I decided to bite the bullet and do something that will try and sort out some of the things I've been discussing. You remember I told you, my style is to just bring a big full basket of stuff and dump it out. You remember the time Dr. Scott came with his box of books and as he dumped it out? Well my style is, is research, to take in stuff and just dump it on you, and then to take time to sort it out. And sometimes the sorting out process, people can get impatient, or they don't understand how this is going to fit or where this is going to go. So, I want to place an idea in your head, and again no matter what I say or where I go, I want this idea to be at the back and eventually when I'm done at the front of everything that is said today. The questions that I have received, either through the mail or on the phone lines, of people being interested in, in the teaching on Nehemiah, and I've referenced Cyrus and Zerubbabel and I've been teaching on all these different things, and there are some who are, I believe, so confused with where these all fit in that if you can't━it's like a puzzle, it's just like a jigsaw puzzle. If you cannot make the pieces fit, you won't be able to see the whole picture. You might be able to look at the box, but the pieces will still be scattered. So I want you to keep in the back of your mind, no one, Jesus said, can come to Him except the Father draws. So no matter where I go today I want you to think at the background that no one can respond to God's call unless God has called and spoken to that person in their heart, opened up the receiver to hear and to be able to follow. I've lamented this for this ministry, Lord give me the people, but I think it's abundantly clear as I mature, as I grow in the faith, as you get a little bit more mature, you realize no matter how much you love people, you cannot make them come. You cannot, forget about church, you cannot make them come to the Lord. That is about the most ridiculous statement when I hear people who are heavy into evangelism, they say, “Oh if you, if you can just get them to the altar.” Better that they never came, than they uttered something they didn't understand what they were saying. It is the reason why Dr. Scott did not do altar calls, or ceased to do them eventually and why I don't do them, because if you're able to hear, if you're remotely interested in God's word, not in the happy, joy-joy message that the multitudes seem to be greatly moved by, but if you're interested in understanding the Bible, you're in the right place. And if you stick around long enough, yes. (Applause) If you stick around long enough, I'm not going to tell you that you're going to understand everything in the Bible because no man or woman understands it all. That's the greatest mistake I've seen some who were here thinking, “Well, it was all revealed here,” no, it wasn't. And I don't think I'll be able to reveal it in my lifetime time, but God give me the things to unfold and reveal and to each person who surrenders as a vessel, He does this. So with that being said, I want you to remember no matter where I go, what I quoted out of John. John 6 and verse 44: no man comes to Jesus except by the Father. If you want it from some other place in Matthew's Gospel: many are called, few are chosen. If you want it out of Paul's writing, Ephesians 1 and verse 4 where it says, “God hath chosen for himself.” My late-husband taught on that word, exalexato in the Greek, middle voice: God chose out for Himself among others in the populous of the world that He did not choose, He chose some for Himself to take to Himself, He chose them for Himself. So, now no matter where I go, remember what I said and we'll see if it makes sense at the end, all right. That's the test right there. Let's start first with, we're going to sort out some things. Let's start first with - we're in Nehemiah and some of you are saying, “Back in Nehemiah again?” Yeah, well, until the Lord tells me otherwise, that's where we're going to be. Now I want you to turn with me to Nehemiah 7, and the last message I delivered out of Nehemiah 7 was treating verses 1-4, but I want you to take a good look at what happens from verse 5, out of chapter 7; Nehemiah chapter 7, verse 5, all the way through to verse 73. If you're reading the same type of Bible as mine, you're going to see a whole lot of names: the the children of, the children of, the children of, the children of, the men of, the men of, the men of, the children of, the children of, the children of. Who on earth would do a message out of a genealogy? I don't know. Do you know anybody who would do that? Well, I'm not going to do that today━maybe. What I want to do is I want to set the record straight and, and unwrap a little bit of this, because if, and some have been here many years, you know that originally it is reported, it is said that Ezra and Nehemiah may have made up one book, especially in the early Vulgate translations, or the early Vulgate versions, they were one book, they later got divided and the question is, how does this all fit in? So I want us to look at chapter 7, verse 5, and I want us to read very, very carefully what we're looking at here. “And God put in mine heart to gather together the nobles, and the rulers, and the people, that they might be reckoned by genealogy.” Here's the careful part, “And I found a register of the genealogy of them which came up at the first, and found written therein, these are the children&.” Here begins what Nehemiah has, has found. And I want you to put a mental note right now that this list of people, “These are the children of the province, that went up out of captivity, those that had been carried away, whom Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon had carried away, and came again to Jerusalem and to Judah, everyone unto his city; who came with Zerubbabel.” Now if you read through this whole entire list, what you're going to find is from verse 8 to verse 25, it's the children of So-and-so and the