At the most basic level, the book of Nehemiah is a story about rebuilding the ancient ancestral capital city of the Jewish people, Jerusalem. And specifically, it's about rebuilding the walls. But as you and I have discovered over the course of this season, working our way through the book of Nehemiah one little bit at a time every day, the book of Nehemiah is on a more subtle level also about rebuilding the people. The descendants of Abraham were in disarray. And Nehemiah has to figure out how to help them remember who they are and recover their identity and become a people once again set apart for God. And you'd think, okay, well, that's a lot of thematic material to fit into 13 chapters of one book. I mean, those are two very different levels of what the story's about, but there's a third level of what the story is about as well, and that is remembering. Nehemiah is a book about remembering. That word appears quite a bit, and it's pretty evenly spaced out over the course of the book. And it would seem that thematically the book is trying to communicate is that a lot of the other problems, like the wall isn't up and the people are in disarray, would be solved if they could remember who they are. And they will stay solved if the people of Jerusalem can continue to remember who they are, what the story is they're living out, who their God is, what they're calling, what their covenant is as it relates to all of that. But remembering in and of itself is a word that I guess could be a little bit ambiguous. It can hit you different, you know? It's one that has a lot of layers of meaning. Some of them are a little bit ominous, some of them are warm and make you feel thought of and appreciated. And here's what I mean: consider the following four children's movies examples that have remembrance as a theme. The Lion King, 1994, right? In the early going, young Simba is told a bunch of stuff about who he is and what he ought to do and what he ought not to do in light of who he is, but he refuses to remember that. He doesn't internalize it, he gets it all wrong, and it's very costly. It seems like a sweet, happy little movie, but it deals with some really dark themes about forgetfulness. That's how Simba gets things wrong, but then eventually remembrance. And when Simba finally remembers, remember who you are, remember that part? When he finally remembers, that is when he figures, you know, it's when he gets it together and he goes and accomplishes great things. So remembrance in that case is about identity and action, remembering to do the right thing, remembering to refrain from the wrong thing. But let's do another example of a children's movie where remembrance means something entirely different. How about the Incredibles? Remember Syndrome, who looked up to Mr. Incredible and then didn't feel like he got enough attention from him, and he kind of had that fallen hero, thin line between love and hate, talented Mr. Ripley thing going on. And he comes back, he dedicates his whole life to taking apart Mr. Incredible because of the slights that he felt. He remembered that he wanted vengeance for a very long time. He remembered those slights and those wounds and those injuries, whether they were fair or not. And that kind of remembrance causes him to spiral out of control and leads to syndrome's downfall. It's okay if you don't happen to know anything about this movie. I think you're able to understand what I'm talking about. Well, Lion King remembrance then is very different than Incredible's remembrance. Here's another one X-Men 97. Again, it's okay if you don't know what this is, but there's a character in that named Gambit, who does something very noble and very brave. And his big line in that noble, brave moment is to say, this is my name. Remember it. And there, I mean, that's something very different than how remembrance is used in Lion King or The Incredibles. We're talking about heroism. We're talking about legend. We're talking about, I'm gonna do one great, grand, bold, magnificent thing, and don't you forget it. This is going to send a ripple through history. It's all the same word, but these are very different meanings. How about the unbelievably sweet Pixar film Coco, where the main song in that entire thing is Remember Me, right? And remembrance is the central theme of the film Cocoa. With the looming threat being forgetfulness that people would forget those they love, and that once someone they loved is forgotten, they sort of go away. And I mean again, it's a very delightful show, but it it's pretty bleak stuff right under the surface. But here, that theme of remembrance isn't about revenge. It's not about taking action, it's not about heroism echoing through the ages. It's about family, who everybody was. And everybody belongs on the little shelf where all the pictures go. And some of the people on the family picture shelf are maybe legendary and did amazing things. Some of them were very simple and maybe lived a more humble life, but this is our family tree. This is who we are. This is what makes us us. Let us remember all the people who were involved. So you got those four stories and those four examples of the use of the concept of remember and the concept of remembers prominent Nehemiah, as I said as well. Here's the final verse of the whole book. You ready for it? Are you emotionally prepared for this? Because this is it. This is the we're finishing a whole book here. It's about to go into your hip pocket. This is kind of exciting. Final verse, Nehemiah 13, 31. And this isn't even all of 31, this is just the second half of 31. Here we go. Remember