Ezra 3
We’ll be taking a break this
morning from our regular study of Philippians. This is sort
of a continuation of what we spoke of earlier in our congregational
meeting. We as a church want to think
about why we exist, why we do what we do and how we can do
it well and how others by God’s grace might join us in that work.
And so Ezra chapter three gives us a glimpse of the people of
God at work during the return from exile when they had been
exiled for their disobedience to God to Babylon in the middle
of the millennia before the birth of Jesus Christ. So let us hear
God’s word now. This is Ezra chapter three. When
the seventh month came and the children of Israel were in the
towns and the people gathered as one man to Jerusalem, Then
it rose Jeshua and the son of Josedach with his fellow priest
and Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel with his kinsmen. And they built
an altar of God to the God of Israel to be burnt, to offer
burnt offerings on it as it is written in the law of Moses,
the man of God. They set the altar in its place
for fear was on them because of the peoples of the lands.
And they offered burnt offerings on it to the Lord, burnt offerings
morning and evening. and they kept the Feast of Booths,
as it is written, and they offered the daily burnt offerings by
number according to the rule, as each day required. And after
the regular burnt offerings, the offerings of the new moon
and all the appointed feasts of the Lord, and the offerings
of everyone who made a freewill offering to the Lord. From the
first day of the seventh month, they began to offer burnt offerings
to the Lord. but the foundation of the temple
of the Lord was not yet laid. So they gave money to the masons
and the carpenters and food and drink and oil to the Sedonians
and the Tyrians to bring cedar trees from Lebanon to the sea,
to Joppa, according to the grant that they had received from Cyrus,
king of Persia. Now in the second year, after
they’re coming to the house of God at Jerusalem, In the second
month, Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, and Jeshua, the son
of Josedach, made a beginning together with the rest of their
kinsmen, the priests and the Levites, and all who had come
to Jerusalem from the captivity. They appointed the Levites, from
twenty years old and upward, to supervise the work of the
house of the Lord. with his sons and his brothers, and Cadmeo
and his sons and the sons of Judah together, they supervised
the work of the men in the house of God, along with the sons of
Hinnadad and of the Levites and their sons and brothers. And
when the builders had laid the foundation of the temple of the
Lord, the priest and their vestments came forward with the trumpets
and the Levites, the son of Aphath, and with simple symbols to praise
the Lord, according to the directions of David, king of Israel. And
they sang responsibly, praising God and giving thanks to the
Lord, for He is good, for His steadfast love endures forever
toward Israel. And all the people shouted with
a great shout when they praised the Lord, because the foundation
of the house of the Lord was laid. But many of the priests
and the Levites and the heads of fathers’ houses, old men who
had seen the first house, they wept with a loud voice when they
saw the foundation of this house being laid. Though many shouted
aloud for joy so that the people could not distinguish the sound
of the joyful shout from the sound of the people’s weeping
for the people shouted with a great shout and the sound was heard
far away. And then this is God’s holy and
inspired word. Let’s ask for his help and grace
to receive it. Our Lord and God, we give you
thanks that you are a God who speaks. And we thank you that
when you came to Moses on the mountains of Sinai and you gave
him the law and you gave him the covenant that you spoke with
such clarity and authority that the thunder, the lightning struck,
the thunder sounded, the mountain shook, and the people trembled
that Yahweh, the great God, had been with them and spoken to
them. May that be true of us now. May we recognize what we
hear is from your holy word and may your word is preached and
presented today. May it be not my voice, but your
voice. And may it help us grow in grace.
May it motivate us to better serve you. And may most of all,
it bring us to a place where we can glorify not ourselves,
but you. This we ask and pray in the name
of Christ Jesus. Above all, his name is great.
Amen. Many of our fellow countrymen
are picking up the pieces after storms. Friends down in southeastern
Texas are reeling now from several weeks of flooding and wind and
rain. Our brothers and sisters, our companions in this country
and Florida are doing the same and as well as others throughout
the better part of the southeastern United States. And you can’t
help but imagine what they’re going through. What are they
going home to? What will they find? How will
they pick up the pieces and restore life? And you have to wonder
what is priority. I heard just this week that down
in Florida, the power is out in many places and the heat is
excruciating. It’s taken the lives of some
who were trapped in buildings where there was no air conditioning.
