The Danger of Drifting

Nehemiah 13:15-31 · 2026-03-22 · Jason Wolin · Nehemiah | From Rubble to Revival

Nehemiah 13:15-31 · Hope. The Danger of Drifting — sermon from Cypress Bible Church on BibleSlides.

The Danger of Drifting Nehemiah 13:15-31 (The Danger of Drifting) So today we are going to talk about the biblical justification for pulling peoples hair out when you are mad at them. What in the world? What is this text about? This is why we do expositional preaching here at CBC. When you go verse by verse through the Bible you don’t get to skip. Not a single person on planet earth would choose to preach this text. But here it is. Given by God for our instruction. All Scripture is God breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness. God has something to teach us here today. So what is the book of Nehemiah about? Really, it’s an amazing question to ask. To answer this, we have to review in our minds where we have been. KEEP in mind the Book of EZRA and the BOOK of Nehemiah were written by the same person and it was orginally ONE BOOK. One story. And if you read the WHOLE book, you start to see this pattern emerge. There’s 3 main characters and each time we are introduced to one: It always starts with a decree from the Persian King to let them return to Jerusalem, equipped with resources from the king and do some rebuilding. Then they begin a work but are met by oppostion that they must overcome and they overcome it. Then it ends in dissapointment. So just trace this for a moment with me. The first character is Zerubbabel. Zerubbabel The King of Persia says to Zerubbabel, go back and rebuild your Temple. I’ll give you resources to do it. This should get us excited because Jeremiah 25 prophesied that one day the EXILES would go back and return to Jerusalem. Exile was not the end. Many prophets prophesied of this: Future Messianic King (Is 11 and Hosea 3) God’s Presence would be in a new temple (Ez 40-48) God’s Kingdom would rule over the nations (Is 2 and Zech 8) So they come back and Zerubbabel leads this great throng of people back and they rebuild the altar and the temple and they get ready to dedicate it. And we should have in our minds here Lev 9 and 1 Kings 8 and what happens when they dedicate the tabernacle and the 1 Solomonic temple. And they get ready for the firey cloud to descend and nothing happens. Talk about a disappointment. And then the first section ends. Ezra 60 Years Later, Ezra comes along. He’s a Torah scholar and teacher in Bablyone and he gets permission from Artexerexs to lead another wave of captives home from Babylon to Jerusalem. This is going to be significant for our study today. Ezra is all about spiritual and social renewal. So he comes back only to find that many of those who had stayed behind and were never taken off to Babylon had married foregin wives. There’s all this infighting. They are saying, these people who inte…

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