me with favor. Oh my God. Is it? We talked last time around about those little narrative blurbs we write for different chapters in our lives. And I suppose this is the forward-facing narrative blurb that Nehemiah wrote for this chapter in his life. I can't solve all these things. Here's the story. This is everything that happened. That's everything that I did. I guess people judge me one way or the other for how I approached all of this, but you know whose opinion I really care about? Gods. So let me conclude my book, my memoirs, with just this one thing. Remember me with favor, oh my God. That's who he most hopes he did right by. And Nehemiah is a guy who understands the story, he understands the character of God. He knows that God is a God whose memory is crystal clear. God remembers everything. His memory is deep and unfading. And this prayer isn't Nehemiah's way of saying, like, oh, please actually do try to make a note to remember me. Here, remembrance, in a sense, is a plea for grace, a plea for forgiveness for whatever he might have gotten wrong with the best of intentions. And again, that word remember appears all over the place in the book of Nehemiah. But it manifests in a lot of different manners. Like the Lion King. There's the action side of it. Hey, remember the rules. Do this, don't do this. Remember that you said you would not neglect the house of our God. Okay, don't neglect the house of our God. The Lion King also has that remembrance theme of remember who you are. If Simba can remember who he is, then he's going to know what to do with the rest of his life and he's going to get things right. Nehemiah has that remembrance theme of vengeance. It sounds mean, but it is what it is. Nehemiah 13, 31, remember them, O my God, because they defiled the priestly office and the covenant of the priesthood and of the Levites. And that's not the only time in here that Nehemiah uses the word remember to ask God to judge and deal with and provide justice for the bad things his enemies did. Nehemiah 6.14, remember Tobiah and Sanbalat, O my God, because of what they have done. Remember also the prophetess Noadiah and the rest of the prophets who have been trying to intimidate me. Two times, that I remember at least, he's kind of using remember in the same way that Syndrome uses the term remember. In the Incredibles, I think Nehemiah is a much more stable, much more likable character than Syndrome. In Syndrome's mind, there was an injustice that had been done that needed to be righted. Now it was imagined in that particular story. Here, there's an injustice that's been done that Nehemiah has seen, and it's not imagined. It's real, and based on what we see in the book, it's right for him to invoke the word remember in light of that. Nehemiah employs the concept and the term remember kind of in the same way that Gambit does in X-Men 97. That is that this is a thing that should echo through generations. This is something that should go into the lore and legend of a people. This is the kind of thing that writes a story and that is meant to inspire. Remember this. Remember what happened here this day. It's that kind of language. And all of that is present as well. And then finally, obviously, the theme of remembering family for better, for worse, whatever they did, their family, and we're in this thing together that you get in the film Coco also appears throughout Nehemiah. And you know, I've told you all along, like just, hey, we got to read all the names, every single name and every single list. It might seem boring in a vacuum, but when we look at the whole of this, we understand that all of these names are really, really important. Why? Well, because they're on the mantle, they're on the metaphorical little remembrance shelf for all the people who have come and gone and all the roles they've played for better or for worse. This is a family. These are the descendants of Abraham. They are ethnically bound together, and because of that, they are familially bound to this story. And that theme of remembrance in Ezra and of Nehemiah, of those who could demonstrate that we're in, we are the blood of Abraham, we're descended from him. That's a big deal too. Remembrance is a key theme in Nehemiah. And frankly, just about any way you might be able to think of to employ the word remember, it applies to what's going on in Nehemiah as well. We're not done here. We're just getting started at looking at the big picture of what this book is about. And that's going to take a few conversations to process through. And then I'm kind of thinking we'll do a quick, quick tour, maybe an episode or two of what happened between Nehemiah and the New Testament, just to connect the dots all the way out. And then I think we're going to tie a bow on this season and jump into the next season, which is Galatians. And if you haven't heard me do so already, I would love for you to hear me right now and to remember this. I would like to invite you to be a part of that season. I know that there's a lot of things on the internet and there's a lot of things to do with your time. I would be honored if you would consider spending the next chunk of time with me and committing to another season of this thing as we go and look at a book that is designed. I mean, it's picked. I chose this one next because it's going to pay off a whole bunch of the stuff that we found here going through Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther. So thank you for considering that. I would be honored to have you be a part of it. All right, I'm Matt. 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