children of So-and-so. Verse 26 through to verses, through verse 33 you've got the men of towns, and then it goes back to the children of So-and-so. And then you'll find certain gifts that are woven in there: verse 39 are the priests; verse 43, the Levites; verse 44, the singers; verse 45, the porters, the gatekeepers; verse 46 the Nethinims, which is nothing more, by the way, that sounds like another name in the Bible for giants or something, but these people simply translated, they're, they're servants, that's all. Nethinims is a name given to them as servants. You've got the children of Solomon's servants, and then the━so those are the people that are the highlighted people in there. But what I don't want you to be confused about is that these people, this record is essentially the record out of Ezra 2. There are some small discrepancies, for example, let me just give you a for example: in Ezra's listing there's a whole family, a whole group of people that do not appear in Nehemiah. And for example, towards the end of Nehemiah 7, we've got a list of 642 people who could not prove they belong to any one family, they could not prove it. You'll read in Ezra, there will be 652 of those. So there's some discrepancy, most scholars agree it is scribal error. There may be some, you know in translation or in transcribing some scribal error, but for the most part it's the same record. What's really important about this is that no one should think that these are the people listed in Nehemiah 7 that came with Nehemiah, and I want that to be clear. So I want to straighten some stuff out, before we can go forward, we need to straighten out some things. So Nehemiah, it says God put into his “heart to gather together the nobles, the rulers, and the people, that they might be reckoned by genealogy,” key word: “And I found a register of the genealogy of them which came up at the first, found written therein,” and so begins the genealogy, so begins the chronicle. Now I want you to think about this, Nehemiah comes as the last of all the people to return and we know that when he left the palace as a cup bearer, the king let him go, gave him letters, and a few men to travel with him. So we're not going to assume we know absolutely, these people are not a record of the people that returned with Nehemiah. And in fact, if you will please, indulge me and turn - the book that's right in back of Nehemiah is Ezra. And if you'll read, beginning after the edict is issued in Ezra 1, beginning in 1:5, after the edict of Cyrus for those people who were caught away and caught up in captivity, 70 years, the edict was given by Cyrus the heathen king that anyone could return. Think of it this way, you want some New Testament terms: “whosoever will,” could, okay? Now you'll know why I started where I did. “Whosoever will” could come, anybody was free to go and rebuild. It wasn't some random journey back into some ambiguity, it was a journey back, for the most part, for most people, even if they were born in Babylon, but their parents or their grandparents would have been from this place, to go back to the roots to restore worship, to restore the things of God. Anybody could've come; very few did. But listen in verse 5, it says, “Then rose up the chief of the fathers of Judah and Benjamin, and the priests, and the Levites, with all them,” key line here: “whose spirit God had raised.” God had to do some stirring, just as God stirred the spirit of Cyrus to issue the decree, He had to stir up the hearts of the people. And we know it was a mass multitude of people carried away in successive waves, and we know about very few who chose to return. Now I want to go historically and unfold the chronology here so it makes a little bit more sense for those people who are struggling to follow along, but before I do that let me just say: the same is true today. God must stir up the spirit of a person. We can pray for people, we can, we can desire for our loved ones, we can say, “I so desire for that person to hear, they need to hear this, they need to know who God is,” but just like in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, just like in the days of the heathen king Cyrus, God has to stir. So that we know that when Jesus says in the New Testament, “No man comes to the Father,” God has not invented some new way, except He gave us the revelation of Himself, if you will, by giving us His only begotten Son. God has been using the same method to stir men and woman's hearts through generations. It's, it's our failure many times over to hear, if we're even stirred up inside to respond and to go. This is why Jesus said, “Many are called, few are chosen.” Now to some that just becomes mere poetry of the New Testament, to me it's a reality. When I think about multitudes of multitudes of people who gather in, and I'm just, I'll be very gentle about how I say this, who gather into certain larger churches on Sunday mornings to hear a peppering about instructions from the word of God, but it's all about how smooth and how pleasing it is to you and how you can be great. I realize the words of Christ being realized right before my eyes, very few people; let's look at the numbers here. How many were carried away as opposed to how many came back? Very few people have the ability to desire God, to earnestly follow and to pursue. What did Jesus say? “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst, they shall be filled,” but He doesn't say, “Blessed are all the people of the world because they will all hunger and thirst.” He says there's a select group of people. Sorry, that may offend some, but the reality of what I see is very few people can actually have that desire. Now if you're listening to me today, even if you're listening to me as one of those pouting failures out there who is puffed up in pride, but you still tune in out of curiosity to say, “What? What the heck is she going to talk about today?” and then when you get mad enough you click me off, God's still even talking to