Chuck Larsen

Nehemiah saw God’s activity in all areas of his life. He even attributed God’s movement to recording the genealogies of the returned exiles. He says, “Then my God put it into my heart to assemble the nobles, officials, and people to be enrolled by genealogy. And I found the genealogy book of those who came up at the first…” The rest of the chapter records the lists of the “sons” of those who “belong” to the original immigrants and their hometowns.

I’ve become interested in my genealogy as I’ve grown older. But I can only trace my father’s side. My mother was adopted and never knew her father. Therefore, I never knew my grandfather on her side. I’ve tried several things but can’t find out who he was. Further, I can only trace my father’s side back a few generations because they came from Denmark and didn’t maintain their genealogies. There were times when that bothered me, and I know it broke my mother’s heart when she learned she was adopted and never knew her birth father. There is a sense of identity in our heritage.

The scriptures teach us that when we come to faith in Jesus, we “belong” to Him, and our names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life. Although we may have lost our original heritage, we’ve inherited a new one. Maybe that’s another reason why coming to faith in Jesus in a truly biblical sense is referred to as being “born again.”

There’s a fascinating difference between the genealogies of Genesis and the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew. The constant refrain in Genesis 10 is “and he died…” Death is never mentioned in Jesus’ genealogy, even though the physical men and women did die. But it suggests that we are in Adam’s genealogy of death by our sinful nature, but by our spiritual “new birth,” we appear in Christ’s living register of the redeemed. Maybe you’ve heard the story of the man whose name appeared in the obituaries by mistake. He complained to the newspaper, “This is terrible! How could you do such a thing??” The editor apologized and said, “Cheer up, I’ll put your name in the birth column tomorrow and give you a fresh start!?” That’s what happens when we find new life in Christ. Now I know who I am!

Nehemiah’s register of all those who returned to Israel updates the one previously prepared by Zerubabbel and Ezra. The land was resettled in three phases over about 50+ years. The three phases are represented by the three groups who returned from Babylon. The group with Zerubabbel came to rebuild the temple. The group with Ezra came to rebuild the city. The group and Nehemiah came to rebuild the wall and the people. The people of all three returns and those born in the process were few. After his final census, Nehemiah says, “The whole assembly together was 42,360.” If you counted all the slaves and servants, there were still less than 50,000.

This is out of millions of Jews who were exiled to Babylon and other spots around the known world. No wonder this is referred to as the “remnant.” Like the more recent resettlement of the Jewish people in their land in 1948, the remnants of Nehemiah’s day were moved by piety, patriotism, and passion to live as independent, free people under the hand of their God. However, most Jewish-born individuals worldwide did not share Nehemiah’s characteristics of piety, patriotism, and passion in Nehemiah’s time or our time. These characteristics are essential because of the opposition that they would face. All the peoples of the land in Nehemiah’s day stood against the reforms of Nehemiah’s Jewish state. So, too, was the case in the latest resettlement. Someone estimated that today, Israel “is a country of 3.8 million in a sea “of 100 million enemies.” This has remained the same for thousands of years. Since October 7, 2023, Israel has been at war with their enemies. The world wants peace in the Mideast, but Israel knows that any peace that allows the existence of their enemies will end up with another terroristic attack on Israel’s remnant living in the land.

Israel’s God brings judgment to a people; he never destroys the faithful with the wicked. He always leaves a “remnant.” The concept of a remnant stands for “that part of a population who remained steadfast even though most people rejected the ways of God. The existence of a remnant is always attributed to the goodness of God. You might say, by definition, the remnants are the real people of God. The New Testament calls the universal body of the Church the “remnant chosen by God’s grace” (Roman” 11:5).

As remnants in the land, we should also be characterized by piety, patriotism, and passion for our God.

Ezra and Nehemiah are responsible for leading what has been called one of the greatest spiritual revivals in history. The remnant in the land made a radical turn from idolatry to the worship of the one true God. They came back to their spiritual roots. The record of that history was God’s Word. It says,  “So Ezra the priest brought the Law before the assembly…And he read from it …from early morning until midday, in the presence of the men and the women and those who could understand. And the ears of all the people were attentive to the Book of the Law.”

The Bible was the very basis of the new life. It was welcomed in every public assembly. It was the key to the education of the children. It was the central theme upon which all “true life” could be built. It seems the whole nation recognized its worth. When “Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people… all the people stood. And Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God, and all the people answered, ‘Amen, Amen,’ lifting their hands. And they bowed their heads and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground.” Under Ezra and Nehemiah, Israel was reborn and flourished.

