Nehemiah 10 Summary - 5 Minute Bible Study
Nehemiah 10 Short Summary:
Nehemiah 10 begins with a list of 84 leaders of Judah who signed a written oath to honor God and respect His commands. After their leaders signed, the rest of the people verbally committed to keeping the laws of God that their forefathers had so often neglected.
Nehemiah 10 Summary
WHEN:
538-537 BC – Cyrus the Great of Persia frees the Jews from their Babylonian captivity.
516 BC – The rebuilding of the Temple is completed in Jerusalem.
457 BC – Ezra arrives in Jerusalem.
445-444 BC – Nehemiah arrives in Jerusalem.
KEY CHARACTERS:
The Leaders of the Jews – They signed an oath to honor God and to keep the commandments found in the Book of the Law of Moses.
Jews – Descendants of the tribes of Israel. Along with their leaders, they made an oath to rededicate themselves to the Lord.
WHERE:
Jerusalem – The capital of the Kingdom of Judah and the location of God’s Temple.
The Cities of Judah – The Levites collected tithes from the people in the cities and then brought them to Jerusalem (10:38).
OUTLINE:
SIGNERS OF THE OATH (10:1-27):
At the end of Nehemiah 9, the leaders of the Jews signed a written promise to respect God and keep his commands.
Nehemiah 10:1-27 is a list of the names of the 84 men that signed the document.
THE PEOPLE OF JUDAH COMMIT THEMSELVES TO GOD’S LAW (10:28-39):
The rest of the people of Judah joined their leaders in their commitment to the Lord.
They resolved to start keeping the commands that their forefathers had often neglected.
They highlighted a few commands that they wanted to do better at keeping. These are listed below:
They weren’t going to intermarry with the idolatrous nations that surrounded them.
They weren’t going to do business on the Sabbath Day.
Every year, each man would give a third of a shekel to the Temple to help with the expenses of the House of God.
They promised to offer the firstfruits of their harvest and herds to God, and to bring their tithes to the Levites.
APPLICATION
Reformation has always been a necessary and healthy part of the history of God’s people.
As time passes, God’s people can start to drift. They can drift in a number of different directions.
Some drift towards apathy. Some drift towards ignorance of God’s word. Some drift towards the traditions of men and man-made doctrines. Some drift towards worldliness, wanting to look as much like the sinful world as they can. Some drift towards legalism, binding what God hasn’t bound. Some drift towards liberalism, permitting what God restricts.
When these drifts get too extreme, a great reformer(s) must come along and work to initial a big change.
But it doesn’t have to be that way, the Church doesn’t need to fall into a terrible state of disorder before it can be reformed.
This is where you and I come into play. We may not be great reformers like Ezra or the judges of Israel, but we can make small reforms in our Christian communities to correct the drifts we see.
When the current is slow, people are slow to realize how far they’ve drifted away from the shore. Satan loves to use the slow drift to subtly move people away from God. Just a bit of drift every generation, too subtle to notice, until people eventually look up and can’t see land.
We aren’t going to fall for that trick. We are going to be people who anchor our ship in the word of God, who constantly watch for changing currents, and who make small corrections when we see any type of drift.
To do this, we have to be diligent! No generation gets to abandon the crow’s nest. Like Nehemiah’s men on the walls of Jerusalem, the watchmen must always be on duty.
Let’s all play our part in our generation to make small reforms so future generations don’t find themselves 5 miles out to sea.
