The Nehemiah Principles Updated: Rebuild Your Wall of Protection

By Helen Jordan Davis

When Nehemiah received the assignment from God to rebuild the wall around Jerusalem, he used the principles we must use today to rebuild a wall of protection around our families.  What is written in the Bible is written for the admonition of us who live in the End Times, so we need to pay attention to how God accomplished His work thro

• Language: English
• Publisher: Principle Books Publishers
• Release date: May 29, 2019
• ISBN: 9780996189750

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Helen Jordan Davis, Ph.D., Th.D.

Helen Jordan Davis, Ph.D., Th.D.

The Nehemiah Principles: Rebuild Your Wall of Protection (Updated) by Helen Jordan Davis

Copyright 2019 by Helen Jordan Davis

All Rights Reserved

ISBN: 978-0-9961897-4-3

ISBN ebook: 978-0-9961897-5-0

Published by: Principle Books Publishers

This book and parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise) without prior written permission of the author, except as provided by the United States of America copyright law.

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version, Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Cover design by Ryan and Tina Schinneller of Image Media Resource.

First printing: May, 2019

Dedication

To my husband, Mickey, my heart’s home for lo these many years, and to our wonderful children: Michael (Kimberly), Jennifer (Gary), and James (Kammy), who are such great blessings.

Seventeen

of the thirty-nine books

of the Old Testament,

almost one-half,

deal with the intriguing story

that leads

to the activities of Nehemiah.

Oh, teach me, Lord, that I may teach the precious things Thou dost impart; And wing my words, that they may reach the hidden depths of many a heart. ¹

Table of Contents

Foreword

Preface: The Jewel in the Middle

Introduction: Judah

Part One: Background

The Warnings Begin

Warnings Continued

Instruments of Correction

Judah Worshipped Baal

Opportunity to Repent

Fulfillment of Prophesies Begins

Why?

Mourning

Captivity Prophecies

Captivity

Restoration

Echoes of Warnings

Strategic Placement

Second Group Returns

Part Two: Nehemiah

Assignment Given

The Heart of the King

Wall Builders

Scorn, Anger, and Threats

Bringing Correction

Pray and Stay the Course

Importance of Genealogy

Reading the Book

Recounting the Journey

Agreeing to Covenant

Populating Jerusalem

Dedicating the Wall

Nehemiah Returns to Jerusalem

Spiritual Rebuilding

Intermission

400 years

Part Three: History’s Witnesses

Jeremiah’s Continuing Story

Restoration to the Land

Present Events

Abraham’s Other Descendants

Conclusion

Endnotes

Works Cited

About the Author

Foreword

"This relevant book by Dr. Helen Davis allows the reader to easily identify the parallels between the city walls in Nehemiah’s time and those of our family, church, and community today. Our culture needs to rebuild the walls that are in disrepair to provide a natural buffer against destructive forces. The questions following each chapter make this book perfect for personal and small group studies."

—Rev. Bp. Sean Yost, Redeemer Church & YouthQuake Live

The balance brought in laying out a knowledgeable/scholarly foundation and driving home the principles for every day living reveal a true gift. I was greatly moved to personal examination and application from not only the principles, but to several ‘golden nuggets’ scattered throughout the book. I am blessed and forever changed to have read this book.

—Rev. Linda Parker

"As we mature in the Lord, we learn principles that give us understanding and enable us to live victoriously. Sometimes we learn to see these principles taught and demonstrated in Scripture; often we do not. Dr. Davis’s book points out those life-giving principles in Scripture, and she shows us how to apply them in our daily lives.

I heartily endorse this book, and commend my friend for taking the time to search out these principles, and to write this book. Prepare to take a life-changing journey through this study."

—Rev. Dr. Parson Carson, International Bible Teacher

"At a time when many people are deeply concerned about the direction of the world around them, Dr. Helen Davis delivers a tome that exhaustively documents how your wall of protection can be rebuilt. Dr. Davis’s latest work, the Nehemiah Principle, is relevant, shockingly clear, and important. I hope its message is heard and heeded in time to avert God’s judgment."

—Rev. Jamie Davis, Durable Faith Ministries

"Dr. Davis brings out the rich principles of Nehemiah’s life lessons to sho us all that the Lord is deeply involved in our lives and orchestrates circumstances for His glory and for us to be fulfilled in purpose. The book for those hungry to pursue God and His plan for their lives."

