Study the Word

Pastor Thom Keller: Nehemiah did not pray first and then the burden came. No. The burden came first and then he wept, mourned, fasted, and prayed. And folks, the same will be true of you and me. You don't need to pray asking God to give you a burden. He will just drop that in on your heart.

So here's the question to ask yourself: What burden has God placed on your heart? What is it that makes you sad? What is it that makes you cry? What would you be thrilled to see take place for the advancement of the Kingdom? If all the necessary time and money and resources were made available to you, what project would you love to undertake? Does that thought get you excited? Pray about it. Just seek the Lord. What burden have you placed on my heart?

Guest (Male): This is Study the Word, the radio ministry of Calvary Chapel Lebanon. Our Bible teacher, Pastor Thom Keller, is just about to start his study of the Old Testament book of Nehemiah. The book begins straight away with God giving Nehemiah a burden, one which changed his life in a way he would never have imagined. As Pastor Thom puts it, what burden has God placed in your heart? Think that over with us now.

Pastor Thom Keller: We're so glad you're here. We're starting a new book this morning: Nehemiah, chapter one, verse one. These are the memoirs of Nehemiah, son of Hacaliah. Hanani, one of my brothers, came to visit me with some other men who had just arrived from Judah. I asked them about the Jews who had returned there from captivity and about how things were going in Jerusalem. They said to me, "Things are not going well for those who returned to the province of Judah. They are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem has been torn down and the gates have been destroyed by fire."

Let's do a quick review of the major historical milestones in the Old Testament leading up to the book of Nehemiah. What's the background, the context? Again, most date Adam and Eve, their arrival, around 4000 BC. After them, Noah shows up in the scene and after Noah, the next key figure on the scene is Abraham. Abraham left his home very close to 2000 BC. Adam and Eve 4000 BC, Abraham 2000 BC.

After Abraham leaves the scene, then his son Isaac comes along, and his son Jacob, and Jacob's son Joseph. Due to there being no food in Canaan, Joseph brings his entire family to Egypt, a total of 75 family members in all. There in Egypt, the Israelites live and thrive for 430 years until they become so large a tribe, millions of them, that the Egyptians become afraid of them and so they make slaves out of them.

God looks down from heaven, sees their plight, and sends Moses to deliver them out of their bondage, their slavery in Egypt, which occurs in about 1450 BC, or about 550 years after Abraham's journey into Canaan. Four of the first five books of the Old Testament—Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy—cover Moses' life, his leadership, and his trials. Those four books cover a 40-year period, the 40 years in the wilderness.

After that comes the book of Joshua, who was Moses' understudy. He replaced Moses and led the children of Israel into the promised land. After Joshua came the time of the judges, a very, very dark time in Israel's history. After judges come the books of First and Second Samuel, which contain the story of Israel's first two kings, of Saul and David, with David reigning around 1000 BC.

Next come the books of First and Second Kings, First and Second Chronicles, which include the stories of all of the kings of Israel and Judah from King Solomon all the way up through the last king, King Zedekiah of Judah, who was killed in 586 BC when Babylon conquered Jerusalem. Now, germane to our study of Nehemiah is this one significant date: 586 BC. If you don't have that date fixed in your mind, try to do this. 586 BC. It's almost 600 years before Christ's birth.

586 BC was the year that God's long-delayed judgment finally fell upon Judah, and they were for the most part slaughtered by the Babylonians with only a small remnant being deported to Babylon. The temple of Jerusalem was destroyed and Jerusalem was destroyed. God had warned the Israelites that this would happen if they continued to rebel against him. 850 years prior to them being conquered, God told them this through his prophet Moses in Deuteronomy, chapter 28.

"The Lord will bring a distant nation against you from the end of the earth." This is Babylon, Assyria first and then Babylon. "And it will swoop down on you like a vulture. It is a nation whose language you do not understand, a fierce and heartless nation that shows no respect for the old and no pity for the young. Its armies will devour your livestock and crops and you will be destroyed. They will leave you no grain, new wine, olive oil, calves or lambs and you will starve to death."

"They will attack your cities until all the fortified walls of your land"—this was where Nehemiah comes in—"all the fortified walls in your land, the walls you trusted to protect you, are knocked down. They will attack all the towns in the land the Lord your God has given you. The siege and the terrible distress of the enemy's attack will be so severe that you will eat the flesh of your own sons and daughters whom the Lord your God has given you."

"The most tender-hearted man among you will have no compassion for his own brother, his beloved wife, his surviving children. He will refuse to share with them the flesh he is devouring, the flesh of one of his own children, because he has nothing else to eat during the siege and terrible distress that your enemy will inflict on all your towns." And did that happen? To the tee. Second Chronicles 25:1-3.

