it and the Fritton in the first month of that see me or rather I'm in the ninth month of the year knowing that it's eight months before his brother told him about the first month I've taught him about the problem in the first month I want to tell you some of the higher critical scholars have used this discrepancy to say the book of Nehemiah is flawed it's flawed it's not reliable how can these dates possibly be right everybody knows Nisan comes before kids left now it seems we need a little bit of instruction and the use of biblical calendars if we're going to understand this so buckle up this is going to get a little bit technical just hang in there with me because you're going to enjoy this and you're going to learn something from it's going to help you to read your Bibles a lot better the Hebrews have several different calendar years each one used for a different purpose there is the religious event calendar year there's the civil calendar year there is the tithing calendar year a couple of others I don't want this to throw you we have the same thing with modern calendars we have the civil civil calendar year which is January through December but we also have a school calendar year which varies depending on where you live we have what's called a fiscal calendar year this is generally used only for business accounting it can start any month my business chooses as long as it remains consistent year to year we have an agricultural year calendar and a few others in the Bible we in addition to all this have years based on the reigns of Kings and I confused it even more there's at least five different ways that the Kings regnal years were counted so what we are dealing with and the opening two chapters of Nehemiah is two things King Artaxerxes retinyl calendar meaning it indicates how many years he's been ruling his King and also the Hebrew calendar that tells us what month of the year that we're dealing with and as time went on thankfully the ways that Kings counted their time in office generally reduced to what scholars call the tea tree calendar and that's because the tea shuri calendar year method was created by the Babylonians not the Hebrews the Babylonians controlled a vast empire that was eventually taken over by Persians but the Hebrews only control little Israel and then only little or Judah and so the t-3 calendar created by the Babylonians became much more widely adopted than the Hebrew calendar now was all that being the Tishri calendar simply means that the month of Tishri was designated as the first month of the year but on the Hebron calender Teesri was originally designated in the Bible as the seventh month of the year in time the Jews acknowledge this near-universal use of the Babylonian t3 calendar by creating the man-made traditional Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashana also known as Jewish New Year Rosh Hashanah is the first day of t3 but biblically speaking the first day of Tishri had already been a God ordained appointed time one of the seven biblical feasts that was assigned to it and that day was yom teruah the Feast of Trumpets so now we have the confusion that on the first day of the month of Tishri it's Rosh Hashanah the start of a new year yet the first day of Tisha is also the Feast of Trumpets which is supposed to take place on the first day of the seventh month on this of the seventh month of the year so this gets worse when Passover rolls around and the month of Nisan and the Bible says that his son is supposed to be the first month of the year and Passover is to occur on the 14th day of that first month on the t-3 calendar Nisan becomes the seventh month of the year so the Hebrews are said to have a religious calendar that begins with the month of Nisan we'll go back to this one back Nisan see here this is the biblical religious calendar there's the month of dis on it begins by and also a separate civil calendar that begins with a month of Tishrei that gets worse yet because according to the Bible the year advances by one say from 2014 to 2015 it's gonna happen here in a few more weeks on the first day of Nisan but the Jewish civil calendar changed his years on the first day of Tishri you wonder why you have trouble with biblical timelines and most Hebrew calendars that are sold today shows the Hebrew year changing on the first day of Tishri so while in the Bible Passover's described as the very first the very first feast in the first month and Sukkot is the final feast Tabernacles it says here but that means the Feast of Tabernacles history is the final feast of the year with this new Jewish civil calendar its yom teruah which is the first feast of the year can you find that up here Pentecost this becomes the first feast of the year and the final feast of the year becomes shot won't I'm sorry where let me get this straight it's this is hard first piece to yalter here we are right here this becomes the first feast of the year and the final feast becomes Shavuot Pentecost that's kind of screwed up admit it's really awful when we start messing with God's timing suddenly we're switching seasons we're doing everything it makes discerning years and sequence of events in the Bible very difficult the bottom line is as concerns the matter of timing in Nehemiah obviously the calendars being the calendar being referred to as what's called a t sri calendar year so in chapter one verse 1 t3 is the first month