It is miserable to live in the temperatures of nineties and
hundreds and the humidity that reaches the same levels. It’s
difficult, but you begin to wonder what are their priorities. And
you can imagine it’s food, it’s shelter, it’s electricity, it’s
medical attention, it’s cutting tree limbs, it’s patching holes
in the roofs, it’s putting life back together so that life can
go on. Well, in our passage of scripture
today from the book of Ezra, which is part of the combined
book of Ezra and Nehemiah in the ancient Hebrew Bible, we
come to a story where the people of Judah, from the little tribe
of Judah and the city of Jerusalem and its little surrounding towns,
they have returned after 70 years of exile in Babylon. Now put
on your thinking caps for just a moment and remember your Israelite
history. God spoke to Abraham in the pagan
land of Ur of the Chaldeans. spoke to him and said, come and
move to the promised land. I’ll make a nation of you. You
have children that outnumber the sand on the seashore. Abraham
eventually, in his old age, had a child. That child grew. Their
people ended up in Egypt. They became slaves under Pharaoh.
They cried out to God. God raised up Moses. He delivered
his people through his mediator, Moses. They went out of Egypt
into the wilderness. A faithless generation died,
but the next generation went into the land. They took over
Cities they did not build. They drank from cisterns. They
did not dig. They ate from vineyards. They
did not plant. They lived inside walls. They did not build in
roofs over their head that they took from others because God
gave them this land and cast out the others. Well, we know
that people wanted a king, and so they had Saul. He was wicked. God put him away. But he raised
up a man after his own heart in David and in his son Solomon. But like Saul, they were sinful.
The kingdom split. The northern tribes up in the
north lived separate from the southern tribes in Judah. And
we read all the accounts of the kings and the kingdoms in the
Bible. And many of those kings did what was evil in the sight
of God. And during that time, God ministered to his people
by sending prophets. And he would send those prophets
with a word from him and say something like this, repent of
your idolatry. For if you don’t repent of your
idolatry, I will take you out of the promised land. I will
remove my glory from your presence, and I’ll just leave you, as it
were, to the wolves. Well, the northern tribes in
the year 721 were exiled by the Assyrians. They were taken away.
And in the year 608, all the way down to maybe the 580s, the
southern kingdom was exiled in different waves to the country
of Babylon. Exile was misery. Exile was life
out of the land. Exile was life away from God
and his presence and from Zion, Jerusalem, the city of the living
God. Exile was death on earth. But after a time, God moved in
the hearts of all the right people to send Israel or Judah back
to Jerusalem. And what did they come to? Well,
they came to a city much like our friends in the southeast
of our country. They came back to a place that was rubble. It
was destruction. It was fallen apart. It was dismantled. It was uninhabitable. And the
most central feature of Jerusalem had been torn down. And that
was the temple, the dwelling place of God, the place where
God meets with his people. And can you imagine what it must
be like all over the southeastern United States? We wonder where
our brothers and sisters whose churches are destroyed or in
disrepair, where they are worshiping today. I am sure with their energy
and their zeal and their thankfulness to God that they have found some
tree under which they can worship or some hotel meeting room or
or maybe they are sharing spaces with other congregations. But
you see, God’s people figure out how to make do and how to
worship. This church has a bit of that
in its own history. When the rise of liberalism entered
their congregation, they sought to establish a church that was
a faithful witness to the gospel, a faithful witness to the glory
of Almighty God. And so they they left behind
what was near and dear to their hearts and they ventured out
to build something new. In a sense, there was a spiritual
storm in their church and they had to seek shelter. somewhere
else, and so this place was built this January. This church will
observe 53 years of ministry, and we think what a great blessing.
