Church Hopping

I think it would be pretty cool to have your name mentioned in the Bible, but at the same time it’s kinda like having your name mentioned in the credits of a movie.  Nobody reads these parts in depth.  We are seeing a renewed emphasis on the Levites in Nehemiah’s new Jerusalem and that is promising.  For song long they had gone without any consideration for God and His law, so it is good to see a refocusing even though it took conquer and exile for it to happen.  But in the end it has brought joy to them even in the midst of their circumstances.  I think that is a defining characteristic of joy that come from God, being that it can come when there is no rational reason for it to be there.

It is encouraging to see the entire population supporting the priests and ministers with material giving.  It is encouraging for ministers to not have to worry while doing what God has called them to.  It is also shows a true commitment by the people since they are backing up their promise with action.  You’re never truly committed to something until you are sacrificing finacially.

Well it’s time to move back into Jerusalem, but not everyone is terribly excited about moving into a rundown city.  Its like someone asked you to move back to Berlin after WW2.  Not many people are excited about it, but it needs to be done for the continuance of the nation.  Nehemiah is smart enough to realize that a slow phase in of the population will be less miserable then everyone at once.  This is probably because there is very little infrastructure, housing, etc.  People probably wanted to stay in their villages cause they had already set up home there and there was definitely more business outside the vacant city.

One thing that I didn’t realize until this chapter is that this population of Jews was only comprised of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin.  This is because the northern kingdom of Israel was so dispersed by the Assyrians that they never really returned in significant numbers to their homeland.  So when we are talking only about the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, along with the Levites who were dispersed amongst all the tribes so that they could lead worship throughout the nation (see Joshua 21).  I read that the estimated population of Jerusalem was only about 4800 to 8000.

It is interesting to think that there were very few significant figures from this point on for the other tribes of Israel.  If you think about the two biggest figures from the New Testament they are Jesus who is from the tribe of Judah and Paul who is from the tribe of Benjamin.  I wonder which tribes the disciples were all from…I’ll have to check into all this.

This chapter surprised me a little because look at the first section…it’s made up of 27 verses.  I’m not exactly sure why it was decided to split every three or four names into a separate verse, but I guess if you want to brag about memorizing a big chunk of verses then this would be an easy one.  I’m really starting to wish I could speak to the people who decided on the numbering system, because although they helped us out so much, they also did some strange things.

I was underestimating the size and scope of what this revival that was happening.  This is the entire Jewish nation (at least the part that had returned from exile) confessing their sin and completely rededicating their lives back towards God’s original plan.  This is a pretty big deal.  The first thing they start with is promising not to intermarry with Gentiles.  It took me a while to accept this practice, because as believers we are supposed to “be in the world.”  But its just marriage that he is asking them not to do, not to avoid any contact at all.  I still don’t quite understand how a believer could get married to a non-believer.  Your ultimate hope is found in completely different thing and it tends to make me question the salvation of the believer.

They make some pretty big commitments that aren’t commanded in the Pentateuch, such as giving a third of their income.  My guess is that this was to help get the temple up and running again, but you have to wonder if they really thought that was sustainable.  I wish it was, but people are greedy.  I also thought about how they gave their best as a tithe to God and I wondered if we were as focused on that today as we should.  I’ve always like CS Lewis’ quote that we should be forced to deny ourselves some luxury by tithing, otherwise we aren’t giving enough (paraphrase).  I wonder what (if anything) we are giving up by tithing and if it is valuable enough to us to be considered a “firstfruit.”

This chapter should be titled “The Faithfulness of God” because look at how many times the people disobey yet God remains faithful.  I count at least 4 or 5 times in the story when the Jews disobey God yet each and every time He restores them when they cry out to Him.  We see the same thing on a smaller scale in our own lives.  We’ll go through life in cycles of disobedience to crying out for His help.  Right now the Jewish nation as a whole is in a period of crying out for God’s mercy.  This is a very unique time because it seems that there is genuine repentance and revival throughout the entire Jewish nation.

This one chapter gives us an entire summary of what God has done since the beginning of time.  I think that this is a very important exercise because it helps you understand where you are in that plan as well as what God is doing at that time.  If you cannot summarize what God has done from the beginning in Genesis up to today, then you may want to look into it.  It will also help you get a better grasp on where God is going and might provide some clarity into the end times.

One last interesting note:  in the ancient Greek texts it credits Ezra as dictating this prayer in verse 9:6.  This is not present in the Hebrew texts, which are older.