of the year then kids lab is the third month in the 20th year of our tech Circe's reign and in chapter 2 verse 1 that makes nice on the seventh month of the 20th year of artaxerxes reign and this solves our dilemma because in the bottom line is it's four months from the time that Nehemiah is his brother tells him about this dilapidated condition of Jerusalem until Nehemiah brought wine to the king and informed him his desire to go to Jerusalem matter of fact we could probably all use a glass of that wine that he brought King Artaxerxes right about now but you need to know this you need to know this all throughout the Bible they're switching around calendars and we have to discern which one it is and after Babylon after Babylon 98% of the time it's the t-shi calendar the one that begins with what God said is the seventh month of the year now we're told in Nehemiah 1:3 that the walls Jerusalem were in ruins the gates were burned up and then in verse four this news brought Nehemiah to tears and he mourned for several days were told one of the issues that scholars point out have various opinions about is whether the walls of Jerusalem were newly destroyed or whether this is referring to the damage that Nebuchadnezzar had inflicted 150 years earlier and had never been repaired now I'm not gonna deal with all the arguments of both sides except to say this the book of Ezra confirms that while Ezra tried to rebuild the temple and the walls of Jerusalem he essentially only succeeded in rebuilding the temple the main argument put forth that the damage that Nehemiah heard about was new and that Ezra did rebuild some are all of the walls but they were again in ruins is that Neum at nehemiah reacted so strongly to the news it had to have been new damage that's it there is no biblical or historical record of the walls of Jerusalem being rebuilt before the time of Nehemiah and there is no biblical or historical record of any kind of the walls being rebuilt and then brought to ruin yet again after the Babylonian exile it's purely the conjecture of modern Bible scholars therefore there's no reason to doubt that since the king of Babylon destroyed the walls of Jerusalem around 600 BC that they had not been rebuilt or at least anything but partially but Nehemiah was about to make this happen the lack of protective walls also explains the poor economy of what should have been a prosperous city and it also explains why so few people lived in Jerusalem that Nehemiah had to nearly compel some country folk to move into the city now verse 5 begins a prayer it's a prayer of supplication and confession by Nehemiah and we see that this powerful man and the Persian government who had been born and assimilated into the Persian culture or he would not have remained living in Persia but rather would have regretted to Judah he was not only religious but the prayer shows he was quite familiar with the Torah I suspect that this was probably due to Ezra's teaching in influence I mean after all Ezra was also in type of service to King Artaxerxes and Ezra and Nehemiah were contemporaries even more we see Nehemiah speak of the Lord in both Hebrew terms and in Persian terms we're in our complete Jewish Bible the first words of verse 5 are translated as I said please Auto my God of heaven what it actually says is please you Dave Ave Viejo they hey Hashem a.m. that is Nehemiah calls God by his formal Hebrew name the elevate but then he continues with a standard purging term for the highest god of their pantheon of gods God of heaven nothing wrong with this it only indicates that Nehemiah was as much Persian as Hebrew in his ways and in his thoughts that should be expected now it's interesting that nehemiah's appeal to God was based on the promises of God's covenants to the Hebrew people also it's based on the inherent grace contained in those covenants that is extended to all who love the Lord and obey his commandments which Commandments the law of Moses of course because there existed no other divine Commandments for the Hebrews you see it's fascinating to me that essentially Nehemiah is appealing to God on the basis of his Hebrew roots and he is defining who God is based on God's attributes and his actions which are based on God's covenants with the Hebrews Nehemiah was born in the Persian Empire well after the Jews had been freed from the Babylonians he lived far away from the temple far away from the priesthood therefore far away from Torah teachers and instead he lived in a Gentile world what were the diasporic Jews such as himself embraced a form of early Judaism that had replaced certain elements of biblical worship and observance with new traditions that served to pacify the Persians while appealing to the Jews as good enough if not downright pious and yet as this sudden awakening to the plight of God's holy city of Jerusalem and his Jewish resident residence swept all like a tsunami of living water he immediately knew to turn to God and he also realized that turning to God meant coming to him on his terms and within the context of God's commandments and instructions I hope this last statement prettier years because so much of the modern church has become deaf to God's Word instead it's assimilated into a type of Christianity that is based on traditions syncretism with pagan observances and wed to tired old man made doctrines I mean we have been oh so comfortable and satisfied with