you, because you tuned in. That should irritate a few people! That's how much Jesus Christ loves you, if you can, if you can wrap your mind around that. You find out eventually I have this interesting perspective on things. The ones that He really wants, eventually it will be revealed that they were tucked away all along being their usual ornery selves and one day something will break inside them and they'll say, “I should've done this a long time ago.” And you'll be able to say, “I never closed the door,” but just like the promises that we're told about in Hebrews, you can wait a day too long. Don't think that God's mercy is some turnstile you can just keep deciding you decide. God at some point, I think says, “Had enough.” Thank God it takes Him a real long time to get there, because I could've been a “had-enough” one and you could've been one of those too! All right, for the smart people, that'll catch up with you in a minute. Now God had to stir up the spirit of these people, I'm back in Ezra, and strengthen their hands. And so if you read carefully you see that as you go through, the decree is given by Cyrus, there is a person introduced in Ezra 1:8 called Sheshbazzar who I may talk about this week, tune in. (I just dangled something), and then begins chapter 2. And this is indeed pretty much the same list as we we're just looking at in Nehemiah 7. And the reason why I wanted to jump back a little bit is to show you that all of these things didn't happen all at the same time. Let's do a little, a little drawing here and let's figure out how we can━I want to make this understandable so anybody who's trying to fit the puzzle pieces together. See, this is my dilemma, I've got some people here who've here like before the flood, they've got notes in their Bible from you know the first dry land. But there's other people here who, who have, don't have those type of notes, so let's talk a little bit about this, and we'll try and put this out on a timeline. And somebody said, “Will you be presenting this on a handout?” I said, “Yes, eventually,” but I want you to have information and understand why if you try to study the timeline you'll find, unless you're following what I'm doing, it's going to be really confusing. So, first things first; we're going to put Cyrus and the decree of Cyrus at the front of my list here to kind of━there'll be two different lines. I'm tempted to go over there, but I want to stay by my notes. So let's talk about this. I think it was last week I presented the message on Cyrus and the prophecies in Isaiah about Cyrus. So let's put down some dates here. Let's put down Cyrus to 530. Now that's not his reign, that's just his, we're putting this as a generous━we know that he died in 530. This is the man who Isaiah 150 years, approximately, before Cyrus is born, the prophet Isaiah prophesies. We saw that in Isaiah 41, in Isaiah 44 and 45, specific prophecies regarding Cyrus. Now Cyrus, we know, will conquer the Babylonian Empire. There's a timeline for all of this, so let's just━I'm, when I have sliding dates I'll say '36, '37. The sliding dates that I'll put down for the conquering of Babylon will be 539. This is where Cyrus comes in and now the Babylonian Empire is overtaken by Cyrus. And these are kind of important dates, because this date will be the date that if you were reading in the book of Daniel, you want to be clear when it says it was the seventh month or it was the seventh year. If you know the dates of the kings, of the Persian kings, this will help. It will also help to sort out Nehemiah, Ezra and eventually Esther. So, let's do this, 2 Chronicles 36, I think, verses 22 and 23 tell you about the edict of Cyrus. And what does it say? “In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia,” the first year that Cyrus conquered. So the first year, we're going to put the first year at 539 / 538, the first year, and the edict is issued and the first wave of people who will return in response to this, which the edict is also included in Ezra 1, verses 1-4. The first wave of people to return, you'll read, will be the people who returned with Zerubbabel and Jeshua; Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel and Jeshua the son of Jozadak. That occurs in Ezra 2. That's the first group of people to return and because I always say I'm going to use notes and then I never do and then I really get critical of myself because I don't, I will. All right. I hope you liked all of that, all right. So what do we have here? We have Zerubbabel in Ezra 2 returning, and I'm using very soft dates, but he's returning with his group. We'll put Zerub; he's returning 536 to Jerusalem. There are certain hard dates in history you can know. “You're going to do a message all about dates?” Pretty much, so you can sort it out, because once you see the puzzles fit together, the pieces fit together, the whole thing, you kind of go, “Oh. Okay, that makes sense now.” How many of you have been reading either Ezra or Nehemiah and then the work stops and then it starts and you can't figure out, well, who the hell is stopping the work? One place it says here's Darius and here's Cyrus and there's another guy over here who's Artaxerxes; we can't figure out if it's Artaxerxes or Xerxes. Who are these people and why are they stopping the work? Then you realize that part of the problem is not so much about those people, but the people that might have fallen in-between those people, whew! All right, Zerubbabel is the first one to return and if you read carefully, this is Ezra 2. Ezra 2, how does it start? 