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Nehemiah is one of the most poignant accounts of what happens when someone decides to commit themselves to a God-given vision to complete a God-sized project. In every age and every city, God has placed people with a mission that can only be accomplished through His enabling (Acts 17:26; Matthew 28:19; Acts 1:8). If we are to be the people God has called to this time and this place, we must be willing to feel the weight of God’s mission and commit to doing it God’s way. To really understand Nehemiah, we need to understand where he falls in the larger story of Scripture. It would be easy to go all the way back to creation and humanity’s delegated stewardship over God’s creation, but for the sake of space we will only go back to the calling of Abram. When God had decided to call for himself a people, through whom he would bless all nations of the earth, he started by calling one man (Genesis 12). To this one old man, God granted a son, who had another son, who had a family. This family continued to grow until a famine drove this family into the land of Egypt under God’s providential care through the wise rule of Joseph (Genesis 37, 39-50). For more than 400 years, this family grew until it became a nation. An oppressed, captive nation. The land that had once offered a haven had now become a prison. The people cry out to God for deliverance. And God is faithful to rescue them. At that time, God raises up a leader in the form of a Hebrew-born, Egyptraised prince-in-exile named Moses. God used this unlikely leader to bring the people of Israel out of captivity and into the wilderness on their way to what was called the “Promised Land”. On the way, God brings his people to a mountain called Mt. Sinai where he enters into a special relationship with them. Of all the nations on earth, Israel is to be his people, and he is to be their God. At Sinai, God bound himself to Israel and Israel bound themselves to God in a covenant. To live as covenant people, God gives Moses ten commandments. If the people keep those commandments, blessings await them. If they break them, curses (Deuteronomy 28). God is showing his people what it looks like to be his people, living under his sovereign rule. Again and again, the people of Israel fail to keep their end of the bargain. Still, God remains faithful.
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Judges, prophets, priests and kings all point to the God the people too easily forget. Israel repeatedly rejects these words of warning, trusting in military might, political allegiances and pagan deities to protect them. It seems they’re willing to trust in anything except the God who called them out of Egypt. In one of his most drastic warnings, God splits Israel into two kingdoms with Israel to the North and Judah, with Jerusalem as its capital, to the south. But they still do not listen. Eventually, the cycles wears thin and The LORD judges the two kingdoms for their unfaithfulness, but He remains faithful and merciful and waits patiently to again pour out His grace upon His people. The Southern Kingdom of Judah was carried into captivity in 586 B.C. by the Babylonians. At that time, the temple was destroyed which would be a crushing blow to the peoples’ national identity. In October 539 B.C, the Babylonians fell to the Medes and Persians. King Cyrus of Persia issued a decree in the first year of his reign (538 B.C.) allowing Jews to return to Jerusalem. Zurubbabel led the first return that same year (Ezra 1-6), and the following year, temple reconstruction began. After some delays that we read about in Ezra, Haggai, and Zechariah, the temple was completed in 515 B.C. Ezra led the second group in 457 B.C. (Ezra 7-10). At the time of the story of Nehemiah, Artaxerxes I, Persia's sixth king, was in the twentieth year of his reign (Nehemiah 2:1). Since his reign began in 465 B.C, we can assume the story of Nehemiah begins around 445 B.C. The Jews had been in captivity for 142 years at the beginning of this story. The book of Ezra picks up where Chronicles concludes. Ezra tells of the rebuilding of the temple – the place where God dwells and meets with His people. This temple plays a significant part in Israel’s history, as it is the last temple to have been built. Ezra requests permission to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem and is denied. Ezra’s story and Nehemiah’s story overlap here. When both leaders (Ezra and Nehemiah) have completed their main tasks, they team up to lead the people in the service of the God of Israel. It would be easy for us to underestimate the importance of this story unless we are looking for some recurring themes that show up throughout redemptive history. Most notably, the exile in Persia echoes the Israelite slavery in Egypt. It was their own unfaithfulness that led them there and it was their lack of faith which kept them there. And it was the faithfulness of God that would bring them out. Ezra and Nehemiah are cast as a sort of Moses figure who lead the exiles back into the promised land in a repeat of
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the great exodus out of Egypt. God is finally following through with promises he had made through his prophets. When God send his people into exile, it was never meant to be permanent. Assyrians, Babylonians and Persians all played a part in the lesson God was teaching to the people of Israel and Judah. Even when God was warning the people of their impending judgment, he always makes it clear that he has plans to bring them back again to the land of promise (Leviticus 26:44; Isaiah 49:13-17; Jeremiah 32:36-37). In fact, one of the most quoted passages in the Bible (Jeremiah 29:11) is set in this context! When we quote that passage, we rarely look at the fact that God is laying out a good plan that would take seventy years to unfold. In everything, we see that God is sovereign, has a purpose in mind and will eventually bring it to pass. Every person has a story that involves less than ideal circumstances. I’m sure that if we were to put all our cards on the table, we would have to admit that none of us have the perfect hand. But our lot in life is not random and is not an accident. God has placed you here and now (Acts 17:26) to accomplish his good intentions (Ephesians 2:10) in a world that desperately needs restoration. And he is birthing a vision in us, his people, to bring about the change he is doing in the world. We all are being liberated. We all are being commissioned. And we all are being sent. We have the happy task of joining with God and taking part in a work that will outlast us (Matthew 16:18).