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Introduction Everyone Likes a Good Underdog Story. Its Seems to Be In

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Introduction Everyone Likes a Good Underdog Story. Its Seems to Be In Introduction Everyone likes a good underdog story. Its seems to be in our DNA to want to root for one least likely to win. We love movies like Remember the Titans, Braveheart, and Miracle on Ice which tells the story of how the 1980 US Olympic hockey team improbably beat the Soviets and went on to win the gold medal. Bible stories like David and Goliath, Daniel in the lion’s den, and Gideon defeating the Midianites with just 300 soldiers inspire us with their messages of faith and courage. History is full of examples of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. The book of Nehemiah tells another one of those stories of how an ordinary man full of faith accomplished an amazing task against all odds. I chose this as one of my Brown Paper Passages because it inspires me to dream about what God might do through us if we have the same level of passion, faith and tenacity that Nehemiah had. Many people are pretty good at seeing what’s wrong but not many are willing to put everything on the line and pay whatever the price to make it better. As we’ll see in Nehemiah’s story, God uses ordinary people to do incredible things, often in the face of some pretty stiff adversity. It’s really not accurate to view Nehemiah as an underdog since God was for him but from a human perspective his chances of success didn’t look very promising. I sub-titled my message “You can’t climb the mountain on the smooth side.” I heard that sentence years ago from some old preacher and it stuck with me. He was preaching out of James 1 on how God sometimes uses adversity to build our faith. I find it generally true that doing big things requires lots of work and sacrifice and overcoming adversity. If slaying dragons and overrunning castles was easy everyone would be doing it. What might God do through the people of TEC if we had the character and faith of a man like Nehemiah? It is my hope and we will have bigger gospel-filled aspirations for our community, and the world, than just unlocking the doors to this building next Sunday and the Sunday after that and the Sunday after that. ECS is one example of us doing just that. As we go through an overview of the first few chapters of Nehemiah, I will be pointing out some key character traits I see in the kind of person who makes a difference. I pray that these traits be present in us as a local body of believers and are growing. Historical Context To better appreciate the story of Nehemiah we’ll look briefly at the history leading up to his time. The account recorded in Nehemiah takes place some years after the Babylonian Exile. For many years Judah had ignored God’s warnings given through his prophets and acted very wickedly so he decided to punish them. The punishment would come in the form of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon destroying Jerusalem and taking most of the Jews captive back to Babylon. From start to finish the exile was going to last 70 years but it was going to take the first 21 years to fully execute it. It starts in 607 B.C. when Nebuchadnezzar forced King Jehoiakim of Judah into becoming a vassal of his. Vassal is just another word for puppet. In addition, he took many of Judah’s finest young men captive including Daniel, Hananiah (Shadrach), Mishael (Meshach) and Azariah (Abednego). Three years later Jehoiakim gets tired of being a puppet and rebels against Babylon but instead of looking to God for help he turns to the Egyptians for support. His rebellion lasts about seven years until Nebuchadnezzar arrives on the scene and lays siege to Jerusalem. This time Nebuchadnezzar takes full control of the area, completely loots it, and takes most of Judah’s population back to Babylon. He leaves behind the poorest people and appoints the Jewish king Zedekiah to be his next puppet ruler. If you are keeping score we are now about 10 years since the exile began. The situation stays like this for nine years upon which time Zedekiah decides he has had enough of Nebuchadnezzar and he rebels. Things are about to go from bad to worse. Zedekiah ignores the fact that Judah is in the middle of God’s judgement and despite the prophet Jeremiah’s repeated warnings not to resist, Zedekiah decides to join a pagan coalition made up of Edom, Moab, Ammon and Phoenicia to try and defeat Nebuchadnezzar. The plan doesn’t go too well for Judah or Zedekiah. Nebuchadnezzar lays siege to Jerusalem one more time. Zedekiah is forced to watch as his sons are killed before him and then his eye balls are plucked out of his head and he is taken captive. What’s left of Jerusalem is laid to waste, the houses are burned and the temple is completely destroyed and more people are taken away to Babylon. Only a tiny remnant of very poor people is left to farm the land. It will be another 50 years before God allows the Jews to begin returning to Jerusalem. By the end of the exile Persia has conquered Babylon and the Jews are under Persian control. God supernaturally directs the heart of Cyrus, the king of Persia, to allow some of the Jews to return to Jerusalem and start rebuilding the temple. That is pretty amazing in itself. The year is 537 B.C. – 70 years after the exile began. For the next 69 or so years the people go about rebuilding the temple. You can read about that period in the book of Ezra. In fact, Ezra and Nehemiah can be read together to get one complete picture from when the Babylonian Exile ends to when temple worship and practices are fully restored in the temple. By now, in our history review, King Cyrus is gone. King Darius has come and gone and Persia is now under the reign of King Artaxerxes. In Artaxerxes’s 7th year as king, Ezra the Scribe moves to Jerusalem and sets about putting the temple in order. Nehemiah’s story picks up 13 years later in the 20th year of the reign of Artaxerxes. This would make it about 445 B.C., 92 years after the first Jews were allowed to return to Jerusalem. One observation we can make from this history lesson is that sin often has multi-generational impact. Ezra and Nehemiah are dealing with the consequences of sin that occurred more than 100 years prior. Key Players Like any good story we have a protagonist and a couple of antagonists. Nehemiah, of course, is the protagonist while Sanballat, Tobiah and Geshem the Arab are the main antagonists. We are told in the opening verses that Nehemiah was King Artaxerxes cup-bearer. You might be thinking that wasn’t a very significant position. What does a cup-bearer do all day? What does the job description say – Bear the King’s cup? How boring would that be? Actually, cup-bearer was a pretty high ranking position in the royal court. To start with, he had to be very trustworthy. Part of his job was to make sure no one tried to poison the king. It came with a certain degree of authority in the court along with pretty decent pay. Very few actually ever rose to this level of responsibility. We don’t know how old Nehemiah was while serving as the cup-bearer but we do know he was serving during Artaxerxes 20th year when he requested permission to take a leave of absence to go rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. We also know that he was a contemporary of Ezra. Their time in Jerusalem would have overlapped although each one had a different purpose for being there. Sanballat the Horonite Sanballat was probably originally from a town in Moab and was most likely a Moabite. At the time of Nehemiah he lived in Samaria and served in some local leadership position under Persian rule. Tobiah the Ammonite Tobiah was an Ammonite leader, possibly even a governor in Ammon. He had business dealings in Jerusalem and, being the political person he was, he was married to a daughter of one of the Judahite leaders and his son was married to the daughter of another Judahite leader. Through these relationships he was able to curry favor with the Jewish high priest, Eliashib. Eliashib’s grandson, contrary to Jewish law, was married to Sanballat’s daughter. Through his connection with Eliashib, Tobiah was able to negotiate a deal to lease the temple storerooms and run his business from there. This would also have been a serious violation of temple use. When Nehemiah arrived in Jerusalem one of the first things he did was to throw all of Tobiah’s belonging out of the storerooms and restore the rooms to their proper use. To say Tobiah was miffed would be an understatement. Geshem the Arab We don’t know much about Geshem other than that he was probably an Arab chief and he was aligned with Sanballat and Tobiah for his own political ends. Remember that all of the players at this time are still under Persian control. So then, we have a Moabite, an Ammonite and an Arab. It sounds like the start of a bad Middle Eastern joke. You can see why they were not excited to see the Jews rebuild Jerusalem.
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