76. Beginner Bible Course: The Book of Ezra and the Book of Nehemiah

E76  The simple Bible overview of…THE STORY OF EZRA AND THE STORY OF NEHEMIAH

We now return to the story of Ezra...

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...We took a break after the first six chapters to go to the historical event from the book of Esther. Now we returned to Ezra chapter seven through 10, just a quick reminder. As her as a history book in originally, it was attached to the books of Chronicles and Nehemiah. It's now about four 57 BC, 60 years have passed from the rebuilding of the temple. And about 30 years from the decree of Haman to exterminate the Jews. Thankfully, a plan foiled by Esther and Mordecai with the enormous help of God who doesn't even need to be mentioned. Here's what we know about Ezra. He lives in Babylon. He's a scribe and an expert in the law of Moses that's Genesis through Deuteronomy.

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Basically he desires to go back to Judah. Now that the temple is built, he wants to work on their hearts for worship the King, our desserts. These allows him to take a second group of people with him and gives him precious metals valued today at about $20 million. He also gives them a blank check that is permission to take tax revenue, to buy things like wine, weed, and oil for temple worship. Our desserts. These also gives Ezra describe the scholar and the law authority to appoint judges among the captives back in Judah and the former territory of Israel. He also makes a rule that there'll be a death penalty.

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Anyone who doesn't know Bay, the laws of the God of Israel that is

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Teach to the people there. He didn't ask for an escort, even though he was carrying 20 mil worth of precious materials, because he was embarrassed to ask the King for more than the King had already given. He makes the four month trip and then spends four months getting a lay of the spiritual landscape back in Judah. But then he stumbles across a major problem, mixed marriages, the Judah Jews, marrying pagans EITs who are now living in that same area. God in Deuteronomy seven had made it explicit. Don't marry. EITs don't let your children marry. EITs Ezra's reaction to this news is telling he goes pretty much Bismarck.

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He does the normal sign of mourning, tearing your clothes and such, but then he starts ripping hair out of his beard and head. He then prays one of the most desperate prayers in the Bible. It can be summarized like this. Oh God, not again. How could we, we have no excuse. We stand before you completely guilty. There's no request to God be merciful or to keep his promises. It's as if, as we're standing there at the end saying we're beyond hope. The exiles in Judah hear this prayer. And it really hits them hard. Something inside gives. And instead of digging in they're broken, humble, and willing do whatever God asks.

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They're willing to separate from their wives. We learn in Genesis when a man and woman are glued together, God intends them to be glued together for life. But here is one case, perhaps the only one in scripture where God at least tolerated or perhaps endorses the tearing apart of these Israelite men from their ICT wives, it takes four months to complete. The legal process may be using some of the judges that Israel pointed. There was exiles of Judah. Now back in the land, put aside these foreign wives, we'll get back to Israel in just a moment, but now I want to introduce you to his partner Nehemiah.

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While Ezra was rebuilding the soul of the exiles who've returned. Nehemiah has another thing that's pressing on him. Nehemiah has some other rebuilding. That's a burden on his heart events and names and Nehemiah have also been documented by archeologists. One of these documents is the elephant teen papyri. It specifically mentions names named in the book of Nehemiah. We're told Nehemiah was the cup bearer to a Persian King cup bears were there to taste test to prevent the King from being poisoned. As you might've guessed, it was a position for a highly trusted person. He's also very near the King.

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And since Kings drank a lot on a very regular basis, probably daily people come from Judah and informed Nehemiah. How things are back with the exiles in the Homeland. It's not a pretty picture. Yes, there's that nice, modest, rebuilt temple. And yes, there are a bunch of people scattered around the countryside with nice paneled homes, but generally speaking, the cities of Judah in the Northern kingdom of Israel lie in ruins. It's mostly farmers and fields. Nehemiah gets very burdened burdened, especially for the city of Jerusalem. That's where God's house now was. It was the former Capitol and God's house.

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The Juul deserved a setting that wasn't ran shackled. So after praying, Nehemiah goes into the King and asks, if he can have a little leave of absence to go back and rebuild Jerusalem. And in particular, the city walls, part of the reason no one wanted to go rebuild and live in Jerusalem is they had no protection there. God grants Nehemiah favor with the King, he makes the trip back, spends a few days, just catching up. Then one night goes out and surveys the walls. After developing a plan, he meets with the leaders there and challenges them come let's rebuild. The walls were then introduced to the two local governors. The governor of Samarria in the North is Sanballat.