—Rev. Cathy Fox, Assistant Pastor, Redeemer Church

"Dr. Davis gives you the tools to overcome your circumstances and to walk closer to God than ever before!"

—Susannah Hanson

"This inspired book is a richly woven tapestry of prophetic writings ans promises of God throughout the Old Testament. As we comprehend the lessons gleaned from Nehemiah’s faithfulness, we are deepened in our spiritual awareness of the hand of God in our own lives."

—Lynda Dickinson

"The teachings in this book are deep and rich. The book will help you better understand our great God and the love He has for you. The book reveals God’s rich promises and is full of Scriptures woven beautifully together. It makes the Bible come alive. This is a ‘rubber-hit-the-road’ manual for participating in God’s great promises here on earth."

—Franklin Dickinson

"Dr. Davis takes you on an unforgettable journey with Nehemiah."

—Virginia Denton

"The godly principles that all mankind should live by, found in following Nehemiah. The bountiful harvest of this book will be the excitement of the changed lives of those who glean from these principles. It presents a lifestyle for the individual who decides to sell out to God."

—Rev. Howard Kendrick, Pastor Life-Changing Christian Outreach, Chaplain Rocky Mount, NC Police Dept.

Preface

The Jewel in the Middle

Nehemiah, Chapter 1

V. 1: The words of Nehemiah the son of Hachaliah. And it came to pass in the month Chisleu, in the twentieth year, as I was in Shushan the palace.

Stop right there. The 20th year of what? And Nehemiah is a Jew from Judah. What is he doing in the palace at Shushan? Shushan or Susa is the capital of Persia, 1000 miles away from Judah. Therein lies the story.

The book of Nehemiah is actually the closing chapter of an intriguing story which ends the narrative of the Old Testament. Malachi, whose prophecies are placed last in our Old Testament volume, is believed to have been contemporary with Nehemiah and probably delivered his messages while Nehemiah was governor of Judah. Nehemiah carries the story line, while Malachi delivers the prophecies.

Seventeen books of the Old Testament, almost one-half of the thirty-nine books, are involved with this one story, some to a greater extent than others. They are: 2 Kings, 2 Chronicles, Isaiah, Micah, Habakkuk, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Psalms, Zephaniah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Haggai, Zechariah, Esther, Ezra, Malachi, and Nehemiah. Obviously, in God’s mind this is a very important story.

Nehemiah is not the ultimate end of the story, though, because it picks up again four hundred years after Nehemiah has played his part, and it continues today. So, really, Nehemiah is simply a comma at the end of Volume I and a prophetic foreshadowing of what was to come. Volume II is the New Testament, then you’ll be intrigued by the subsequent events happening today, of which we are history’s witnesses.

We have much to learn from Nehemiah, but if we want to fully understand his part in the chronicle, we’ll first have to go back and see what had transpired before he came on the scene and then look at what has happened since. The book of Nehemiah becomes an even brighter jewel when seen in its setting of background and foreground.

Two Nations from One

The story is that of the family of Abraham, the family through which God would bring about the redemption of mankind. Abraham’s descendants went down to Egypt because of famine and remained there for 430 years, 400 of which were spent in slavery. A family of seventy-five (Acts 7:14) had gone down to Egypt, the family of Jacob, grandson of Abraham. When they came out, they were at least two million in number. Some scholars suggest the number was probably closer to three million. We know there were 603,550 men (Num. 1:44-45), plus women and children, so a conservative estimate would be two million. The Law of God they received at Mt. Sinai, concerning all aspects of life, was the constitution of the new nation of Israel. They had gone down to Egypt a family; when they came out, they became a nation.

These Israelites, or children of Israel (the name God gave to Jacob in Gen. 32:28 and Gen. 35:50), were led by Moses for the forty years spent in the wilderness, then entered the Promised Land under the leadership of Joshua. For a thorough study of the possessing of the land and how it parallels our lives today, see this author’s book, The Joshua Principles: How to Possess Your Promised Land.

After the death of Joshua, Israel was ruled by judges for about four hundred and fifty years (Acts 13:20), till the people insisted they wanted a king like the surrounding nations. God had the prophet Samuel anoint Saul as the first king. He was followed by David, then David’s son Solomon.

