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All of us, if we're studying the Bible and trying to teach the Bible, it's because we're

convinced that the Bible is for us. If we didn't believe that at some level, we wouldn't even

be bothering to try. Dick Lucas had this great line that says, the Bible is for us, but it's not

always immediately about us. So we want to be very careful about

very quickly trying to insert ourselves into Nehemiah's situation and flattening out all the

historical distinctive so that we can kind of spiritualize Nehemiah and make him as much like us as possible.

Welcome to help me teach the Bible. I'm Nancy Guthrie. Help Me Teach the Bible is a production

of the Gospel Coalition, sponsored by Crossway, a not-for-profit publisher of the ESV Bible,

Christian books and tracks, Learn More at Crossway.org. Today I'm in the office of Reverend

Aaron Messner, who is senior pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, Georgia.

Aaron, thank you for being willing to help us teach the Bible. Yeah, it's great to see you again,

Nancy, and an honor to be with you. Well, I saw you a few months ago, and we talked through the book that precedes, the book we're going to talk about today. Today we're going to talk about the book of Nehemiah. Last time we were together, we talked about the book of Ezra. We had actually hoped to talk about both books in one episode, and you just had too much good stuff on Ezra. And so I said, okay, well, we'll meet up again.

And so that's what we're doing. And I can hardly believe now that I thought we would do that

all in one episode because even as I looked through Nehemiah this morning, I just thought

there is so much good stuff here to talk about. So I appreciate you being willing to do that.

And I think we'll just dive right in because there was so much good stuff here. So I appreciate you being willing to do that. And I think we'll just dive right in

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