In a moment we’re going to hear our Bible reading and it’s a new teaching series that we enter into. When I met with a few others to think about what we might teach upon across this year we were mindful that, as a nation, we are moving into, hopefully, a new season and a new dynamic with the pandemic where, maybe, in some ways, church life would begin to rebuild again and restart in different ways. We’re also conscious that as a denomination, we are having to rebuild too, that we are having to enter a time of pruning back because of how things are within the denomination, and so, again, we’re building and rebuilding and as such, it made sense to turn to that quintessential book about rebuilding, the book of Nehemiah in the Old Testament.

In the book of Nehemiah, we find Nehemiah in exile because he is part of the Jewish people was taken into exile and many years later, he’s now in a position of influence and authority, and the people were taken there because they had disobeyed the Lord and He had disciplined them and there’s been two stages of return already so far. Under two other leaders, one of whom was Ezra and we have the book of Ezra just before Nehemiah, but now we meet Nehemiah who’s on the cusp of another return and another stage of the rebuilding work and we might get into bits and pieces of other dynamics of the history but that’s just to help situate you as we come to the reading today.

I encourage you not only to watch and read it on screen with us, but we have the Bibles out on the pews now as well and so I encourage you to get open up one if you don’t have an app or something with you. You’ll find on your newssheet that at the top of the newssheet every week is the Bible reading that we’re going to have and the page number so you can even be prepared for it. So follow along, keep it open during the sermon, make sure I’m not preaching heresy or something really rebellious and you can make sure that what I’m saying is from the Word of God.