After the death of King Solomon, the twelve tribes of Israel divided into two totally separate kingdoms. The ten northern tribes continued to be known as Israel, with Samaria as the capital. Two southern tribes (Benjamin and Judah) became known as Judah, with Jerusalem as the capital. Some Levites lived in each country, in each tribe’s territory. The descendants of David continued to rule in Judah.

The northern kingdom of Israel strayed away from God and was taken captive by Assyria in 722-721 BC, never to return, or so it was thought. Those ten tribes have been referred to as The Ten Lost Tribes. There is intriguing news about them today, fulfilling prophecies by Ezekiel and Jeremiah, but we’ll look at that later.

We’ll leave the northern kingdom of Israel for the time being and focus on the southern kingdom of Judah, where Nehemiah would one day become a prominent player.

Discussion

What book ends the narrative of the Old Testament?

What book ends the prophecies of the Old Testament?

What was considered the birth of the nation of Israel?

For how many years were the Israelites ruled by judges? What happened next?

The twelve tribes divided into two countries after the death of what king?

Describe the division into two countries. What were the capitals?

What happened to the northern kingdom? When?

In what kingdom was Nehemiah a prominent player?

Introduction

Judah

The southern kingdom of Judah also strayed away from God. It was taken captive by Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, beginning in 605 BC. Our study will primarily center on this kingdom of Judah, its warnings, its captivity, and its restoration.

Judah’s conquerors, the Babylonians, were also called the Chaldeans. The Chaldeans were one of many Cushite tribes peopling Babylonia. … The Chaldeans were priests, magicians or astronomers—the depositaries of learning and science.² The terms Babylonians and Chaldeans are used interchangeably in the Bible.

It is significant that they were carried to Babylon, since they were Abraham’s descendants. What was Abraham’s native land? Ur of the Chaldees, or Babylon. This is where Abraham was when God called him to leave the idol worshippers behind and go to a land where he and his family could worship the one true God. Now because his family had turned away from the one true God, they were carried back to Babylon to live under the rule of idol worshippers. What name does that country have today? Iraq.

Demonstration

If you were the invisible God and wanted to let people everywhere know how you would deal with certain attitudes and actions, how would you be able to make them understand? You could set up a demonstration by choosing a group of people and giving them instructions as to what would be approved of and what would be punished. As those things took place, you could have them recorded for all of mankind to read and understand. God did this with the Jewish nation. This nation was and is His demonstration group.

God’s dealings with them were written for our admonition, the Bible says (Rom. 15:5; I Cor. 10:11), because the way He worked with the Jewish nation is the way He works with the individual believer today. … God dealt with the nation into whom Christ would be born in the same way as He would thereafter deal with men individually through the Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, God’s dealing with Israel was a type of His dealings with you and me.³ A type is something used to represent something else. Types are picture or object lessons by which God taught His people….⁴ The word type is used 16 times in the NT, sometimes translated pattern or example.⁵

Read what Bible expositor, G. Campbell Morgan, had to say about God warning Judah through the voices of many prophets against straying away from Him. "We are inclined to say, ‘What was the use of it?’ God knew that the people would not obey. He told Jeremiah so. Then why did the word of God persistently come? If there be no other reason, it came in order to give us this prophecy; in order that through all subsequent history, and in every hour of darkness, we may return to it, find what God thought, what God felt, and discover wherein these men failed."⁶ Compare our country today with the Judah of that time, and you’ll see why we need to read and heed these prophecies.

God corrected this nation of people when they strayed from His commands. They were taught that strictly following God brought blessing, while disobeying brought punishment. He accomplished many purposes through this Jewish nation, the most important one being the birth of the Messiah from this group of people.

Messiah

Mankind, not just the Jews, needed a Messiah or Redeemer, but this Messiah needed to obey perfectly the things commanded by God, so He needed to be born into a nation of God-fearing people where He would learn God’s laws. The Messiah would have to fulfill every requirement of the Law of God so that He could qualify as the Sacrificial Lamb without spot or blemish to die on behalf of fallen mankind, or mankind would be doomed forever. Jesus, this Messiah, was born into the southern kingdom of Judah. God’s plan worked; Jesus lived a sinless life, then died and paid for the sins of the whole world, according to 1 Jn. 2:2: And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world. The penalty has been paid for the sins of everyone, Jew and Gentile alike. Only those who claim His vicarious death receive the benefit, though.