2:2 says those, these are the people which came with Zerubbabel. This is the exact same list that you find, more or less, in Nehemiah 7. So I want you to know that Nehemiah's purpose for using this genealogy, pulling it out and recapping it is not some random act, it's not confusion about, well, are these the same people that returned? I'll get to what the purpose is in Nehemiah 7, but what I want you to see is if you're even concerned about this, this is the first group of people, Zerubbabel; that returned with Zerubbabel. Now there's a mention of Sheshbazzar, and some people have said that Sheshbazzar is indeed Zerubbabel or Sheshbazzar is another prince of Judah. We'll have to discuss that at another time, but what I want you to know is by and large, it is standardly accepted that Zerubbabel's group is the first to return and the bulk of the people who return━oh, I'm going to open up a can of worms, but I might as well. If you add up the numbers either in Ezra or in Nehemiah, they don't add up. And I don't have to apologize for it, because we're looking at something that antiquity has at least given us the knowledge of even in Ezra's writing in Aramaic, we may have lost some portion of the text. That's pretty sure. So when it; if you're one of those people that say, “Well, I tried to add it up and it doesn't add up,” don't worry about it. Other people have tried too, but it doesn't add up; but do I think all these people returned? Absolutely. What's so funny is who would take the time to chronicle all of these people and you know that all of their names mean something, right? Because you're not given a name in the Hebrew concept without it having meaning; we'll do that too this week. I think you'll have some fun with the folks and their names. But what I want you to see is here's the first group, 536, Zerubbabel returns. Now in the book of Ezra, I want you to see the second wave of people who will return. The second wave of people, it's very counterintuitive, but the second wave of people occurs with Ezra, coming with Ezra in Ezra 7 and 8. Now somebody might say, “Well, that's convoluted. Why does he have a book named after him when he only shows up halfway through?” Well, don't ask me. Ezra 7 and 8 are the second wave of people returning and there may have, as I said, depending on if you want to give credence to Sheshbazzar being Zerubbabel or a different person, we might say one, two and possibly three with Ezra, depending on how you're reckoning, but Ezra's return is here. It begins with telling us something about Ezra, which is going to be super important. Ezra 7, “Now after these things, in the reign of Artaxerxes king of Persia”━remember how the opening of Ezra started with the decree of Cyrus? Remember that? Some of you remember it. Now one thing you can be sure of: Cyrus died in 530. We know that absolutely. If you love history, well, let me say it this way, if you hate history, you're going to hate me right now. But we know that Cyrus died in 530 and he died at the hands of Queen Tomyris, who was a Scythian queen. He went to make war with a group of people, these nomadic people on horseback, and he first proposed that he marry her so he could get her kingdom. And she said, “No nookie for you, cookie.” Who knew the Bible could be so interesting? But king Croesus decides to come up with a plan to help Cyrus gain the territory of these people, thinking they put out a big banquet and they'll feast and the people will come and get drunk. And instead, they come but Cyrus ends up losing his head. And if you like art, Peter Paul Rubens painted a great depiction of Queen Tomyris with the head of Cyrus with a jug full of his blood, because that's what she said she'd do. If you're interested in knowing about her, who is a part of the Scythian wandering people, or part of the Saka people, whatever those people are, tune in this week. Am I trying to get you to watch this week? Yep. Is it working? Okay, that's some of you. All right, so here we are. Chapter 7 of Ezra says, “Now after these things, in the reign of Artaxerxes king of Persia, Ezra the son of Seraiah, the son of Azariah, the son of Hilkiah, the son of Shallum, the son of Zadok, the son of Ahitub”━there's a reason why this is there. Why? Because verse 5 culminates with “the son of Aaron the chief priest,” Ezra, his pedigree, his genealogy is linked to Aaron of Moses and Aaron. So this is included for this reason to make sure we know he has fine pedigree here in the genealogies. Then it says, “Ezra went up from Babylon; he was a ready scribe in the law of Moses, which the LORD God of Israel had given: and the king granted him all his request, according to the hand of the LORD his God upon him.” And if you keep reading, you'll find an exact date even here. “And there went up some of the children of Israel, and of the priests, and of the Levites, and singers, and porter, and Nethinims, unto Jerusalem, in the seventh year of Artaxerxes the king.” So not to be confused with this first group of people who went under Cyrus' decree. Here is a second group of people and if you keep reading, you find out it's the seventh year of Artaxerxes. Am I the only person this has ever bothered that this seems to be all chop, chop, chop, chop? Has this bothered anybody? Aw, somebody up there shook his head no. Go to sleep, come back later. It bothered me because I'm reading this, thinking, well there's all this stuff. Some of it is just, you just perpetuate things, but here we have the seventh year and it says, “Upon the first day of the first month began he to go up from Babylon, and on the first day of the fifth month he came to Jerusalem,” that tells you it's a four-month journey from Babylon to Jerusalem. That tells you right there how long it took. And I'm not sure, but I don't think that they were, I don't think they were speed-walking, but four months, “according to the good hand of his God upon him. For Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the law of the LORD to do it, to teach it in Israel statutes and judgments.” So we read that there is this clear understanding of when Ezra goes up, and if you keep reading and you go into the next chapter, chapter 8 of Ezra, it says, “Now these are the chief fathers, this is the genealogy of them that went up with me,” it changes now, “went up with me,” Ezra, “from Babylon, in the reign of Artaxerxes the king.” And here becomes, here we have a chronicle of the people from