Franklin D. Roosevelt said of the United States, “We cannot read the history of our rise and development as a nation without reckoning with the place the Bible has occupied in shaping the advances of the Republic. … [W]here we have been the truest and most consistent in obeying its precepts, we have attained the greatest measure of contentment and prosperity.”

Woodrow Wilson remarked, “A nation which does not remember what it was yesterday does not know what it is today, nor what it is trying to do. We are trying to do a futile thing if we do not know where we came from or what we have been about …The Bible … is the supreme source of revelation of the meaning of life, the nature of God, and the spiritual nature and needs of men. It is the only guide of life that really leads the spirit in peace and salvation. America was born a Christian nation. America was born to exemplify that devotion to the elements of righteousness derived from the revelations of Holy Scripture.”

True revival begins nationally and personally with a new reverence and respect for God’s Word.

The revival we studied in Chapter 9 of Nehemiah involved the public reading of God’s Word, followed by conviction of sin and true repentance (inner remorse for sin), which resulted in the outward confession of sin. God’s Word deeply touched them to seek God with all their hearts. Chapter 10 gives us the next step in a genuine revival.

It begins with Nehemiah and all the leaders “cutting” a covenant agreement with God. They are so passionate about getting right and staying right with God that they write out their promises, and all the leaders sign them. It was a declaration of independence. It laid out the deepest desire of the people to live free from slavery to sin. Verse 39 tells us that it wasn’t only the leaders who made the covenant with God. “The rest of the people… join with …their nobles, ?and enter into …an oath to walk in God’s Law…and to observe and do all the commandments of the Lord our Lord and his rules and statutes.” They want the freedom to live life to its fullest and to walk with the God that made them and redeemed them from slavery in Babylon. They liked it so much that they joined a covenant to proclaim it. The passion in these words reflects the true character of their hearts.

There should be a similar passion for those redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ. We have been freed from slavery to sin and are now set free to live wholeheartedly for God. Max Lucado says, “Before Christ, our lives were out of control, sloppy, and indulgent. We didn’t even know we were slobs until we met him. Then he moved in. Things began to change. What we threw around, we began putting away. What we neglected, we cleaned up. What had been clutter became order. Oh, there were and still are occasional lapses of thought and deed, but he got our house in order by and large. Suddenly, we find ourselves wanting to do good.” Paul puts our situation this way in Romans 6:22, “But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life.”

The revival under Nehemiah found its origin in God’s Word. It moved then to the prayer life of the people and into a recognition of sin followed by confession and repentance with a deep passion to live free from slavery to sin. It reached deep into the hearts of the people to follow God’s ways.

To demonstrate the sincerity of their revival, Nehemiah records the rededication of the people to give to God’s work. They make another promise to God. They say, “We obligate ourselves to bring the first fruits of our ground and the first fruits of all fruit of every tree, year by year, to the house of the Lord.” They also vow to bring “the firstborn of our herds and our flocks; ?and to bring the first of our dough, …to bring to the Levites the tithes from our ground…”

The scriptures are full of promises related to the tithing to God’s Work. We read in Proverbs 3:9-10, “Honor the Lord with your wealth and the first fruits from all your crops. Then your barns will be full, and your wine barrels will overflow with new wine.” In Malachi 3:10, we read, “Bring to the storehouse a full tenth of what you earn so there will be food in my house. Test me in this.… I will open the windows of heaven  for you and pour out all the blessings you need.” In Luke 6:38, Jesus confirms this principle. He says, “Give, and you will receive. You will be given much. Pressed down, shaken together, and running over,  it will spill into your lap.”

Spurgeon, a preacher of long ago, said, “Earn all you can, save all you can, and then give all you can. Never try to save out of God’s cause; such money will canker the rest. Giving to God is no loss; it is putting your substance into the best bank. Giving is true having, as the old gravestone said of the dead man, ‘What I spent I had, what I saved I lost, what I gave I have.'”

Under the newly established Government in Israel, the government subsidized the Priests, Levites, temple servants, and even the singers.  The King recognized the value of worshipping God in the land. He was conscious of its stabilizing influence in the citizens’ homes, families, and lives. To guarantee the continual exercise of worship in the new society, the King made provision for all religious workers. In Nehemiah 11:23, we read, “For there was a command from the king concerning them, and a fixed provision for the singers, as every day required.”

