Today, I am reading and commenting on  Nehemiah 11-13.

After Jerusalem’s wall had been rebuilt and dedicated, Nehemiah returned to the court of Artaxerxes, as he had promised when he first proposed going to rebuild Jerusalem.  Then after a period of time he went back to Jerusalem to discover that the Jews in Jerusalem had neglected maintenance of the temple in his absence and allowed nonbelievers to use the temple for commerce.  As Nehemiah looked around he saw that they had stopped being faithful to God in many other ways.  As I read this passage, Nehemiah realized that their failure to keep the Sabbath holy played a central role in their falling away from God.  In much the same way, I suspect that the failure of Christians in the United States to keep Sunday as a holy Sabbath contributed to their inability to take a stand against other sins.  The first step in bringing people back to God is for those who seek to faithfully serve Him to set one day a week aside purely for maintaining their relationship with Him.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.