Welcome to the 10-Minute Bible, where one book of the Bible is summarized in about 10 minutes. Well, more or less 10 minutes. In this session, we're going to consider the book of Nehemiah. In order to understand any book, whether it's in the Bible or not, there are a couple of things you must understand if you're going to fully appreciate what the author is writing. For example, In any book, you need to understand the subject. What is the author writing about? That's true of books outside the Bible, and it's true of all 66 books in the Bible. The second thing you need to understand is how the author develops that subject. I call that the structure of the book. How does he develop the subject he's talking about? In a secular book, that can be indicated by a table of contents, but as you know, the Bible doesn't have table of contents for each of the 66 books. But what you can do is outline the book, and that'll give you some idea of how the author is developing his subject. So in understanding any book, you need to understand the subject, the development of the subject that I'm calling structure. The third thing you need to understand is the situation. Now, that's not necessarily true with books outside the Bible, as it is with virtually every book in the Bible. You see, in those 66 books, God chose an author to write to an audience on a particular subject. I call this the situation. It consists of the author, their original recipients, and the subject on which he's writing them, and why he's writing it. You could call that the purpose. So, the three things you have to understand to understand any book, but especially books in the Bible, are the subject, the structure, the development of the subject, and the situation. By situation I mean author, original recipients, and the purpose why that author wrote on that subject to those people. Now with that in mind, let's look at the book of Nehemiah. What is the subject of Nehemiah? And I'm going to suggest that the subject would be something like repeated restoration. Now, I will explain that in a little bit, but the subject for all intents and purposes is clearly restoration. But because of the nature of what's going on in Nehemiah, I'm going to call it repeated restoration. What is the structure of the book? Well, In two passages, he gives us what I think are clues to the structure. In chapter 2, verse 12, and in chapter 7, verse 5, Nehemiah says that God put it in his heart to do something. In chapter 2, it was rebuild the wall, and in chapter 7, it's restore the population in Jerusalem. So the book of Nehemiah is divided into two parts, the rebuilding of the wall, which is in chapters one to six, and the restoring of the city of Jerusalem, which is in chapters seven through 13. Now, those are the major divisions of the book, but each of those major divisions have sub points. You could subdivide them. For example, The first six chapters are discussing the rebuilding of the wall. But if you look at those six chapters, it begins with a prayer in chapter one. some planning on Nehemiah's part in chapter 2. In chapter 3, they begin to build the wall, and then they encounter opposition in verses 4 and 5. And finally, they complete the rebuilding of the wall in chapter 6. So the point is that the first major division is rebuilding the wall Chapters one to six and all the chapters in those six chapters pertain to the rebuilding of the wall. The second major division has to do with the restoration of the community. If you subdivided that point, you would see that in chapter seven, there's a registry of the people and all of a sudden there's an interruption. In chapter eight, there's the reading of the law. Chapter 9, the people repent when they hear the law, and then they reconfirm the covenant that God made. So in 8, 9, and 10, there's sort of an interruption because of the time they read the law. But when you get to chapter 11, they're back to repopulating the city. In chapter 12, they dedicate the wall. In chapter 13, the last chapter of the book, Nehemiah goes back to Persia, spends a few years there, comes back. And when he does, the people need to be restored again to their spiritual state. And so there is a second restoration in Nehemiah, which is why I called the book continual restoration or repeated restoration. Now, We've talked about the subject, repeated restoration or continual restoration. The structure is the rebuilding of the wall and the restoration of the community. Let's talk about the situation. The author is Nehemiah, the first verse says that. And all agree that he wrote certain portions of the book, like chapter 1, verse 1 through chapter 7, verse 5, 12, 27 through 43, and 13, 4 through verse 31. But it's also possible that some of the other material was not his composition, but his compilation. And then there are some people who think that Ezra wrote portions of this book. As a matter of fact, there's a chapter in Nehemiah that is identical with a chapter in Ezra. Be all that as it may, I personally think that Nehemiah either wrote or compiled the whole book. Now, He lived during the reign of Artaxerxes, who reigned from 464 to 423 BC. Nehemiah left Persia in the 20th year of Artaxerxes. We know that from chapter 2 verse 1, which was 445 BC. He returned to Persia in the 32nd year of Artaxerxes, which was 432. We know that from chapter 13 verse 5. And then he went back to Jerusalem 12 years later, and that's around 425 BC. So, put all those dates together and you come up with a fact that Nehemiah probably wrote in 425 BC. Now, who were the recipients? Well, the recipients of the book were those Israelites in Jerusalem after the captivity. Remember that before Nehemiah came upon the scene, Zerubbabel and Ezra returned to Jerusalem and rebuilt the temple. So by the time Nehemiah got there, he's addressing those people who had already returned from the Babylonian captivity. His purpose was to show that God not only restores, but he also repeatedly, constantly, continually restores. Now, if I were going to put the content of the book together in a simple sentence, I would say the overall message of Nehemiah is that God rebuilds and constantly restores. Now, there's a spiritual message here. The spiritual truth of Nehemiah is simply that God continually restores. Now think about it in the context of the Old Testament. Zerubbabel came and restored the temple. Ezra came and did some restoration. Nehemiah comes, rebuilds the wall, and restores the people twice. Therefore, I conclude that the spiritual lesson here is that God continually, repeatedly restores. Isn't that a great truth? Even though these people disobeyed the Lord and experienced exile as a discipline, God restored them. And even when they then got away from the Lord, he restores them again. That's the great spiritual truth of this book, one that we ought to all be thankful for. God continually restores.