Page 70 - Principles of Leadership - Nehemiah

At this point, I find it remarkably interesting that God gives fifty-five verses to talk about the genealogical
record. Why would he give this amount of space in Holy Scriptures to record the names of the people who
would be part of the process of repopulating Jerusalem? Remember that these verses are “a story of people in
the previous century who were prepared to leave the relative security of their comfortable lives in another
country to return to a homeland they had never seen and to a new and challenging pattern of living. These
people had been willing to uproot themselves from secure and familiar surroundings in Babylon to follow God’s
call to a more precarious and vulnerable existence in a land and capital city that had been ravaged by the
enemy and left destitute and neglected. Nehemiah is now about to ask the children and grandchildren to
consider doing the same thing that the previous generation did when they left Babylon. This city's repopulation
could only be done by Jewish people who could trace their genealogical record found in Ezra chapter 2. Later in
chapter 11:1-3, Nehemiah asks for one out of ten families to repopulate Jerusalem. Today, in the new covenant
church age, leadership needs to be just as diligent to keep the church's purity and only allow those who have
been born again and baptized to be church members. (Acts 2:41) Yes, anyone should be allowed to attend, but
the bar of church membership needs to be limited.

Nehemiah was a leader who realized that if he was to win, he had to win with people who were willing to
follow his social reforms. To do so, he had to move people to the point that they realized that everything was
not about them. Albert Einstein said, "A person first starts to live when he can live outside himself.” 186
Therefore, everyone must ask themselves this question. Do I have a challenging time putting others first? Jesus
would have called our attention to Matthew 6:33 to drive home this point. Kingdom-minded people would see
the big picture and realize that for worship to be reestablished as it should be, some of us are going to have to
uproot our families once again, as our parents did. Those who saw the big picture and volunteered to move
back into Jerusalem were commended in Nehemiah 11:2 for their sacrifice. These people realized the
importance of the partnership principle, which says that “Working together increases the odds of winning
together.” 187 You can do what I cannot do. I can do what you cannot do. Together we can do great things. In
this chapter, Nehemiah was looking for partnership makers and commended the parents and grandparents for
their willingness to move back to Israel from Babylon. Now he is about to look at the kids and grandkids and ask
them to do it again.

Then my God put it into my mind to assemble the nobles, the officials, and the people to be
registered by genealogy. “We know by now that Nehemiah has a well-established modus
operandi. He will not act without consulting Yahweh, even when it comes to seemingly mundane
tasks, such as summoning the people together and conducting administrative tasks. The phrase
“my God put it into my heart” rings familiar.” 188 I found the genealogical record of those who
came back first, and I found [the following] written in it: These are the people of the province
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who went up from among the captive exiles deported by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon.
Each of them returned to his own town in Jerusalem and Judah. They came with Zerubbabel,
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Jeshua, Nehemiah, Azariah, Raamiah, Nahamani, Mordecai, Bilshan, Mispereth, Bigvai,
Nehum, and Baanah. The number of the Israelite men [included]: 2,172.

This list of names is also found in Ezra 2, with a few editorial touches that fit Nehemiah’s
purposes. I agree with most who choose to spend their time looking at the variations between
Ezra 2 and Nehemiah 7 that they do not violate the integrity of the account. Nehemiah seems to
want to make sure that the legitimacy of the Jewish people is maintained. In chapter 7, he affirms
the population about to repopulate Jerusalem. Nehemiah declares that they have a legitimate
right to be there based upon the first generation of returnees found in Ezra chapter 2.

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Parosh’s descendants 372
9 Shephatiah’s descendants 652
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