verse 2 all the way down, keep reading, that are the people that returned with Ezra in the second return. And we put his return at approximately the year 458. This is important, because when you read you start putting together these pieces. And let me just cut to the chase so some of you who are saying, “Where does Nehemiah fit into this?” We know that Nehemiah returned about 445, because the walls were completed in the year 444. So I want you to see the difference between Ezra and Nehemiah, and this becomes important because in the 8th chapter of Nehemiah, Ezra is going to appear and read the law. And some people have said, “Well, how could that be? If he was in the beginning of his book, how can he be in the middle over here?” Right? So I want you to see what's happened: three waves of people. You've got almost, not quite, but almost 100 years of people trickling and returning, so the first group that comes, Zerubbabel and the high priest, they do the bulk of the construction. They do the bulk of the work. You will not find Ezra appearing before chapter 7 and 8 of Ezra, of the book named after him. And we know that his timeline is very crisp. There is an edict, a second edict issued. If you want to get fancy here, there's a second edict, a second decree issued by king Darius in Ezra 6 that's allowing Ezra now to return. So if you start putting these pieces together, you say, “Well, that, I guess that makes sense.” Let me take a new page now so we can start scribbling all over again. Now, let's do it like this. We have the people that return the first time and those people who I just was referring to, the first group of people returning, in the list of Ezra 2 and 3. Believe me, this message is not going to make you feel all tingly inside, but when I'm done, you're going to know something about how God calls to people's hearts and how, how people can respond. There's a reason why, as I said, Nehemiah has this genealogy being reread some what? Almost 100 years later. Does that make sense to you that you'd pull out an old genealogy and say, Okay, everybody. Hey, I'm going to tell you about the people that were here 50 years ago in this building. Some of you would say, “Well, who cares?” Except if you had family members that were here, then it would make a difference. It would prove the point that you've got roots here, you belong here, so let's park that for a minute. Ezra 2 and 3 are the people who returned with Zerubbabel. That's what we just said, correct? All right, we put that timeline at what date? (536) Okay, we put that at, within a year or so, some of the dates given can be '37, '36, but this is the first group of people. Now, Cyrus is going to die in 530, this we know absolutely. What's going to happen is Cyrus' son, Cambyses, if it looks like that, he will reign in his stead, and he dies in 522. The work stops in Jerusalem right here, somewhere in this ballpark. Let's put a line and come down. Now, if you've been following anything that I've been saying because I dumped out a whole bunch of stuff, the teaching of Haggai and Zechariah occur 520, so we've got, we've got some━actually, it needs to go beneath this. I'm dyslexic right now. It needs to go beneath this. It's hard when the numbers are going backwards; 520. That's where this goes. Work comes to a stop and we know the work comes to a stop for a reason. You will not find the reason why it stops necessarily clear, although there were, there were people who came and━Tatanai and other people who made trouble, but if you know the history, the Persian history, you'll find that there is a successor to Cambyses, temporarily. His name is Smerdis. Boy, those names are sure names you want to name your kid after. His name actually was false Smerdis. So a decree is issued, a second decree is issued to recommence the work and what you have here is the second decree being issued in Ezra 6, and that decree will be issued by Darius. You want to confirm what I'm saying? Go back to Ezra 6 and what do we read in Ezra 6? “Then Darius the king made a decree,” does that match up with what I just said? So it's important when I say to you to line all this up. You might say, “Well, I can't follow all this. I'm trying to take notes and you're going too fast and it doesn't make sense to me and what━what does it matter?” Because last week I told you God's in control of history, God's care for His people, but there's one other criteria that's missing right here. Remember where I started: no one can come except they be called, they be drawn by the Father. That was true in this day, the day of Ezra and Nehemiah; it's true today. I'm going to be consistent here. No matter what I do in the middle, at the end I will end up saying the very same thing I started with. So we have a decree. That is Darius will find the decree that Cyrus made and then the green light is given, that's Ezra 6:1-12, to start the work again. And if you're going down the timeline, you've got in 458, you've got Ezra, what I just read out those 7 and 8th chapters, who will return, and a third decree, he returns by a third decree issued in Ezra 7 by Artaxerxes 1. And of course, then you've got Nehemiah arriving, as I said, 445, because we know that by 444 the walls were built. So that gives you perspective. There are other things possibly, if we were going to discuss that are critical. If I was teaching out of the book of Esther, I could show you where Esther fits into this. And the reason why it's important to know where all this fits in is because it can get rather confusing of why Esther was in the palace and why Nehemiah's in a palace. And you can say, “Well, I understand the Babylonian captivity, but where do these fit in?” Now I have to just tell some of you, if you go to look up Bible commentaries, it may be a little bit confusing. The timeline of the kings, of the Persian kings, depending on whose record you're following, if you're following the Bible chronology and you're trying to match it up with the Behistun Rock or you're