So, Hello, my name is Matt Whitman and today I'd like to talk about Nehemiah Chapter 11.

A chapter of the Bible in which a whole bunch of ancient descendants of Abraham living under

Persian rule decided that it was time for them to

repopulate their ancestral capital city of Jerusalem even though kind of nobody

really wanted to live there.

It seems like it wouldn't be that interesting a plot, but it's a pretty interesting plot

because they've done all this work at this point in the Bible over the course of the better part of a

hundred years to put back together their way of life

their religious system they rebuilt a temple in there somewhere they barely

staved off eradication at the hands of the vile genocidal maniac named

Haman and now they've just recently finished rebuilding the walls of this

ancestral capital city of Jerusalem but nobody wants to live there

because nobody's lived there for a long time it's not fashionable at this time and also

it's kind of a dump and it doesn't have the reputation as being a place where you'd

want to live and the economy is all religious there and the real way to advance your family's holdings is to move back to the parcels of land that your family owned hundreds of years earlier before a terrible

conquest at the hands of Nebuchanese are out in the Hill country where families could recover

their wealth and their reputation by rebuilding their agricultural lands and grand villas.

And so moving to Jerusalem that sounds appealing because of the bright lights and the culture and all of the other cool things that you and I associate

with happening in cities happening there.

But it just wasn't fashionable at this point.

It wasn't economically desirable and it required some really forward-thinking people like Ezra and particularly

Nehemiah the guy for whom the book is named to say look if nobody wants to move

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