Bible Study Library

Dear Disciples:

When God wants us to do something, how do we know? Even if we know, how should we respond? How do we actually go about accomplishing the big, big things He asks us to accomplish?

We’ll find answers to those questions in the book of Nehemiah.

In this post I want to provide just a quick overview of what was going on with God’s people in Nehemiah’s time.

Follow this brief history:

• Judah had been ripped away from their home and held captive by the Babylonians for 70 years, just as Isaiah and Jeremiah predicted
• In the process, the Babylonians destroyed the temple in Jerusalem
• Without access to the Temple, the Jews were unable to worship God properly, since sacrifices were to be offered at the temple
• Through an unlikely series of events, the Jews were suddenly freed from Babylonia and allowed to go back to their homeland
• 50,000 Jews (out of a population of about 200,000) returned to Jerusalem
• Two leaders (Ezra and Zerubbabel) and two prophets (Haggai and Zechariah) led these Jews in rebuilding the temple and restoring their faith and devotion to God

That’s the point in history where Nehemiah comes in. City walls were extremely important in that day for protection from enemies, and Jerusalem still didn’t have a wall. Nehemiah motivates and leads God’s people in building the city wall.

Spiritually, what we will be learning is how to hear and respond to God’s callings, both in our individual lives and as a church, and how all of God’s people can pull together to do what He wants us to do.

Along the way, we will learn about leadership from God’s perspective.

I encourage you to go through the studies with the Bible text open in front of you. However, if you just want a quick cheat sheet of the personal application lessons we learned in this study, click here.