But the people of God, the people of Judah, as they left Babylon
and came back to the city of God, they came with one sole
purpose, and that was to reestablish worship in the land, to set up
the temple and the altar and to make sure that God could be
worshiped. and that the people can make
atonement for their sins on the altar of Almighty God. Israel’s priority, though they
were a small group, though their return was difficult, though
their excitement was high, their task was difficult to rebuild
and to restore the city of God and the temple and to reestablish
worship in one place. And as you make your way through
chapter three of Ezra, you’ll notice a handful of things. First,
you’ll notice in verse one that it’s one body. They do it together. They meet somewhere along the
river Kedar over in Babylon and they gather and they think and
they plan much like many did 50 some years ago when this church
had a group that got together in homes and prayed and thought
about what it would be like and how they would go about establishing
a church in Burlington. These folks gathered as one body.
They traveled as one body. They entered back into the city
of God, the rubble and ruins of it. And they went back to
their homes and their towns. And they began, like our neighbors
in Florida and Texas and other places in the South, they began
to rebuild life. Now, their priority was to reestablish
worship. It was in a sense they were going
back to the land. And instead of claiming the land by putting
a stake in the ground with a flag on it, their way to claim the
land was to build an altar. And so one body of people returned
to the promised land to build one altar, one place where God
might be worshipped and where they might keep the feast of
Israel and where atonement might be made for their sins. And so
this one body, they built one altar and they followed one way. You’ll notice in chapter three
how over and over it says they worshipped God according to the
scriptures. They didn’t make it up. They
didn’t take a straw poll from out in the world and say, how
would you like to worship God today? Or what are the trends
out in the world? And how can we apply that to
worship? No, they did not worship the Lord in the world’s way.
They worship God in God’s way as it had been expressed through
Moses and David and other prophets of old. They worshiped the living
and true God. There was one body, one altar,
one way. And there was one reason. We
sing a hymn called, What Can Wash Away My Sins? And we know
the answer to that, nothing but the blood of Jesus. Well, if
they sang that song back in their Hebrew Old Testament, Old Covenant
days, what can wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of bulls
and goats and turtle doves and sin offerings and peace offerings
and Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. What can wash away my sins? Nothing
but keeping the highly regulated sacrifices of the covenant. That’s what they would have sung
in their day. One body, one altar, one way,
one reason, one hope. They were coming to reestablish
the worship of the living and true God in Israel, in Jerusalem,
on God’s holy mountain. No other place, no other way,
no other people, no other means. but to reestablish what had been
lost when God threatened exile. When he threatened the destruction
of Jerusalem, he threatened the removal of his glory from the
city. And that had been realized. And now 70 years later, they’re
back. And oh, do they want their power on? Yes. Do they want their
pancakes for breakfast? Of course they do. Do they want
their mail back? Oh, they do. Do they want the
trees cut and off the roof? Yes, they do. But guess what they
want first and foremost? They want worship. They want
the presence of almighty God. They want atonement for their
sins. They want the fellowship they have together as they walk
the pilgrim way in this life. These things teach us something.
They teach us about priorities. One body is unity in the church. One altar, God has a prescribed
way in his holy word that we worship. One way, Jesus, is the
only way to salvation. It’s through our faith and hope
and trust in him alone for our salvation. One reason that’s
that Jesus can heal us and cleanse us. One hope. And that is that
as we worship God on this earth, it’s giving us a glimpse of what
worship in heaven will be like. And so why did these people go
all the way back to Jerusalem? They could have stayed in Babylon.
And many did. They could have enjoyed the homes
that had been established for 70 plus years by some of their
ancestors and family members. They could have enjoyed the theater
and the grocery stores. And they had a Lowe’s and a Home
Depot nearby. You know, I’m sort of making
that up. They didn’t have all that. But you understand in our
worldly context today, they had it all in Babylon. And why did
they come back these 700 miles into their old land that was
torn down and rubbish? And it was infested. I don’t
know if you noticed, by the peoples of the land who had taken over,
there were squatters and others living in their places. And do
you think they wanted them back? Oh, no. But they came back for
one reason, and that was to serve the living and true God. Well,
what do we find them doing when they get back? What do we find
the people of God in Ezra chapter three doing? And what can it
teach us about what we can do here to serve the Lord? They
do three things. They work and they worship. But there’s also weeping. First,
their work. In chapter 3, verses 7 through
10, we read about the massive work of rebuilding the temple,
of putting the altar back, of laying its foundations. It was
massive, but it was for the glory of God. And it was an international
project. The cedars from Tyre and Sidon
were cut and timbered and sent across the sea and brought in
at Joppa and carried across the land. It was a international
work, many nations and tradesmen, masons would come from all over.