these strange ways for a long time but suddenly a whole crop of new Nehemiah's are popping up all around the world awakened by a concern for Israel for God's Jewish people and a burning desire to recover his Holy Word in our lives just as Nehemiah turn to the Torah and to his Hebrew roots and preparation to serve the Lord in an exciting new way so must believers in the modern era just as Nehemiah we must let go of those weak and questionable definitions and attributes of God ascribed to him by human religious leaders and we need to discover him anew within the pages of the Hebrew Bible and especially the Torah our concern must be turned towards what he says in the scriptures is the most important thing to him at this time in our history the restoration of the people and nation of Israel and then from this our understanding of the New Testament will grow and change our faith will be deepened it'll be made pure our relationship with heist will mature and it will ripen making us useful in service to him now and ready to be harvested at the last Trump note that in verse six Nehemiah similar to Ezra completely identifies himself with his people and with their sin he confesses first that the source of the troubles for Israel is with the people being disobedient to God's commandments Nehemiah sprayer is intensely personal because he admits the both he and his direct ancestors bear blame and leaving no doubt that what he and the Jews are violating aren't judaistic customs and traditions he directly refers to the laws and rulings given by Moses then in verses 8 & 9 after confessing the sins of he and his people and that doing so was to break the covenant that they had made with God nehemiah draws attention to the consequences it is that even though they remain redeemed Israel was scattered throughout the nations and left to wallow and the curses that come from God from breaking God's commandment however this sad reality is balanced with the other side of the divine coin forgiveness forgiveness because if after being exiled for breaking faith the chosen people will return to God and begin to recover and observe his laws and Commandments then the Lord will go he will gather his people from wherever they've been flung on this planet and bring them home or as the verse says I will collect them from there and bring them to the place where I have chosen for bearing my name where is that place Jerusalem I mean there's so much here to examine first of all the people who transgressed against God those who refused to obey his laws of Commandments were not pagans they were his redeemed people they knew who God was and they believed in him and God knew them because he was their Redeemer but their Redemption didn't amount to a get-out-of-jail-free card it didn't amount to an immunity from prosecution see that is the heat people didn't obey their way to Redemption any more than you folks today who count on you schewe for their Redemption yet when the redeemed of God disobey God's commandments to a great enough degree the discipline from the Lord can become extremely severe with Israel and Judah the severity amounted to expulsion from their land inheritance into subjugation and oppression by Gentile nations who did not fear the Lord Paul issues a similar warning to those who were redeemed by Christ's blood in Romans 11:22 he says so take a good look at God's kindness and his severity on the one hand severity towards those who fell off but on the other hand God's kindness towards you provided you maintain yourself in that kindness otherwise you too will be cut off second we find that Nehemiah understood that a covenant has two sides to it blessings and curses if one violates the stipulations of the agreement then the Kirkus curses kick in to operation if one keeps the terms of the agreement then shallow blessing will be the result for God's redeemed the curse was usually not complete or permanent rejection by the Lord not even loss of redemption rather it was to have one's status with God severely reduced and for blessings to be curtailed Christ put that dynamic in another way in a most familiar passage to seed of Abraham into for class followers in Matthew 5:17 through 19 don't think that I have come to abolish the Torah of the prophets I've come not to abolish but to complete yes indeed I tell you until heaven and earth pass away not so much as a uterus stroke is gonna pass from the Torah not until everything that must happen has happened so whoever disobeys the least of these Commandments and teaches others to do so they will be called the least in the kingdom of heaven but whoever obeys them and teaches others will be called great in the kingdom of heaven so the formula Old Testament and New Testament is it for those who have been redeemed we are obligated to follow the Torah Commandments for those who obey those Commandments and teach others to obey those Commandments their status and God's kingdom will be elevated for those who disobey those Commandments and teach others to disregard them Christ says their status in God's kingdom will be severely reduced to the lowest level the exhales of Judah didn't lose their redeemed status as members of God's kingdom for their disobedience and as believers we don't typically lose our redeem status as members of God's kingdom for disobedience in fact if either group disobeys but comes to their senses acknowledges the Tropic that