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A sermon preached by Mr Antony Weiss The Eighteenth Sunday After Trinity Christ Church St Laurence Solemn Evensong – 25th September, 2016 Nehemiah 2, John 8 Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer. (Ps 19:14). AMEN.
If you were to create a timeline of Exilic and Post Exilic Prophets of the Old Testament and their world, the books of Ezra and Nehemiah (from where last, this and the next three Sunday Evensong First Lessons are taken) would be placed right at the very end as Biblical History of the Old Testament Period ends in the Book of Nehemiah. But if you were to pick up a copy of your own Bible, where would you find these books? The answer is smack bang halfway through what we canonically have as the Old Testament. But this is not so in the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible… the books of Ezra and Nehemiah are not only treated as one book in Hebrew Scripture, but they are placed together as one, as the penultimate book just before the Chronicles. Last week’s First Lesson from the first chapter of the book of Ezra told us that Cyrus, King of Persia, decreed a policy of the repatriation of the Jews following their Babylonian captivity and he allowed the Jewish exiles to return to a wrecked Jerusalem in order to rebuild their ruined Temple. The first group of exiles returned to Judah under the leadership of Zerubbabel in approximately 536 BC. A century later, Ezra led a second group of Jews back out of exile only to find the the remnant of the Jews who had gone before them were living in a state of spiritual and moral destitution. Like their forefathers they had intermarried with unbelievers from different nations and were willingly engaging in idolatry and other pagan practices. Ezra made it his priority to institute spiritual reform and by God’s good grace the people began to turn from their sinful ways. This sets the stage for Nehemiah’s appearance in Israel fourteen years later in 444BC. Now I’m sure if you were to think about heroes and great leaders in the Old Testament there would be many that would come to mind before Nehemiah. In fact there is not a single reference to Nehemiah by Jesus, St Paul or any of the New Testament writers. But nonetheless God uses Nehemiah’s leadership and faithfulness for a greater purpose; the rebuilding of Jerusalem’s walls (Chs 1-6), the renewing of Jerusalem’s worship (Chs 8-10), the repopulating of Jerusalem’s streets (Chs 11-12) and finally the renewing of Jerusalem’s renewal (Ch 13) which, as I have mentioned, had sadly gone to the dogs after the return of the first wave of exiles in 536BC. At the beginning of the book, Nehemiah is in exile. He is in the service of the court of the King of Persia, Artaxerxes (465-424BC) serving as the king’s personal cupbearer. Jews and other foreigners were able to rise to positions of considerable influence in the Persian court. Like Daniel before him, Nehemiah was highly respected and trusted by the king he served.