So, Nehemia is not a terribly complex book in terms of its structure.

We've been looking at it now for a hundred and whatever episodes together,

and I think we can all see the same thing structurally.

At the beginning of the book, there's a problem. It opens faraway and Susa in the east and

Persia, but there's a problem back out west in Jerusalem. Nehemiah makes it his problem.

The geography of the story moves from way out east to way out west

as Nehemiah goes to Jerusalem and now he's in a little rougher spot. Things

aren't so cushy as they were back at the capital. The

King's a long ways away and he's got Nehemiah that is got to demonstrate he's got to

use all these smarts and his cleverness to cut through all of the obstacles and get these walls built to preserve

the people. But there's an undercurrent all the way through the first half of Nehemiah during the

rebuilding of the walls phase and the undercurrent is that it isn't just

the walls that need to be rebuilt the walls are kind of a metaphor in their

tumbled down state for a people who are in a tumbled down state of people who are in

disarray they've had flashes of brilliance over the course of their 2000 almost

this year history at this point.

Struggle, but they keep struggling to get out of their own way and now there's a little glimmer of hope.

There's an opportunity here to rebuild something that was lost or maybe to make something and realize it fully and truly for the first time ever.

First half of Nehemiah is about the metaphor, the walls, which did need to be rebuilt, but the second half of

Nehemiah is about the rebuilding of the people.

What Nehemiah is trying to do, along with Ezra, is get everybody in the right spot, get all of the money in the right

spot, get all of the plans in the right spot, get all of the rules in the right spot, get the heart of the people in the right spot get all of the rules in the right spot get the heart of the people in the right

...