9 Things To Learn from Nehemiah and Ezra That We Can Apply To Holy Trinity Asia
Essential Lessons from Nehemiah and Ezra
Nehemiah and Ezra were two leaders in Israel's return from Babylonian exile — around the 5th century BC — tasked with rebuilding their broken nation.
Ezra was a priest and scribe who led exiles back to Jerusalem and realized the people had abandoned God's Law. He led people to rediscover the Bible and triggered a wave of grief and repentance the city hadn't seen in generations.
Nehemiah, a Persian king's cupbearer, knew that Jerusalem's walls lay in ruins. He led the people to rebuilt those walls — while facing mockery, threats, and sabotage from every side — and then had to confront his own people's failures all over again.
Their story raises hard questions about what real reform costs, what real leadership looks like, and what real repentance actually feels like. Most of all, what we should be doing as a Church.
I. What the work will actually feel like
1. False belief that if God is for us then it will be easy.
We may believe that if we're doing God's work — serving, planting, pastoring — it should feel easy, as though struggle proves we've stepped outside His will. Drop that belief now. Nothing in Scripture or church history supports it. God promises to support the work if it's according to His will. He never promises it will be effortless. Look at Nehemiah and Ezra: they worked exceedingly hard, and they made the people work hard too, to rebuild a ruined city. Nothing fell from the sky for them, and nothing will for us.
2. Division is not always a bad thing.
When Nehemiah and Ezra led reform, division broke out almost immediately — even among people who wanted the same thing. We will see the same. We need to stop expecting that good intentions alone will produce unity among us. That only happens in movies, where the hero speaks and everyone falls in line. In real reform, some among us will disagree and separate, and sometimes that division is necessary — it cuts off what would otherwise spread. We are not responsible for uniting everyone around us. We are responsible for uniting those who will submit to the same authority we submit to: God. We should expect both followers and opponents, the way Nehemiah and Ezra had both.
3. We need to let our leaders be hard, not soft — and we need to be hard ourselves.
Nehemiah and Ezra were dominant, demanding, strict. Today we'd probably call them difficult or stubborn. Set that instinct aside. I've absorbed plenty of modern leadership teaching myself — much of it dressed up in language of empathy and collaboration — and it cost me real fruitfulness before I saw it had no biblical grounding. If we are leading reform, we need the traits that modern feminism opposes. We need firmness, demand, resolve. And if we are following such leadership, we need to let it lead us, rather than resisting it because it feels harsh.
4. Let's not mistake "old" for "backward".
When Nehemiah and Ezra reformed Jerusalem, they weren't inventing anything new. They were bringing the people back to a covenant already given. That's what reform means for us too: not progress toward something new, but return to something ancient. When people call that instinct backward — "medieval," "fundamentalist" — we don't need to accept the label or defend ourselves with new ideas. We're not chasing the past for its own sake. We're returning to the covenantal life God has already set for us, and we should expect the same resistance Nehemiah and Ezra got from people who preferred to stay as they were.
II. The Exaltation Of The Bible
5. The Bible we're holding almost didn't survive.
Before the exile, Israel neglected the Book of the Law, and the priests let it slip away. By the time the exile came, the Bible was effectively lost to them. When they returned, Ezra had to reconstruct it from fragments and from whatever oral tradition the elders still carried — sorting legend from fact, organizing it, writing it down by hand. That is exacting, patient work. This may be one of the work that we need to do. To work hard keeping our Bible and Prayer Book alive in our culture.
6. The Importance of Scribes and Scholars.
The delegation and formation of Scribes — designated as scholars, researchers, transcribers, and copiers of sacred texts and Scripture — has been an essential role in the history of the Bible and even Church history.
The Scribes took their role as a sacred duty to research, study, copy, and preserve whatever was important to the covenantal community and Temple life of Israel. They are the pre-scholars of modern times.
This shows that such work has been essential even in Church history. Before modern scholar-theologians, it was the monks who did this work. The word "clerk" evolved from the Latin word "clericus," which means clergyman and scholar. In Church history, the work of the clergy is the work of the "Scribes." They have been enormously significant in mission and Church work.
We need people who are willing to dedicate themselves to such work, which will advance the Church in the work of the Kingdom.
III. Repentance Is Healing
7. Repentance is healing
Returning home to Israel was a pilgrimage of healing. When the people returned home and saw the ruins of Israel, they recalled their unfaithfulness and ignorance toward God. It led them to many tears of repentance.
Likewise, before healing comes to any person, they must look at the ruins of their past life. They will feel regret because of their former godless lives. It's concerning if you do not have a sense of remorse about any godless past lives.
How about us? Do we feel repentant when we look at our past lives that are godless and sinful? There is no healing if we do not repent.
8. Repentance and healing after hearing and understanding the Bible.
In Nehemiah chapter 8, when the people heard the Bible restored and read to them, and especially as it was expounded to them, they mourned and rejoiced. They were so grieved and heartbroken that the Levites had to comfort them and urge them to rejoice instead of mourning (Nehemiah 8:10). This is what repentance looks like.
I don't really see this happening in Holy Trinity Asia. While I am happy to see how you have learned and feel joy in discovering truth — such as in your recent reading of the Old Testament — I have not yet seen deep, heartfelt repentance due to hardness of heart. Thus, I always pray for true repentance to happen in Holy Trinity Asia. Without repentance, many here are still sick and dying. Sick people are of no use in doing the work of God.
When God heals a person through His word, hearts will be broken — sinful hearts will be broken or even shattered. Then new hearts will be born — born again to truly love God and sincerely desire to do His will.
9. The importance of expository preaching and teaching.
In Nehemiah 8, when Ezra took out the Book of the Law to read aloud, the people paid attention, and afterward the Levites and priests helped them understand it. Such work is known as expository preaching and teaching — the exposition of the text to make it clear and understandable.
During the pre-exilic period, the people were deprived of the Bible (we can observe this in the book of Jeremiah and other prophetic books), and the priests were likewise ignorant and too lazy to read and teach it — while all of them confidently believed they knew what it meant to have faith in God. Doesn't that sound familiar? Therefore, the impact of repentance is stronger.
Likewise, today, we find many ignorant Christians and either incompetent or lazy pastors who will not preach and teach from the Bible, starving the people of spiritual food. Therefore, it is essential that we treasure and support our priests, who feed us with the word of God.
"Her priests have done violence to my law and have profaned my holy things. They have made no distinction between the holy and the common, neither have they taught the difference between the unclean and the clean, and they have disregarded my Sabbaths, so that I am profaned among them." (Ezekiel 22:26)
"Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy, and say to them, even to the shepherds, Thus says the Lord GOD: Ah, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep?" (Ezekiel 34:2)