God had singled out the Jews by choosing their faithful, believing father Abraham as a covenant partner, making a blood covenant with him (and renewing it with his descendants), which provided for blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience or breaking of the covenant. We will see both of these, the blessings and the curses, carried out just as God had promised in the story we will study relating to Nehemiah. No one among the Jews, before Jesus, had kept the Law perfectly. When they disobeyed God, He dealt with them as He had promised, thus the crisis of our story.

Kingdom Principles

As we study, we’ll see demonstrated a number of principles of God’s Kingdom that helped Nehemiah in his task of rebuilding the wall around Jerusalem and will help us to rebuild the protective wall we need around our lives. God’s principles are for all time never changing, though their applications may change with the times. They are laws, just like the law of gravity, that are in operation whether we are aware of them or not. We can cooperate with them and use them for our benefit, or we can go against them to our hurt.

Since they have not changed and are just as important for us today as they were for Nehemiah, God had Nehemiah’s story recorded so that we could learn these principles. Now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages have come (I Cor. 10:11). So we see our first one:

Principle #1:

What is written in the Bible is written for our admonition (Rom. 15:4; I Cor. 10:11).

The Bible is the most valuable document on earth and was written for us. The One Who knows the future in detail has written us a message to tell us how to be safe and secure in a fast-changing world and how to not simply survive but to prosper.

Purpose of Our Study

Nehemiah is often referred to as an exemplary book on leadership, and it is that, but we must be careful while looking at Nehemiah’s leadership model not to overlook those other principles God demonstrated through him. We will see both in this study.

When we see God’s faithfulness to perform His Word regarding the Jews, we can come to trust that He will be just as faithful to fulfill His Word toward us. After all, we have been grafted into the spiritual root system of the Jews, so we are the children of Abraham by faith. As we are in Christ, the provisions of the covenant God cut with Abraham are ours: And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise (Gal. 3:29). To understand how Christ was involved in the cutting of covenant with Abraham, see this author’s book, The Joshua Principles, Chapter 11.

So, as we study the book of Nehemiah and the background and foreground for it, we will hope to accomplish something in three areas: (1) to gain knowledge about God and His dealings with man; (2) to gain confidence in the Word of God by seeing how precisely God’s promises are carried out based on the covenant He has with the people in question; (3) and lastly, to see how the lessons of Nehemiah apply to our lives today to change us. Gaining knowledge can never be our only goal. We need to let the Word of God change us by giving us a clearer picture of God, strengthening our faith in Him, and conforming us to the image of Christ Jesus. We would do well to heed the warning in the story we are about to study, and we would do well to claim the promise of restoration. Look closely and see if you don’t catch a glimpse of us and our country in the pages of this story.

Partnership

We will see the partnership between God and man demonstrated with Nehemiah’s story. There is always a part for you to play in order to bring about the blessings God has promised. Promises that are prophesied for you personally are very exciting, but are conditional. Joyce Meyer explains the outcome this way: Those prophesied possibilities are not positivelies⁷ because part of the success depends on your doing what you’re supposed to do. Those prophecies, if they’re from God, are to show you how high you can go. God has set the bar very high, but you may end up lower if you fail to do all He tells you to do. God simply gives you the goal that’s possible if you’ll aim for it.

Principle #2:

Prophecies concerning you are possibilities, not positivelies, because your actions affect the outcome.

There’s always a part for man to play. The wall will be built only if you do your part. Over and over in the Word we read where God said, If you’ll do this, then I will do that. Lev. 26 is just one example of God laying out this agreement. In verse 3a, He says, "If you walk in My statutes…. In verse 4a, He says, Then I will give you rain…."

In 14: "But if you will not…." In verse 16: "I also will …."

In 18: "And if you will…. In 19: I will…."

In verse 21: "Then if you … I will…."

In 23: ‘And if ye will not…." In 24: Then will I also…."

In 27: "And if you do not …. In 28: Then I also will…."

In 40: "But if they…." In 42: Then I will…."

You must do your part.

Prophet

In this study, we will hear from many different prophets. What’s the difference between a priest and a