the trouble is disobedience to God's commandments not to some religious doctrines or some personal sense of right and wrong and we change our ways and turn back to obedience then he will return them us for our normal status in relationship with him nevertheless there are earthly and eternal consequences for disobedience especially when coupled with teaching others the God's commandments are irrelevant to them so Nehemiah understood that the only hope for himself and for his fellow Jews was a complete return to obedience to God's Torah nothing else would substitute it's obvious but almost all of what Nehemiah claimed in his prayer were paraphrases somewhere close to verbatim of passages from the book of Deuteronomy listen to Deuteronomy 30 verses one through four you don't have to turn there when the time arrives that all these things have come upon you both the blessing and the curse which I presented to you and you are there among the nations to which God Adonai your God is driven you then at last you'll start thinking about what's happened to you and you will return to I deny your God and pay attention to what he said which will be exactly what I'm ordering you to do today you and your children with all of your heart and all of your being at that point I don't know your God will reverse your exile he'll show you mercy he will return and gather you from all the peoples to which I denied your God scattered you if one of yours was scattered to the far into the sky Adonai your God will gather you even from there he will go there and get you now third only after acknowledging his and his peoples sins and the covenant relationship that is the basis of everyone's personal relationship with God and that God keeps his promises whether those promises are negative or positive nehemiah then petitions Yael Bay for his own success as he prepares for an audience with King Arthur sees verse 11 says now please be attentive to the prayer of your servant into the prayer of your servants who take joy in fearing your name so the implication is nehemiah had some prayer partners he didn't go with this alone my only comment on this passage is this it honestly shocks me sometimes that the prayer request list may sometimes have only a few requests on it shocks me I don't know why that is is it pride is it fear of embarrassment is it just being a very private person could it be that most folks have nothing of importance in their lives to even bring before the Lord that hardly seems likely see I know with some of the troubles that some of you who are listening to me are having have the troubles of some of your children and your grandchildren even parents and friends I know that you pray to the Lord for his intervention in his help so why are you going it alone why aren't you asking for the hundreds of prayer partners available to you to join with them are the prayers of many more effective than the prayer of one yes over and over we see that principle in the Bible and here in Nehemiah it's also brought to light enough this chapter ends with the comment that I was the King's personal attendant it was quite a personal achievement for nehemiah to achieve such a achieved epsilon t position and it shows as with Daniel and Esther and Mordecai and others that the Jews of the Babylonian exile were not usually treated with prejudice rather it is that several Jews had been elevated to surprisingly influential positions in the Empire's government with some belonging to the Kings royal court so it brings brings us right back to the question I asked last week what-whatever possess a man of Nehemiah's education wealth and status to throw in his lot with his fellow Jews in a remote place where he had never visited what could cause him to do that this narrative seems to indicate that it was kind of an accident that nehemiah even heard about the decrepit condition of Jerusalem and the distress that this was causing the the Jews of that area but quite illogically this new soul overwhelms Nehemiah he can't hardly bear it he determines something must be done and that it can only be the God of the Jews who has caused this improbable set of circumstances to come about that he must be the one to step forward he's fully aware that this is going to mean great changes in his life he is going to leave the luxurious prestigious secure confines of the king's palace for a place far away the place he knows little about except that the people living there can barely make it due to the ghetto light conditions and the precariously unprotected population that's currently Jerusalem but he recognizes that this is God calling him into service service that he had never imagined for himself but that he had been unsuspectingly prepared for over the last many years now nehemiah had a simple choice to make in response to the Lord calling him to our radically new vocation and lifestyle the choice was yes or no that is the choice that every believer all of us has been or eventually will be faced with what's your answer [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] issue you [Music]

Channel: Torah Class

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Keywords: Nehemiah, Prophet, Jerusalem, Old Testament, Torah, Seed of Abraham, Torah Class, Tom Bradford, Bible Study

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Length: 46min 18sec (2778 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 14 2019