And because the treasury of God had been filled full by the people
who gave to the work of God’s house in his kingdom, they were
able to build and to establish worship and altar and service
to God there again. Friends, it’s worth doing church.
It’s worth our time, it’s worth our money, it’s worth our energy,
it’s worth our Sunday mornings, our Sunday evenings. It’s worth
our evening time studies with one another. It’s worth a Saturday
move when someone needs their things carted across town. It’s
worth visiting in the hospital. It’s worth making soup when the
cold and flu season comes. It’s worth ferrying a brother
or sister from their home to the hospital or to the next doctor’s
visit. It’s worth crying with someone, laughing with someone,
eating at a table over someone. You see, it was worth it for
them and it ought to be worth it for us. But we work, we build,
We preach, we proclaim, we vacuum, we dust, we trim bushes. We serve
one another and we serve the living God. You see in verse
nine, it speaks of their unity. They join together in work. It’s much like that fellowship
word we’ve discovered in Philippians as we’ve studied Paul’s letter.
There’s fellowship in the gospel. There’s joining together in the
labors. There is a yoke and we have yoke
fellows. And we willingly yoke ourselves
together and labor side by side in unison for the gospel, plowing
straight, pulling hard so that Jesus can reap a harvest. And
so there’s work, but there’s also worship. We find it in verses
10 and 11. I remember 20 years ago now,
my family was building a house and I was off at college missing
all the action. But I remember one particular
Sunday night phone call, and this is back before the internet
and cell phones. I had to be in my room at my
phone at eight o’clock Sunday night, y’all remember that, for
the phone call. Well, there was one particular
phone call where mom and dad called and guess what they reported?
The footers of the new house had been poured. Now that sounds
really boring. You can drive down Edgewood and
see an empty lot where they have poured footers. It’s not all
that exciting. There’s no bricks, there’s no mortar. There’s just
a hole in the ground. It looks like mud. And if you
look down, you’ll see the footers. But you know why that was exciting
for us? Because on those footers would be all our hopes and dreams.
On those footers would be a foundation and then walls and windows and
floors and closets and bathrooms and then the furniture. Oh, but
then the people. And in that house, we would sit
around the fire. We would eat meals. There would
be many tears and and sadness, but there would be also great
joy. There would be family life. There would be guests. In a dark
winter night, you could pull up and see the lights in the
window. And friends, that’s what we need to see about our church.
Just as the people who had returned from exile in Babylon, or just
as our friends down south of us are thinking about what life
will be like as we rebuild, we have to see the grand future.
And that is that God can be worshiped. And notice what they did in this
passage. They had worship as soon as the foundation was laid.
They did not wait for the building to be opened and dedicated and
swept clean. Just a little footers. And 35
miles square of rubble. And trouble around them. But there was an altar where
atonement could be made, and there was the footers of the
future temple that would be built. And they worshiped God according
to the scriptures with trumpets and the Levites and the priests,
according to the law of Moses and the words of King David.