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The governor of Amand to the East and South is Tobiah. These two are going to make Nehemiah miserable in his wall, building project with his plan in place. He assigns the work and they get started. It's only a few weeks before they have the wall at half height all the way around the city. That's stunning progress. Then they start hitting some potholes in this project. First it's mocking, Sanballat criticizes their substandard materials, you know, charred marks on everything to buy a criticizes, their construction. Hey, if a Fox jumped up there, that thing would fall over.

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But Nehemiah and his crew kept working. Then they started to threaten attack. Nehemiah responds by arming all the workers, both with swords and trumpets. The swords use was pretty obvious. The trumpet was to blow, to get other people to come to your aid. The project continued then Sanballat and Tobiah tried to lure Nehemiah out of the city to assassinate him. Nehemiah said, I'm too busy to come out there. I got a job to do. Then they resorted to slander telling Nehemiah you better meet with us. We're going to take a report to the King that you're building the city and you're planning to make yourself the King Nehemiah response.

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Knock yourself out. It'll never stick. I'm going to keep working next. They tell Nehemiah they've got it on a good word. He's going to be assassinated. He should run into the temple, take refuge and hide again. Nehemiah said, should I stop work to save my own life? Not a chance. If the attacks were only coming from the outside from Sanballat to buy in their gang, that would have been one thing. But Nehemiah has to deal with incite attacks. The first is obvious discouragement and fatigue of the workers. This was an overwhelming project building a wall around the entire Capitol city, but there was a more tragic thing happening among his workers.

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You'll read about how it was being done in Nehemiah. They were being taken advantage of by their own people. Nehemiah handles that with haste. We're told Nehemiah and the exile workers in Judah finished the wall of Jerusalem in 52 days. If you're scratching your head, wondering how in a world could they ever rebuild a wall, holding a spear in one and in a shovel in another, in 52 days? Well, that's what Tobiah and Sanballat were asking themselves too. They concluded all my goodness. God is helping them. There's no other way they could have gotten this thing done with the wall completed Nehemiah and Ezra lock arms Israel assembles the people, the exiles of Judah and publicly reads the book of the law.

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Stopping to give the sense or an explanation of what they were hearing. These poor folks had been starved for God's word. As Russ starts with the basics like the NFL coach who told his team, gentlemen, this is a football. And guess what a revival breaks out in Judah, Maya records, another prayer of Ezra. Ezra goes through the history of God in his dealings with, with his people, the children of Israel, the thread of his prayer is God, look at all. You did look, you made your expectations clear to us and look at all the time. We Europeans people didn't listen to you.

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But Pete, on the electric fence for ourself at the end of Ezra's prayer, as rhe leads people in making a new covenant to follow God, then Nehemiah goes back to Babylon and 32. After about seven years of serving the King, he returns to Jerusalem. Remember he's only been away seven years when Nehemiah comes back, this is what he finds. Are you ready for this? The priest had rented a room out in the temple court to Tobiah. I am a Knight. He was keeping his stuff there. Nehemiah pitches his stuff in the street. The Levi's had left ministering in the temple.

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It gone out in the fields as migrant workers to support themselves because they weren't being supported by the people. People were working on the Sabbath on the Sabbath. The city of Jerusalem was a marketplace place. Nehemiah changed that he locked the Gates on the Eve of the Sabbath so that nobody could enter Jerusalem. We're told those tire merchants showed up outside, waiting to get in several weeks in a row. Then Nehemiah threatened to do bodily harm to them. They returned. And then Nehemiah heard this children speaking another language. They were speaking another language because their mothers were EITs. Some of the men of Judah had started marrying EITs again and not even teaching their children, the Hebrew language, all this deterioration in seven years.

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How are you feeling about the remnant of Judah now, back in the promised land, more important than that? How do you think God is feeling about this remnant of Judah back in the land? He promised them we'll answer that question with the last two profits, Zachariah and Malakai in our next word picture.