trying to match it up with the Cyrus cylinder, they all may read slightly different. But if you line it up with the Bible, the Bible lines itself up perfectly; things are confirmed within the Bible. You'll find prophets overlapping in these periods. As I said, Zechariah and Haggai; we could, we could pick apart their work and know exactly to the date, because Haggai specifically gives us day and month of his prophecies. So what am I trying to tell you? I'm trying to tell you that if you sort all this out, you find God has been masterfully unfolding a plan for His people. I told you last week about Jeremiah foretelling the 70 years. And if you're one of those people that likes to fit all this in neatly, you've got the book of Daniel, which not only foretold of the people coming out, but pointed to the 70 weeks of years, pointing to the death and Resurrection of Christ, and ultimately at a time, a future time when the government of God on earth shall appear. So you've got some pretty hard dates in here. So then, that brings me back to the question of why did Nehemiah include this genealogy? So let's go back now, now that I think I've laid out a little bit of a timeline. Here's the important part. As you know, we're looking at Nehemiah 7, but as you know, this passage, as I said, originally occurring in Ezra 2 and the start of it was God stirring up the leaders of the people, stirring their hearts to return and to build. Now in Nehemiah's day, let's look down here, in Nehemiah's time, and all of this time has passed; the temple, the foundation, the altar, the temple and now finally the walls have been rebuilt. And all of these people are now, you can't, you almost have to jump something, you have to jump a conclusion that the people who originally returned, for the most part, unless they were still living lengthy lives, are dead. There's about a 100-year space or close to a 100-year space. There may be a few elders still living, but what's going on here is Ezra, Nehemiah rather, he says "God put it in his heart to gather together the nobles, the rulers, and the people, that they might be reckoned by genealogy. And I found a register of the genealogy of them which came up at the first, found written therein,” and here are all the people. Now can you imagine reading this, this record? You know, today, if you want to find you're ancestry, you go to a website, ancestry.com and you can put in all your information and big brother can also help you find your, find your━never mind; let's not go there. But you can, if you were looking to find out where you came from, you may have to do a lot of tracing, a lot of “Well, So-and-so got married and they changed their name.” But back in this day, you would be known by the “children of So-and-so.” So can you imagine Nehemiah's day this recap, if you will, that is calling out. I'm assuming that Nehemiah took this list and he began to read it. Now let's just imagine for a minute that there's a mass multitude of people gathered here and most of the people in this list may be already deceased or very, very old. And Nehemiah starts to read this chronicle of the people who first returned. Now if I was, if I had the ability, which I don't, but if I had the ability to know your mother's name or your father's name or your grandfather's name and I called it out, that'd make you like, “Okay, you got my attention!” So imagine what's happening here. As these names are being read out, there are people standing there who are the children of, who are the children of the children of. And then there's this group of 642 people, who cannot, cannot show that they belong anywhere. They're put out of the priesthood because they're considered polluted and the Scripture says here that they had to wait until there be a priest with the Urim and the Thummin, who could come and say whether or not they could remain. Now that passage still is tying us back to the original people that came. The important part I want you to see here is, imagine Nehemiah, who was moved to come back and rebuild the walls, he understood something: the walls meant nothing without people there, without a community. So it's put in his heart to start reading this, finding the geological record, or the genealogies of the past to help ensure, to guide the future of this people. And as this is being read, you can imagine if he's standing up and he's reading this and people are gathering. This is not just a random chapter tucked in here like some people have said, “Why did; why is this included here?” You'll see why. If you keep reading, it says, beginning in verse 1 of chapter 8, “And all the people gathered themselves together as one man into the street that was before the water gate.” This is right before Ezra the scribe will come up and read the law. And it's no accident to me that in Nehemiah's hands, this document was used to remind the people of their incredible history coming out, those that returned, those that could answer the call of God, to remind them of the rich history of God's hand to provide for them this almost 100 years past. And looking forward to a future, which is why hard sanctions by the mouth of Nehemiah that they shouldn't intermarry and they shouldn't intermingle to preserve the seed to Christ, which I've said before. But if you think about it, there's something really great here. To encourage all the people whose names would be read who are listening, now stirred up as one person ready to hear the word of God. Hearts are prepared as one person in the street, this mass multitude of people standing there, because Nehemiah knew something, which doesn't take a great genius to figure out. You could build the walls, you could have a temple, you could have an altar, but without a community of believers gathered by God, the walls, the temple and the altar meant nothing. Now remember I started all this by saying the Lord calls people and He's still doing the same thing today. And the radical thing is that when you read this “and all the people