Rebuilding My Personal Wall And Temple

by Kevin Burton

   Contemporaries Ezra and Nehemiah were key figures in rebuilding the nation of Israel after Babylonian exile. I hope to hang out a bit with those boys this year.

   The Old Testament book of Ezra describes the rebuilding of the temple and Nehemiah the rebuilding of the wall of Jerusalem. The two books were originally combined, according to Dave Brannon, writing in “Bible Source Book” from Our Daily Bread Ministries.

   And it wasn’t just the physical structures of Israel that the two were helping to rebuild. They sought to reestablish the true and pure worship of God.

     If you press on it too hard, my analogy will collapse. I did not have a complete defeat and exile as Israel did. But this is where I am as this year begins, in need of a rebuild, reorganization, re-invigoration.

    Sometimes you just feel the need to pick up the pieces and get back on track. You remember the way certain things used to be. You want to go back to those times and those practices.

   I can’t be the only one thinking along these lines. So jump on board if I am headed in a direction you want to go.

   If you could see what I call my Christian library (a bookcase tucked into an odd corner of the house near our garage), you’d get a great visual of what I am talking about. There is a lot of good information there. Sermons on disc and on tape are there, books, Christian music, tracts, devotionals, even some games. But it’s dust-covered, disorganized, in part at least, unexamined.

   The word of God is “living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword,” (Heb. 4-12) but it needs to see the light of day. It needs the attention of somebody “rightly dividing the word of truth (2 Tim. 2:15).

   No better time than the present to walk prayerfully down this road, learning from the record left by people who have been there, who followed God’s instructions and had success.

    “Rebuilding is usually harder than original construction, whether it’s a coach rebuilding a team, a family rebuilding a home, a couple rebuilding a marriage or a prodigal rebuilding a life,” writes Dr. David Jeremiah in his book Understanding the 66 Books of the Bible. “But whatever we’re rebuilding, we have a blueprint for it in the book of Ezra.”

    As for the book of Nehemiah, it compares favorably to any number of secular leadership books, according to Jeremiah. “None of them have the inspired power that resides in the 13 chapters of this book.”

   Nehemiah is a good place to take those typical January good intentions to make sure they eventually amount to something.

   “As we read the book of Nehemiah, we  can’t help learning vital skills of leadership. This book gives us one of scripture’s best case-studies in spiritual and visionary oversight – setting goals, planning projects, delegating tasks organizing people, solving problems and accomplishing results,” Jeremiah writes.

   I don’t have all this mapped out into a neat series, but I hope to return to this theme from time to time this year.

   My wife Jeannette and I have already been through Ezra and Nehemiah using our home Bible study method. I plan to return to those notes. I have some other studies about those books and I just ordered three more from Amazon. They are supposed to arrive tomorrow.

   It was necessary that Israel be rebuilt to fulfill prophecy that the Messiah would come from there, Brannon writes.

   As for my personal rebuild, or perhaps yours, that’s a lot less consequential on the face of it. Except that as Jeremiah writes:

   “One person empowered by God can make a difference whether that person is Nehemiah or whether that person is you.”