In January 15th, during the ninth year of Zedekiah's reign, this is 586 BC, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon led his entire army against Jerusalem. They surrounded the city and built siege ramps against its walls. Jerusalem was kept under siege until the 11th year of Zedekiah's reign. By July 18th of the 11th year of Zedekiah's reign, the famine in the city had become very severe and the last of the food was entirely gone.

And so God, in attempting to prevent this from ever happening, sent prophet after prophet to warn the Israelites what would happen and that judgment would follow if they did not listen to him. That is why most of the major and minor prophets wrote their books during the 300 years prior to 586 BC. You have 4000 years in the Old Testament up until the time of Christ. These 17 books were written for the most part within a 300-year period out of 4000 years.

The last 17 books of the Old Testament all warned Israel of God's coming judgment due to their wickedness. The exceptions were Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. They were written after the destruction but very close to it. These last 17 books of the Old Testament all warned Israel of God's coming judgment. This is why the book of Ezra and Nehemiah are such a prize to us. They are the only books we have that are written after the sacking of Jerusalem and are our link to the New Testament. These books are what connect the Old to the New.

Here is an introduction to the book of Nehemiah. In order to give us context, let's look at how it began, the sacking. In Second Chronicles, in 586 BC, God says enough is enough. Second Chronicles 36 says, "Likewise, all the leaders of the priests and the people became more and more unfaithful. They followed the pagan practices of the surrounding nations, desecrating the temple of the Lord that had been consecrated in Jerusalem."

"The Lord, the God of their ancestors, repeatedly sent his prophets to warn them, for he had compassion on his people and his temple. But the people mocked these messengers, these prophets of God, and despised their words. They scoffed at the prophets until the Lord's anger could no longer be restrained." This 300-year period when they're writing, nothing could be done. "So the Lord brought the King of Babylon against them."

"Babylonians killed Judah's young men, even chasing after them into the temple. They had no pity on the people, killing both young men and young women, the old and the infirm. God handed all of them over to Nebuchadnezzar. The king took home to Babylon all the articles, large and small, used in the temple of God, and the treasures from both the Lord's temple and from the palace of the king and his officials."

"Then his army burned the temple of God, tore down the walls of Jerusalem"—which is what Nehemiah is going to be burdened about—"burned all the palaces, and completely destroyed everything of value. The few who survived were taken as exiles to Babylon, and they became servants to the king and his sons until the kingdom of Persia came to power. So the message of the Lord spoken through Jeremiah was fulfilled. The land finally enjoyed its Sabbath rest, lying desolate until the 70 years were fulfilled, just as the prophet had said."

"In the first year of King Cyrus of Persia, the Lord fulfilled the prophecy he had given through Jeremiah." And this is what connects us to Ezra and Nehemiah, through King Cyrus. "He stirred the heart of Cyrus to put this proclamation in writing and to send it throughout the kingdom. This is what King Cyrus of Persia says. Now the Lord prompted him to do this: 'The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth. He has appointed me to build him a temple at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Any of you who are his people, to the Jewish people, any of you who are his people may go there for this task. You may go back to rebuild the temple and may the Lord your God be with you.'"

That passage takes us right into the beginning of the next book, the book of Ezra. Ezra 1:1 says, "In the first year of King Cyrus of Persia, the Lord fulfilled the prophecy he had given through Jeremiah. He stirred the heart of Cyrus to put this proclamation in writing and send it throughout his kingdom. This is what the king of Persia says: 'The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and he has appointed me to build him a temple at Jerusalem, which is in Judah.'"

If you listen to that closely, this is word for word what was said in Second Chronicles, the same as the beginning of the book of Ezra. The reason is that originally, Second Chronicles and Ezra consisted of just one book, one scroll actually. Later they were separated into two different books. Let's back up a little bit and look at the different kingdoms involved here.

The first kingdom that is of importance to us are the Assyrians. Assyria was founded prior to 2000 BC, which would have been at the time Abraham was alive, but Assyria only existed as a world power for about the last 300 years, ending when they were conquered by Babylon in 625 BC. The capital of Assyria was Nineveh, the Nineveh that the prophet Jonah prophesied against in 767 BC.

Of significance is that when King Solomon died, Israel was divided into two kingdoms, the north and the south. The north consisted of ten tribes; the south consisted of two, Judah and Benjamin. It was the northern ten tribes that were the first to be conquered and carried off by the Assyrians. This occurred in 722 BC, well before 586, and these captured Jews were exiled into Assyria.