were gathered as one man,” they did the same thing in, in the opening chapters of Ezra and they did the same thing on the Day of Pentecost, gathered as one, in one mind, in one accord. And you see that God has been saying something really that is a repletion of His way with His church. Now I'd love to tell you that in this list, if you tune it during the week I'll go through it name by name. There's some very interesting stuff in there. In this list, it's almost as though tucked in there are things that God wanted to say as a little footnote. For example, in one of the, the groups men that returned, it says the men of Anathoth, and if you know the Bible, you know that Jeremiah, while he was in prison, he sent the money to buy a field in Anathoth to preserve his inheritance. That's included in the men that returned. So you see God is basically saying, "I still call the people. I want to remind you of your rich past and your rich heritage, but you've got a future ahead of you.” Now what about those 642 people who couldn't prove who they were? Well, you'll find out that in Nehemiah's book later on, some of these people actually are integrated into the work of the ministry, and you'll find that if we were taking Nehemiah's lesson to us today, anybody who knows that they've been bought by the blood of Christ has a genealogy. You're not left outside; you're not like these who said, “I can't prove who I am.” I know who I am. Just like Paul, I bear in my body the marks of a brand slave, this crock of clay that's inhabited by His Spirit. But these people who didn't have our information were gathered as one person and I imagine it was at that point, 100 years later, with children and children and children being produced. I mean, if you look at the production of one family; there's two families here that were really productive 100 years ago, the family of Senaah that produced 3,930 and the family, yeah, and the family of Azgad who produced 2,322. That's, you know, listen, maybe they were in captivity and they were a little bored, you've got to pass the time, redeeming the time because the days are evil; I don't know. But you know that they were busy doing something. They were busy repopulating in preparation for a future time, whatever that means. Nah, that's a lie. But what I'm saying to you is this, when you recognize that everything here in this book is almost an indicator. It's beautiful history if, if it's placed properly, and I guarantee you for those people that say, “You went too fast,” I'll go through this again. I did prepare a chart. It's chart, by chart, by chart to show you step by step, how all these things fit together, that at some point you have to realize even the names being included here that would have prompted the children to say, “Me! That's, that's my family! That's where I belong!” And today in the church, it's those people who able to respond and say, “Me! That's me!” Not “Me! That's me━my parents necessarily grew up in the church,” but “Me! That's me━I was sometimes in darkness, I was alienated, I was outside, I was foreigner to the church and suddenly one day, God opened my heart. I wasn't, I wasn't trying to plan on it, but God opened my heart and drew me to Him.” That's the only explanation I can tell you for me. I can't, I can't say somebody coerced me and said, “Well, you'd better get right with God,” because for me, God was God and I was okay and everything was good, but I didn't know who the hell God was. That's the problem with most of the church is they're so busy trying to tell you how they're bringing people; God is not involved anymore in the drawing and the criteria for belonging is not here: I belong because the Lord Jesus has bought me. I'm His. When He went to Calvary He bought the whole field, His blood covered everything, my sins, your sins white as snow. It doesn't matter. Now there's a new criteria: the minister's capability to be eloquent or some new terminology I heard over the past week and I thought, “Aw, that's just a bunch of stuff.” There's only one way that God is still doing His work, the very same thing here. Anybody could have returned, but God knew the ones━it doesn't mean that He knew them and therefore they did. We have free will, we have free will to do otherwise; that's the whole definition of sin, that we do what we want to do as we want to do it, “All we like sheep.” But yet here is a picture of people who answered the call. And I love this. We'll read on in Ezra 8 when Ezra starts reading the law━in Nehemiah 8 rather, when Ezra starts reading the law━the people heard the law, some of them for the first time, and their reaction to the word. Forget about the concept of law, Torah. They were hearing God's word for the first time and their reaction wasn't to be clipping their nails or picking their teeth or rolling their eyes; they all wept; a response to God's word. When God has done the drawing, there'll be an ability to respond. These people were weeping at the hearing of the word of God and they're told instantaneously, “Don't weep. Go home and be happy.” And I'm telling you today, just like these people. There's a lesson, there are so many lessons in this book for us. I don't know who could be bored with the concept of understanding God is still doing it the same way. I'd love to go out and tell people, “You need this. You need to hear God's word,” but if somebody is only interested━I, I heard the, the idea that the largest Protestant church, which I sometimes get forwarded emails from, from you, that the bulk of the people who attend are non-believers, and in essence it's, it's under the auspices that this is a great way to introduce people to the word of God. But that is a bunch of bologna, because if people have a hunger and a thirst and if you feel lost and you have no moorings and you, you have nothing to hang onto, you're either going to grab for fluff and at the moment in the flesh the fluff is good because it's soft, but it will fall away, and in eternity will count for