Beginning with verse 4, we have the Messiah’s vicarious suffering. Vicarious means “in place of another.” It goes back to the Latin word vicis, which means “a substitute.” We have it in the English Word “vicar,” which is what the Church of England calls its ministers. Thomas Hardy wrote a novel abou
Many of the phrases in verses 1–3 speak of the Messiah’s humble origins, but the one that strikes me particularly is in verse 2: “He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground.” That is an unusual expression, is it not? A root out of dry ground! Growing up like a tende
I do not know of any chapter of the Word of God that gives greater proof of the blindness of the human heart to God’s truth than Isaiah 53. This is very evident in regard to Jewish people. In the first twelve centuries of the Christian era Jewish people through their rabbis and other Old Testament s
4. The family (vv. 23-28). The final abuse was an old one, going back to the people’s early days in the land: intermarriage with the nations roundabout, the very thing they had promised to avoid in chapter 10. Half of the children of these marriages did not even know how to speak the Jews’ language,
After dealing with the erring Eliashib and Tobiah, Nehemiah moved with the same determination to right the other wrongs he discovered. These wrongs correspond to the items promised by the people in chapter 10. Nehemiah’s actions in dealing with them constitute his final reforms. 1. The tithe (vv. 10
These problems were dramatically illustrated by what Nehemiah found to be going on at the temple. Eliashib, the high priest (v. 28) with whom he had worked closely during his earlier governorship and whom he had placed in charge of the temple storerooms, had affiliated himself with Tobiah the Ammoni
But it is not just that Nehemiah had to continue his struggles into old age that is significant. It is also that he had to deal with exactly the same problems he had dealt with earlier. In the last chapter we looked at the climactic celebration in which Nehemiah, together with Ezra the priest, dedic
I begin this final study of Nehemiah with the history of a well-known politician. I wonder if you can identify him. He was born in 1809 and suffered his first major defeat in 1832, a year in which he lost his job and was defeated in his first political race, a bid for the state legislature. The next
2. Rejoicing. The second thing I notice about the celebration services at the dedication of Jerusalem’s wall is the rejoicing. This is related to what I have been saying about singing, since the best singing flows from a rejoicing heart. But singing can also be sad. Some hymns have a sad or melancho
In Nehemiah 12 the priests and Levites were the first to dedicate (or, as it says, “purify”) themselves, which was fitting since they were the ones who were to conduct the dedication service. We are not told of what this work of purification consisted, but it was probably ceremonial washings of them
3. Nehemiah inspired a defeated and dispirited people. Not only was the objective itself overwhelming, but Nehemiah also had to cope with a people who had tried to build the walls before, had failed and were now dispirited. There had been nearly a century of defeat. The people had settled down into
The climax and unity of the book is seen in this way. Remember that the book has two parts. The first and longer part concerns the building of the walls, a task in which Nehemiah played the leading role. This part fills chapters 1-7. The second, shorter part concerns the revival in Jerusalem and the
The Christian life is hard work. There is no doubt about that. Even the Bible recognizes that it is hard work by describing it as a battle (“Fight the good fight of the faith,” 1 Tim. 6:12), a race (“I have finished the race,” 2 Tim. 4:7) and a sacrifice (“I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s merc
3. We must be a biblical community. This leads to the third necessary ingredient for an effective Christian presence in the city. Not only must we be in the city and be a community, we must also be Bible-directed. In other words, we must be the kind of community God wants us to be. What kind of a co
E. V. Hill tells of what happened in Los Angeles on one occasion. One man had been so put off by the captain of the block in which he lived—she was always inviting him to church and other religious meetings—that he decided to move. He decided to move the whole way across Los Angeles. The truck came.
The fourth characteristic of Nehemiah's effort to revitalize Jerusalem was that he had a religious base. The chapter begins with an account of how one in ten Jewish lay persons was chosen to relocate, but little is said about them. The bulk of the chapter (and the next chapter) detail the families o
At first glance, the list of names and places in Nehemiah 11 seems even more tedious and uninteresting than the earlier lists in chapters 3, 7 and 10. But the list actually reflects a great strategy. It highlights several parts of Nehemiah’s plan. 1. Repopulation. The first and most obvious step in
I do not need to prove the accelerating urbanization of the world in this century. At the time of Jesus Christ there were only about 250 million people in the world, about equal to the current population of the United States. It took 1500 years for that to double to one half billion at the time of t
5. Dedication of the firstborn (v. 36). The law declared that the firstborn of every household, as well as the firstborn of all the flocks, belonged to the Lord. In practice the people generally redeemed the firstborn by payment of a redemption price, but the practice reminded them that all life is
2. The Sabbath (v. 31). The second specific commitment of the people on this great covenant day was to the Sabbath, to keep it by abstaining from all commercial activity, and to observe the seventh year Sabbath of the land in which the fields would not be worked. The requirement has precedent in God
The third striking characteristic of this covenant is the people's strong sense of responsibility. Nothing in the covenant looks to other people to do what they should do. Nothing sets some of them apart from these responsibilities, or assigns specific tasks to one group and other tasks to another.
Change for the sake of mere change means nothing, of course. What matters is the direction of the change. So, before we examine the specifics of the covenant, it will be helpful to see its characteristics, which indicate where the people saw themselves to be heading. There are three of them. We will
Things changed in Jerusalem under the governorship of Nehemiah and the pastoring of Ezra, and they did so radically. I have been calling it a revival, because that is what it was. Revival means coming to spiritual life again. The people had been spiritually dead. Now they revived, and the changes th
Today we begin with the third part of the Levites’ prayer.3. An appeal for God’s mercy in the present distress (vv. 32-37). As the litany of the people’s sins has built to a climax, so have the repeated affirmations of God’s patience, goodness and mercy. It is to these blessed characteristics of God
