Nehemiah 5:19 – Remember me, my God. Consider everything that I have done for these people.
You know we would want to look at this prayer and think that it is selfish. But truly it isn’t. We might want to say that Yahweh knows everything, and he does. But he does say to ask. He does say to come to him. And Nehemiah said straight up: remember me.
Nehemiah 6:10 – One day I went to the home of Shemaiah, son of Delaiah and grandson of Mehetabel. Shemaiah who was confined to his house, said, “Let’s meet in the house of God, inside the temple, and close the temple doors. Some men are coming at night to kill you.”
Nehemiah discovered that he was a false prophet. He was confined to his home. How was he gonna meet in the house of God?
Nehemiah 9:32 – And now, our God, you are the great, mighty, and awe-inspiring God. You faithfully keep your promises. Do not consider all the hardships that we have been going through as unimportant. The hardships have come to our kings, leaders, priests, prophets, ancestors, and all your people from the time of the kings of Assyria until now.
Truthfully, there are so many scriptures where it says, “Yahweh keeps his promises” that it is easy to miss one (Sigh – my mind blanked out – can’t even remember what I was thinking).
There are so many scriptures, why is it so easy though to forget? Why is it that we don’t expect him to work it out? And I still experience the twinges at times. There are times when nothing will shake my belief in his promises and other times I’m doing my best not to worry. But will keep on repeating his promises.
Nehemiah 13:4-5 – Even before this, the priest Eliashib, who was related to Tobiah and had been put in charge of the storerooms of our God’s temple, 5 had provided a large room for Tobiah. Previously, this room had been used to store grain offerings, incense, utensils, a tenth of all the grain harvested, new wine, and olive oil. These things belonged by law to the Levites, singers, and gatekeepers. The contributions for the priests had also been stored there.
See this is a problem. The one (or one of those) causing so many issues had a “large room” in the temple. He was still in the midst. Held close. So often we do this – we know they up to no good. We know that it’s sin, but we still have it enthroned in its own room in our heart. We need to evict it from our hearts and then put something of value in there. (Nehemiah 13:9)
Nehemiah 13:25 – So I reprimanded those Jews, cursed them, beat some of them, and pulled out their hair. I made them swear by God: “We won’t allow our daughters to marry their sons, and we won’t allow their daughters to marry us or our sons.”
Okay. So a couple chapters back, they swore an oath that they wouldn’t do this. How quickly we forget.
Annnddd…Nehemiah was a gangsta! He pulled out their hair? Seriously Nehemiah?! Arrmmm. That seems extremely painful and I know you’re gonna say that they needed a painful reminder, but you didn’t even shave their heads, you plucked out their hair! Did you grab it in chunks? Did you pull out just one patch? Were they lined up to get their hair pulled? cause this is just such a strange visual it’s raising questions.