August 29, 2024: Thursday Bible Study on the Old Testament book of Nehemiah 11:1-36
Good morning my dear friends. I just realized that there will be no Bible Study on Monday the 2nd of September. It is Memorial Day. It is the day on which we Lutherans celebrate the LORD'S gift of the labors of our lives. Celebrate and give thanks to God for His abundant blessings in our daily lives.
Today we have a large reading again from Nehemiah. It has another of those long lists which we have become accustomed to seeing in the Old Testament Book. Once again it tells us that Nehemiah was an administrator of the highest level. It is no wonder that Artaxerxes, the king of Persia, did not want him leaving for an extended temporary time. If Nehemiah kept the king's records in the same way as we see them in this OT book, then it is certainly understandable why Nehemiah was considered such a valuable member of the royal household. Nehemiah tells us that it was the officials who settled in Jerusalem along with a volunteer 10 percent of any other community members who were Judahites who were believed to be of a pure blood line. It makes it really clear that the intent of Nehemiah was to see that there was purity of blood lines for those who settled into the city. You know, we should not be really surprised. I grew up at Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Ludington, Michigan. It was founded by Swedish immigrants in the 1870's in Sweden Town. They were my family members on my mom’s side of the family. They even went as far as to go back to Sweden to call their first pastors. The last who had Swedish heritage was The Rev. John Landin. He served in my home congregation for about 44 years. He was the last to be able to offer worship in Swedish. I grew up in my early life with people who looked a lot like me, fair skin, light hair, and blue eyes. The community often looked at others who were not Swedish, those who had difference physical features with what I would call suspicion. Even in high school, when Melody went with me to church, she would feel that she was being looked at to decide her acceptability. It didn't matter to us, we were always finding joy in Christ in the church no matter whether it was Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodist, or Episcopalian. We were in youth groups at all of them. So even I am familiar with the issues of correct heritage.
I do have to wonder about having a city that was filled with "executive" types. Decision making must have been a real experience. The other 90% of the population was settled in the cities on property which was believed to be theirs from the time of the settlement of the "Promised Land". The expression "Holy City" comes up three times in this chapter of Nehemiah. It appears 2 times in Isaiah, and in Daniel. In the thinking of the people, it was because of the supreme holiness of the Temple that the city itself was also Holy. Revelation 11, and Matthew 4 and 11 also speak of Jerusalem as the Holy City. Remember that it was the Judahite's belief that the Temple was the throne of God, and in spite of what some denominations might declare about their city being the holy one, it was, is, and will always be that Jerusalem will be the Holy City. Next week we will finish Nehemiah, and then move on to the Book of Esther.
In Christ's love, Pastor Kim
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