In that culture, the government accepted its responsibility to support and promote singing with religious themes.  Our government doesn’t help it or even promote it. At best, we’re sometimes allowed to sing songs of a spiritual nature, but that is not often well received. Even the old Christmas classics that celebrate our Christian heritage are usually excluded by government decree from the classrooms and other establishments in our land.

In his “Notes on Western Civilization” in the Chicago Tribune, Dave Barry wrote, “To avoid offending anybody, the school dropped religion altogether and started singing about the weather. At my son’s school, they now hold the winter program in February and sing increasingly non-memorable songs such as “‘Winter Wonderland,’ ‘Frosty the Snowman’ and—this is a real song-‘Suzy Snowflake,’ all of which is pretty funny because we live in Miami. A visitor from another planet would assume that the children belonged to the Church of Meteorology.” Every Christian should have a song to God in his heart. In Ephesians 5:19, the apostle Paul speaks of “singing and making melody?” in our hearts to the Lord.

Revival found its way into the lives of the Israelites through their focus on God’s Word, followed by a passionate explosion of enthusiasm, which resulted in repentance, confession, and rededication of their lives to God. However, chapters 11 and 12 settle down to a firm establishment of order, with the priests and Levites assigned various responsibilities. Chapter 12 lists them in great detail and appoints some to specific responsibilities. In verse 8, six individuals and their brothers were “in charge of the songs of thanksgiving.” In verse nine, another group and their brothers “stood opposite them in the service,” assumedly as backup singers.

The thought struck me that all passion without order and structure doesn’t last very long. By utilizing gifts in the church, Paul addressed the Corinthian weakness of “all passion” without order. In 1 Corinthians 12–14, Paul encourages the free exercise of spiritual gifts while providing rules by which these gifts can operate “decently and in order” (1 Cor. 14:40). I’ve seen people break off established churches because they felt “restrained” or “overly restricted” by the established order. They say, “You can’t put new wine in old wineskins.” Only about 20 percent of new church plants survive for three years or more, but those that do find that their survival has its roots in a passionate revival followed by an establishment of order and infrastructure that sustains the effort. Jesus didn’t say, “You don’t need wineskins” to hold your wine. Just the opposite, you need “new ones.” Wine left without wineskins (order) eventually becomes mud.

The same is true in personal revival. When I first became a Christian, I couldn’t find enough time in my day to read the bible, pray, and talk about God with others. I never missed a church service. But after 50 years, I find that what has sustained my faith and spiritual growth has been harnessing my passion around a set of structured practices that I do, whether I feel like it or not. We cannot live on an emotional or spiritual high; we must allow the depth of our feelings to settle into an orderly lifestyle that reflects our professions. If not, we’ll often find that the seed of God’s word has fallen on shallow ground, and it won’t survive long enough to bring forth lasting fruit.

As Nehemiah was preparing for the dedication of the new Temple, he extended a joyous invitation to all those in the surrounding communities. His aim, as stated in Verse 12:27, was to bring them to Jerusalem for a celebration filled with gladness, thanksgiving, singing,  and the harmonious sounds of cymbals, harps, and lyres. It was a grand event, and the joy of Jerusalem was so resounding that it was heard far away, as we read in 12:43.

Jesus, too, extended numerous invitations in the Bible. His invitations were not mere suggestions but significant calls to action. They were invitations to follow him, to seek healing, health, and wholeness. His parables and lessons were filled with invitations, some overt, others more subtle. He even shared a story about an official who invited many to a significant celebration. Luke 14:18 reveals that despite the grandeur of the occasion, many made excuses. The official then sent his servants to invite anyone willing to join the celebration.

The essence of Jesus’ story is clear: the ‘good time’ he has planned for us is within our reach simply by accepting His invitation. Those who reject it will miss out on the greatest joys of all: celebrating with God for all eternity. Paul, too, extended an invitation to the Philippian jailer, urging him to’ believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.’ This invitation to faith is the key that unlocks the door to the eternal ‘good time’ God has prepared for all who believe in Him. The Bible ends with an invitation to everyone. Revelation 22:17 says, “The Spirit and the bride say, Come! Let the one who hears this say, Come! Let whoever is thirsty come; whoever wishes may have the water of life as a free gift.”