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Nehemiah
Nehemiah is a historical book and by this point in Israel’s history two prior waves had returned — Zerubabbel led one to rebuild the temple and Ezra led another to reteach the people. Nehemiah records for us the return of the third wave.
What comes out of this man when he hears troubling news?
Does history matter? Why does it matter? How should we approach a historical text like the one we have in Nehemiah?
Christians believe in God and this changes the way we approach history. We believe in a God who is meaningfully involved in a sovereign way. He intervenes in history, redeems His people through history and also works through history and historical events. History, rightly understood, should help us to recognise God’s faithfulness of God.
Christians read history to know their God.
We live in a culture shaped by work and its rewards. Singaporeans know it well. We are some of the most overworked people in the world, clocking in an average of 45h/week!
What hope is there for us in a cultural context where work wields a vice-like grip? We turn to Nehemiah. It is the last of the history books in the Old Testament. How will the Holy God bring about His spiritual purposes in this world?
This is the last study in our Doctrine of Scripture series. We started our series with a speaking God, and we went through some of the attributes of Scripture — sufficient, clear, authoritative and necessary. Then we studied about the Canon of the Bible, how we have the set of books in our bibles today. Last week, we spoke about how Scripture cannot be broken. And we come to this week, where we want to trace the storyline of the Bible, because we know that what God says will come to pass!
In this session, we carry on with our survey of the Old Testament, looking at the period of exile. The timeline has shifted forward, and the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel are located in this time period. We will see in this overview of the exile that God does plan to restore His kingdom, even by using pagan, non-Jewish kings to accomplish His purposes. And as we approach this study, it will be important to remember that these studies of the Old Testament serve ultimately to reveal how God accomplishes his redemptive purposes in Christ Jesus.
This is the first in a new series, which takes it's title from the hymn "A Mighty Fortress is Our God" by Martin Luther. In this series, we hope to see in a fresh way what the Bible says about itself.
The Old Testament is made up of different genres, but each of these books of the Old Testament work together to tell one narrative. It is not a collection of short stories, but is really one story.
Here's how each book fits into the larger storyline.
