Welcome to the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast.

Right now, we're going through the entire Bible to understand it as one big cohesive story.

We're covering one book each day, and this one is about Nehemiah.

Hey my friends, it's Matt, thanks for hanging out with me and talking about the book of

Nehemiah today.

And Nehemiah, as we talked about yesterday when we were looking at Ezra, is an interesting

animal because it isn't a book unto itself in its original form.

It's the second half of one unified book that is now split into Ezra and Nehemiah.

And at the simplest level, it's the story of how Nehemiah, the cup bearer to the great

king of kings, the king of Persia, receives permission to go back as an exile to Jerusalem

and to oversee the rebuilding of the walls of the city of Jerusalem.

Doesn't sound like that big a deal, or that big a project to you and me because, oh,

why do you need walls around a city?

What's that going to do?

Why does it matter?

But you've got to not think moderately here.

You've got to think about the ancient world.

A city without walls wasn't a city.

A city without walls couldn't protect, say, a sacred temple inside those city limits.

The walls are what kept it from being toppled by even just a few men or a band of brigands

who were looking for an easy city to sack.

No walls in the ancient world meant your city was not legit.

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