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- [Don Carson] Hello, my name is Don Carson.
I'm president of the Gospel Coalition
and it's a real privilege for me to work with Kathleen Nielsen in the preparation
of this Bible study on the book of Nehemiah.
To understand the book
of Nehemiah, it's very helpful to come to grips with three realities.
The first is where Nehemiah fits in the sweep of Old Testament history.
Start with King David, he comes to the throne of Israel about a
thousand years before Christ. He has a son called Solomon.
After these two kings, David and Solomon, the kingdom splits, it divides,
and the northern tribes, called Israel, go off into more and more idolatry and
mayhem and debauchery. In the South, the southern two tribes going by the name
of Judah remained loyal to the Davidic dynasty. It takes them a little longer
to descend into the same kind of idolatry, but that's the direction, I'm afraid.
And then at the same time in the background, there are three regional
superpowers we have to come to grips with. The first is the Assyrians.
They are warlords, very powerful, and ultimately they destroy the
northern kingdom. They take the leaders off into captivity and the northern tribes
really exist no more as a separate nation. That happens in 721 BC.
The southern two tribes are destroyed by another superpower. The Assyrians are
taken over by the Babylonians. And in 586 BC, the southern tribes are
destroyed by King Nebuchadnezzar, the monarch of the time of the
Babylonian Empire. And again, the thinking at the day was that the way
you pacify these new territorial acquisitions is by destroying some
of the ties, the societal ties, that hold things together.
Land and religion and loyalty were tied together. Land, religion, people.
If you could somehow pull out one piece of that, then the cohesion of the society
broke down. So what these regional superpowers did was take
off the leadership, the priests, the nobility, the rich people,
the royalties and they moved them off into other territories where they started
over as dirt farmers. That left the poor people behind,
the tradespeople and there usually wasn't enough leadership, then,
to break out into some sort of fomented rebellion. So that's what the
Assyrians did, that's what the Babylonians did. But eventually,
the Babylonian Empire was itself taken over by the Persian Empire and the first
dominant king of Persia, King Cyrus, reversed this national policy. In 538 BC,
he allowed the conquered peoples who had been moved forcibly into other lands,
he allowed them to return. And in the Providence of God,
the exiles from Israel and Judah were likewise allowed to return to the
Promised Land. This return took place in three waves. The first was under the
leadership of a man called Zerubbabel, and his account is preserved for us
in Ezra:1-6. About 70 years later,
there was a second wave that came through under the leadership of Ezra, the priest.
And at that time, the temple was rebuilt. This is the time of the preaching of such
prophets as Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, the closing books of the Old Testament.
And some years later then, Nehemiah leads the third wave.
Nehemiah was an administrator. He was not a priest,
he was not a Bible teacher. He was an administrator and he helped
build the wall of the city of Jerusalem. But it's really important to understand
that in his mind, he was not simply rebuilding the physical city.
He was building the city understood to be the people of God. His concern was not
simply to build a wall to have more physical protection,
he was concerned to repopulate the
city, to build it up as the Covenant Community
of God relying on the promises of God, a community living under the Word of God.
He had a massive vision for the city of Jerusalem. So that's the location of the
book of Nehemiah in the sweep of Old Testament history. In that sense,
this is the last storytelling book of the Old Testament. This takes us as far as the
Old Testament history goes. The next stop, a few hundred years later,
is the birth of Jesus, the Messiah. And that brings us to the second frame
of reference we need to hold in mind. And that's the place of the book
of Nehemiah in the sweep of God's purposes in redemptive history. For ease of memory,
it's worth recalling three big turning points. The first is the call of Abraham
and the promise that God gave to Abraham that, in him and in his seed,
all the nations of the earth would be blessed. The second is the rise
of the law, the giving of the law under Moses. And with the law,
then all of the stipulations regarding the sacrificial system, the temple,
the priesthood, how people under the Covenant came to know God,
to trust God was through the sacrificial system and the priests that God Himself
had ordained. And of course, that was all destroyed once Jerusalem was
destroyed and the temple was razed to the ground under Nebuchadnezzar,
the Babylonian. Now the people are coming back. The temple is rebuilt.
And under Nehemiah, the priesthood is reestablished and the sacrificial system
is put back into place. And the third step, then,
is the Davidic monarchy. We started this clip with David,
King David. There is still no return of the Davidic King because, after all,
the people are still under the power of the Persian empire. So the rulership is
by various governors and administrators. There is still no promise being fulfilled
now about the restoration of a Davidic King. But all three of those
strands eventually come into the New Testament era where we find the
ultimate Seed, Jesus Christ Himself, the ultimate fulfilment of the law,
Jesus Christ Himself, and the sacrificial system that he brings
to an end with his own sacrifice. He himself being the supreme priest
to reconcile us to God. He himself being the supreme temple.
And then the Davidic monarchy, well, Jesus Himself is the King of kings in line
with David. But more than just a king, as the Prophet Isaiah put it,
He was also the "mighty God, the everlasting Father,
the Prince of Peace." So the book of Nehemiah then is right
at the end of the Old Testament history pulling together more of these strands
before the launch into the dawning of the new covenant and the coming
of Jesus Christ. Now, the third frame of reference to bear
in mind is how this book talks about Nehemiah himself. It's important
to understand that Nehemiah was a gifted administrator. Later on in this book,
when Nehemiah helps to organize a Bible conference and the people are
called together, he knows that he is not the person to do the teaching.
He brings in Ezra, who is still in the city, and Ezra does the Bible teaching.
Ezra trains Levites, the priests, and they do the Bible teaching.
But behind all of this is the gifted work of Nehemiah, the administrator, the ruler.
And that reminds us, too, that in the New Testament,
when we find pastor/teachers, these pastor/teachers are not only
teachers in the church, they are overseers. The Old English word
is bishops. There is an administrative responsibility, and people have different
gifts in the church today too. There is need not only for faithful,
serious Bible teaching but for people also to do some planning to think through what
is required and to help provide the services and structure that,
under the Word of God, under the teaching of the word of God,
serve the people of God in reformation and revival. It is important, nevertheless,
to remember that this book is not primarily about leadership.
It's not primarily about Nehemiah, a leader. He is a leader.
He's a great leader. There are things to learn from him
in this respect, but it's not primarily about leadership. It's about God's
restoration of the people of God under the terms of the Covenant in preparation
for the time when all of this would come to fulfilment in the person of His Son.
And God raised up this man, Nehemiah, as he had earlier raised up Ezra,
the priest, the Bible teacher, to lead the people to this triumphant
turning point at the end of Old Testament history. Welcome to the book of Nehemiah.
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