As Moses prophesied, the Assyrians, if you do historical research on this, were brutal conquerors. Those who remained alive were relocated, widely dispersed throughout their kingdom, and the reason why was so that it would break their family and ethnic ties. They didn't want these people, once they were conquered, to get together and build their strength back. So he dispersed them all throughout the kingdom.

This dispersal was the great downfall of the northern ten tribes because once they were dispersed, they intermarried with non-Jews, which was forbidden by God, which ultimately caused, as he said it would, them to worship foreign gods. But about a hundred years later, in 625 BC, the Assyrians were conquered by the Babylonians and Nebuchadnezzar was the king who was in power in 586 BC, the king who ordered the destruction of both the temple and the walls to be torn down in Jerusalem.

This is the same Nebuchadnezzar that Daniel served, the same Nebuchadnezzar who, because of his pride, ate grass for seven years like a cow. Nebuchadnezzar was the mightiest of all the Babylonian kings. He reigned for 45 years and he transformed the city of Babylon into a dazzling showpiece. It had a 300-foot-high city wall that ran for 60 miles and was 80 feet thick.

Who could possibly conquer such an impregnable fortress? Actually, it was King Cyrus and the Persian empire that did it, the king who was in power during the book of Ezra. Herodotus, the great and respected Persian historian born in 484 BC, wrote this about Babylon's fall to Cyrus. By the way, when you find old historical accounts by Herodotus and others, it's interesting. They didn't have TV, of course. And what they did for entertainment was read historical accounts of the past. So when you find these people like Herodotus that wrote these things, it was well known by everybody what he wrote because that's what they did for entertainment. Wise people study history.

This is what Herodotus said about Cyrus conquering this unconquerable city. "A battle was fought at a short distance from the city in which the Babylonians were defeated by the Persian King Cyrus, whereupon they withdrew into their city. And here they shut themselves up and they made light of his siege, they made fun of his siege, having laid in store provisions for many years in preparation against this attack. For when they saw Cyrus conquering nation after nation, they were convinced that he wouldn't stop until their turn would come at last."

"Cyrus was now reduced to great perplexity as time went on as to how he would conquer this great city. Someone made the suggestion, or maybe he thought of it himself. He placed a portion of his army at a point where the river entered the city and another group of soldiers at the back of the place where it came out of the city with orders to march into the town by the bed of the stream as soon as the waters became shallow enough."

"He then diverted the Euphrates river by a canal into a basin, which was then a marsh, on which the river sank to such an extent that the natural bed of the stream became fordable. Hereupon the Persians entered the stream, which had now sunk so as to reach about midway up a man's thigh, and thus they got into the city. Had the Babylonians been apprised of what Cyrus was about to do or had they noticed their danger, they would never have allowed the Babylonians to surprise them, to enter the city, but would have destroyed them utterly. For they would have made fast all of the street gates which gave access to the river and, mounting upon the walls along both sides of the stream, they would have caught the enemy in a trap."

"But as it was, the Persians came upon them by surprise and so took the city. Owing to the vast size of the city, the inhabitants in the central parts knew nothing of what had happened because they were engaged in a festival and they continued dancing and reveling and drinking until they learned about the capture. Such then were the circumstances of the taking of Babylon by Cyrus of Persia."

This same Cyrus is the king who commissioned the Jews to return to Israel, which leads us up to the book of Ezra, which is the story of the same Jews leaving Babylon, traveling to Jerusalem and rebuilding the temple. But the temple only. All they did was rebuild the temple. A large contingent of Jews, Ezra says a little over 42,000 Jews, arrived in Jerusalem in 536 BC.

Ezra says this in chapter six, verse 15: "The temple was completed on March 12th during the sixth year of King Darius's reign." And this was March the 12th, 515 BC. Now, the book of Ezra is named for a priest who became the spiritual light of Israel during this time. In Ezra, chapter seven, after 78 years of being back in Israel, Ezra finally arrives. Up until this time, it was about rebuilding the temple. When Ezra arrives, it's about rebuilding their spirituality.

In Ezra 7:1, we read this: "Many years later, during the reign of King Artaxerxes of Persia, there was a man named Ezra. He was a son of Seraiah, son of Azariah, son of Hilkiah." King Artaxerxes is the king who's in power during the time of Nehemiah as well. So who was this Ezra? Same chapter, verse six says this: "This Ezra was a scribe who was well versed in the Law of Moses, which the Lord the God of Israel had given to the people of Israel."

