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Leadership comes in many forms. Your role at work may require managing a team. Perhaps you're a teacher at school.

Or maybe you have little ones that look to you for direction.

Today, on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindall describes a man who set the standard on leadership.

Our study about Nehemiah is called Hand Me Another Brick.

And in the coming programs, we'll discover time-tested wisdom for anyone in a leadership role.

To understand the context of Nehemiah's story, our study begins with helpful history.

Chuck titled his first message, The Matter At Hand.

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If you look at the first chapter of the book, Nehemiah, you'll discover that this man was in a very important place in the history of the Jews.

Not when they were attacked from without, but when they were attacked from within, did the walls of their spiritual heritage begin to crumble?

At this time, when the kingdom divided, all hell, if you please, broke loose.

Well, God judged Israel at the north, you'll notice, as the Assyrians invaded in 722, and those ten tribes were finished.

The northern kingdom was ended by and by, they blended down into the south, but when they fell, they fell completely, as the Assyrians invaded their land.

But the land of Judah continued on a little longer, in fact over 300 years altogether.

Until Babylon, the king named Nebuchadnezzar, raped the city of Jerusalem and all Judah, and took captives, and began what has been called the Babylonian captivity.

We are at the end of Judah's history, and the beginning of the Babylonian captivity.

They burned the house of God, that's the temple, and they burned the wall around the city, the protective wall that gave them protection from the enemy,

and they burned all its fortified buildings with fire and destroyed all its valuable articles.

These Jews that lived through the siege of Jerusalem were wrapped up together, chained and bound, and sent back to Babylon, perhaps 800 some miles in that trek back to the land.

And under Nebuchadnezzar and his son, the people of the Jews lived, as they had lived before in Egypt, slaves to a foreign power.

But God didn't forget them. He had a purpose, and he had a plan.

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