This summer I'll take some time to preach from the Old Testament books of Ezra and Nehemiah.  In case you're not too familiar with them, they are essentially an ancient Hebrew version of a dystopian novel, except that in this case the story is true.  George Orwell and Aldous Huxley got the the genre going earlier in the twentieth century with A Brave New World, Animal Farm, and 1984, but in recent years novels and movies of similar theme have become very popular.  The Hunger Games and Divergent series of books and movies are perhaps the most famous of them.  This type of novel is set in a future post-apocalyptic world, and features heroes and heroines who struggle against overwhelming odds to maintain or to rebuild some sort of normal existence.

The apocalypse that was in the background for these two books was the destruction of Jerusalem in 586/587 B.C. by the Babylonians and the subsequent exile of most of the residents of the kingdom of Judah.  Hundreds of miles from home, they longed and prayed for the day they could return.  The day finally came in 539 B.C. when the Persian Empire, the new big bully on the block, overwhelmed the then crumbling Babylon.  Cyrus, the Persian ruler, had a much different policy toward subjugated peoples than the Babylonians and issued a decree allowing the Jewish exiles to return to their homeland.

The return to Jerusalem and Judah would not prove to be easy.  Their beloved holy city lie in ruins, the temple was utterly destroyed, essentially nothing remained of the life they had lived in their homeland.  Other people had moved into the area including Samaritans from the north and people from other nationalities in the region.  This is where you can envision the heroes in one of the popular books now trying to restore order and normality in a future world against the backdrop of a shattered urban landscape after a global conflict or nuclear war.

In the case of Ezra and Nehemiah, these books tell the story of the valiant efforts to rebuild their homeland.  Under the leadership of Zerubbabel the first Hebrews returned to to their homeland, where they struggled to rebuild the temple against great obstacles, not the least of which was determined opposition from Samaritans.  The story contained in the Biblical books of Ezra and Nehemiah is largely set during the long reign of Artaxerxes (465-424 B.C.)  The great struggle of the books is to rebuild the city- spiritually and physically.

As with the books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah were originally one book in the Hebrew canon, and were somewhat artificially divided many years later.  The names for the two books as we have them refers not to who wrote them, but to who the main character is in each.  Ezra focuses largely on the work of Ezra the scribe/priest, while Nehemiah is devoted largely to the work of the secular leader Nehemiah.  These two leaders were rough contemporaries of each other, and they are referred to a handful of times together in these books.  The composition of these books has been the subject of intensive study, but there is a strong tradition that Ezra/Nehemiah was written by the same scribe who penned Chronicles somewhere around 400 B.C. or not long thereafter.

Ezra/Nehemiah are tremendously valuable resources for the church.  In reading these books we are forced to ask ourselves,  "How important is worship in our lives?"   "How do we recognize and overcome opposition?"  "How important is scripture in our lives?"  "How we go about rebuilding our churches- not physically- but spiritually?"  "How do we deal with the ever-present reality of sin, and are we really willing to repent?"  Tune in this summer for how we rebuild our lives and churches one block at a time.



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