"He came to Jerusalem from Babylon and the king gave him everything he asked for because the gracious hand of the Lord his God was upon him." And why was the gracious hand of the Lord upon him? Verse nine says that: "For the gracious hand of the Lord was on him. This was because Ezra had determined to study and obey the law of the Lord and to teach those decrees and regulations to the people of Israel." Because he had determined to study and teach the word of God. That is why the gracious hand of the Lord was upon him.

And so Ezra, after 78 years, begins a "back to the Bible" movement in 458 BC, which is when Nehemiah, the central star of our current study, gets involved. Again, Ezra arrives in Jerusalem in August 4, 458 BC and the book of Ezra ends in December of 458 BC. So once Ezra arrives on the scene, the writing in the book of Ezra about him only lasts for one year.

Twelve years after the book of Ezra closes, just as God placed a burden on King Cyrus to rebuild the temple and just as God placed a burden on Ezra to rebuild the temple, God places a burden on a young man by the name of Nehemiah to rebuild the wall around the temple and around the city of Jerusalem. And again, we read that in Nehemiah 1.

In the fall of 446 BC, Nehemiah's brother visits him. We see that in verse two. "Hanani, one of my brothers, came to visit me with some other men who had just arrived from Judah." Now, commentaries are split on this. Some say Hanani was his blood brother, some say he was a blood relative, or some say he was just a fellow Jew. Nehemiah is told that things are not going well in Jerusalem.

It is important to note again that Cyrus signed a decree allowing any Jew to travel back to Jerusalem who wanted to. But as we said, historical records show that many Israelites decided to stay in Babylon. Only 42,000 went. And why is that? Because they had prospered so much during their years in Babylon and they didn't want to return.

In fact, it's interesting in the book of Esther, which is around the same era, when Haman convinces the king to write a decree to destroy the Jews, he said and as a part of that, you can confiscate their property. And that was a windfall for the non-Jews because the Jews had become so prosperous. They would have received all of their assets.

Because they prospered there and were doing well financially, they didn't want to leave. But that doesn't mean they didn't care about their homeland. They did. And that is expressed here by Nehemiah's despondency. Verse three says, "They are in great trouble and disgrace." King James says, "They are in great affliction and reproach." It says, "The walls have been torn down and the gates have been burned," and Nehemiah is crushed by the news.

And then verse four and five, it goes on and says this: "When I heard this, I sat down and wept. In fact, for days I mourned, fasted, and prayed to the God of heaven." The reason this report was so shattering, many commentators believe, is because the walls and gates were destroyed here does not refer to the walls and gates that were destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar 140 years earlier in 586. That was ancient history.

No, what was probably being referred to is a current armed attack by hostile neighbors living around Jerusalem who, as we will soon see, were relentless in their attacks against Jerusalem's rebuilding efforts. And that was the disheartening news—that they were still being attacked, they were still being destroyed, their work was still being thwarted. And so, as verse four says, when Nehemiah heard this, he sat, wept, mourned, and fasted.

How does today's lesson apply to me? Just one. Did you notice the order here? Nehemiah did not pray first and then the burden came. No. The burden came first and then he wept, mourned, fasted, and prayed. And folks, the same will be true of you and me. You don't need to pray asking God to give you a burden. He will just drop that in on your heart.

So here's the question to ask yourself: What burden has God placed on your heart? What is it that makes you sad? What is it that makes you cry? What would you be thrilled to see take place for the advancement of the Kingdom? If all the necessary time and money and resources were made available to you, what project would you love to undertake? Does that thought get you excited? Pray about it. Just seek the Lord. What burden have you placed on my heart?

Guest (Male): Thanks for joining us today for Study the Word with Pastor Thom Keller. We're in the book of Nehemiah right now. To give this a second listen, either go to our website at ccleb.com or visit our YouTube page. Subscribe to our channel at Calvary Chapel Lebanon, and you can watch our services live or on demand. We can also send you a CD copy if you call 717-273-5633. Once again, that's 717-273-5633.

Study the Word is made possible through the generous support of our listeners and we're thankful for each and every gift that comes in. Rest assured, it'll be responsibly used to help people like yourself study the word over the radio. If you'd like to make a donation, visit ccleb.com or call 717-273-5633. Let me also give you our mailing address: Study the Word, 740 Willow Street, Lebanon, Pennsylvania 17046.

We hope you can join us for a Sunday service. For more information or to watch the livestream, visit ccleb.com or again go to our YouTube channel at Calvary Chapel Lebanon. We'll cover some more ground in Nehemiah next time on Study the Word with Pastor Thom Keller. This program is furnished on this station by Calvary Chapel Lebanon, Pennsylvania.