nothing, versus the things that are absolutely true, forever settled in heaven that this word still is occupying the hearts and the minds of people today who are able to hear, to come and to react to the word. And guess what? These people randomly that we read about, chronicled here, not random. All counted for something, all part of God's repopulating the city, bringing us to the time of Christ. Well we are repopulating the city in preparation for Christ's coming. Your purpose, your genealogy is not through the children of and the children of and the children of, but I'm a child of God. And praise God that He called me and He called you. And forget about the multitudes of people and the multitudes going in a direction saying, “This is the way!” We're told, “This is the way, walk ye in it.” And this is the only way that anyone comes. Jesus said it, “No man comes to the Father save through the Son and Him I will raise up in the last day.” What a wonderful promise for those people who have ears to hear and eyes to see that somehow, even if you feel like you're just a marginal hanger-on today and you cannot figure out why you're still here. There are people like that. Listen, don't be deceived. There are people listening to me, they cannot figure out why they're still here or what's the point. And the point is, if you will humble yourself and quit thinking that God's going to do it some other way. I've quoted this to you before out of 1 Corinthians, “God uses the base things,” what: “to confound the wise.” He uses the things that are not, to bring those things that He wants to come to pass. So don't look for some cloud and some pillar of fire somewhere, but listen to the word of God. And we only know from what the word of God says: faith comes when you're hearing the word of God, and you hear the word of God when it's preached. This is how faith comes and is built every single time, and the more you get into God's word, you realize no accidents. No accidents for these people, you are not accidents, I am not an accident. But I am part of a great plan such as you are that when this genealogy is looked at you can say, “Well, their names are there,” well, my name and yours is also there in the Lamb's book of life. We have nothing to apologize for and I'll say it again. This is a great lesson to say many people could have returned. I'm talking to you people out there; “whosoever will.” God didn't say, “Well, here's the criteria, you know, you've got to qualify, you've got to do these things.” “Whosoever will,” anybody, the door's open. And yet look at how few. Indeed, if you want to go on the high record and the addition here in Nehemiah 7 and verse 66 is right, it says 42,360. Even if that adds up, counting the people that returned with Ezra and the peppering few that traveled with Nehemiah, you might come up with 50,000 people. That's just a small pittance if you consider how many were drawn away. We're just looking at Judah. I want you to think of those who were carried away about 100 years, 722, carried away by the Assyrians. And how many people return? Fifty thousand is kind of a paltry number when you consider the magnitude of the people who were carried away. Somebody might say, looking at this congregation, it's a paltry number considering the opportunities and considering the luxury and considering the knowledge. And I've said to you and I'll say it again, God decides, God draws, God opens the heart. There are some people here whose husbands or wives, they don't care to know. It's not the right time for them. Just keep praying and keep your mouth shut. Don't try and push something on them they're not ready for. Only God can do that, only God at the right time. I've lamented to you I wish God would have done it sooner, but it wasn't my time. For some it's not your time yet. You just keep marching on and recognizing He's in control, my name's in there. My loved ones, I'm going to keep praying for them. God will answer my prayers, they'll be with me. Now, for Nehemiah's time, for Ezra's time━I'm not done. I don't want you to think, “Okay, we're done,” but I want you to know this. If you start piecing this together, you're going find two things are going to happen. One is that God didn't make any mistakes; there aren't any random kind of sliding dates. The 70 years were the 70 years, the people came out, the people could return, the people did indeed repopulate. And friends, it didn't take but 100 years, maybe even less, we'll just say that possibly by the time the prophet Malachi comes on the scene, he's the last prophet of the Old Testament, his book closes the Old Testament and let's just say that possibly Neh━Malachi prophesies no later than 400, than the year 400 BC, somewhere in that ballpark. It didn't take very long from the time that they had this great revival in the streets with Ezra reading the law and the people weeping and crying, maybe some 40, at best maybe 50 years before the people went back into their old ways, into idolatry and treating God with lip service and not caring. And this is why I've told you, be on guard, understanding your heart and your mind are very precious to Him. You keep staying the word, you keep abiding the word, and if it still doesn't make sense, “Why did Pastor Scott do all this today?” Keep listening, because at the under, underneath all of it you're going to find the answer, which is God has called us to understand. We don't know everything, and putting all these pieces out on the table helps to put it together to where we all do indeed grow and come to a greater knowledge of His purpose and His hand on history and His hand on your life and mine. That's my message. You have been watching me, Pastor Melissa Scott, live from Glendale, California at Faith Center. If you would like to attend the service with us, Sunday morning at 11am, simply call 1-800-338-3030 to receive your pass. If you'd like more teaching and you would like to go straight to our website, the address is www.PastorMelissaScott.com