And what did they say? We give praise to God for he
is good. His steadfast love to Israel
endures forever. God is good to us, brothers and
sisters. We worship this side of the cross. We’ve seen more
than these folks. We’ve not just been returned
from exile or brought out of Egypt. We’ve been brought from
darkness to light by the power of Jesus’ blood on the cross. And so we worship in the temple
and the house of God because Jesus has saved us. There’s work. There’s worship. But notice in
verses 12 and 13, there’s weeping. It’s almost a hollow note. It’s
almost the DJ has stopped the record and it’s kind of come
to an abrupt stop. It’s scratched and it makes this
awful sound that we don’t want to hear. You know the old saying,
every party has a pooper. That’s why we invited you. Well, there were some old men
in the congregation, some old priests, old Levites, old men
who had probably seen the former temple. the one built by Solomon
during the prosperity of Israel, the United Kingdom and God’s
full blessings. And they remember how big it
was, how tall it was, how wide it was, how ornate it was, how
much silver and gold there was, and how the city of God had already
been built up a generation by David, who had before taken an
already great city from the Jebusites. And now they have to come back
to this little city And its former days and former glory are gone
and it’s in rubble. And this new temple, as they
look at the footers and they look at the foundations and they
see it’s not as big as it once was, it will never be as big
as it used to be. Oh, you know how it can be in
church. We lose perspective and we say things like, I miss the
good old days. I miss the days when X and that’s
all well and good. I miss the days when this was
happening and that was happening. And sometimes we speak of church
in the former days and in the present days as if somebody has
died and God is not with us anymore. And it’s almost an offense to
those of us who are present and serving. But that’s what was
taking place. In Israel. These men had lost
perspective. They had lost perspective of
the reality of the temple and the altar, that God himself comes
into the midst of his people, whether the temple is big or
small, and he meets with his people. He atones for their sin
when they are faithful to keep the sacrifices and the feasts. Oh, friends, don’t let us get
that way. And so much so, remember the glory days and say, oh, it
ain’t like it used to be and it probably never will be. Guess
God is dead. Guess nothing good can happen
because things aren’t like they used to be. Now, let’s be fair. These men may be weeping. It’s
not likely. But they may be weeping because
they remember how far Israel fell after prophet after prophet
after prophet said, quit your idolatry or else God will remove
his presence. and he’ll destroy this city and
its temple and you’ll have nothing to boot. You’ll be in Babylon
among pagans. And we read something like Psalm
137 when it says, when by the waters in Babylon, our captors,
they taunted us and they made us sing the songs of Zion. How
do you sing the song of Zion when your city lies in ruins
and you’re in a strange and foreign land among pagans? Oh, these
men may have been weeping, Not over the size of the temple or
how many filled its rooms at one time or how full the treasury
was or how tall and wide and great and square it was. They
may remember how far Israel fell and they may remember the day
when the Babylonians were marching into the city and the glory of
God was departing as he promised. And the people were carried off
in a wicked, treacherous way because of their sin and their
lack of repentance. That is what they may remember.
Oh, but it’s not likely. No, there’s weeping. There’s
weeping over the past. Yet do you see what the others
are doing? They are excited about the future. Oh, there is joy
because the presence of Yahweh, which left this place, is going
to return and God will be with us and the enemies of the nations
will scatter. And once again, in some special
way, we will be the city of God. Oh, maybe not with the same prosperity
of Solomon. But this little ragtag group,
by faith, will make it. You know, there’s something in
that for this little church. We’re not as many as we used to be.
We don’t have the wealth of a landowner to give us this place and to
give us a building like this. We don’t have the same wealth
this church used to have. But you know what we do have?
We have faith. And it may be that God is putting
us in a place where he says to me, you trust me. and the riches
of heaven will be sufficient to grow you in grace and to get
you all to glory. And we may not have the wealth
of nations or landowners or people with deep pockets as may have
been in the past, but we have God. And just the same, these
dear people who went back from exile to the destroyed city of
God to rebuild it so that worship could be held and that God would
be in their midst. That just may be where God has
us. And friends, that’s not a bad
place. Now, there’s opposition around this work, opposition
around this worship. There’s opposition even within
the ranks of the weeping and the wishing and the hoping for
the days of glory gone by. But there’s opposition without.
There are people who have entered the promised land who hate the
people of God, and they are ready to evict them. And if you read
through the rest of Ezra and Nehemiah, you’ll find occasion
after occasion where the people of God were ridiculed, they were
harassed, they were fought, they were run off, they were scared
out of their wits, and yet God would come into their midst with
a word and say, you keep working, you keep worshiping, and you
stop your weeping, for I am in your midst and I am at work.
The prophet, Haggai, as well as the prophet Zechariah, both
prophesied during the time of the returnees from exile and
their labor in the temple. We’ve read in a few weeks past
about the work of Haggai. He tells the people, you’re living
in paneled houses and the temple of the house of God is not going
to get built. You know, from this day forward with all this excitement,
it’s going to take about 30 years for the temple to get built because
guess what? They wanted the power on. They needed to put groceries
in their cupboard. They needed paneled walls. And
so they built up their houses and the temple of God for 30
years after this point sat dormant. After all that joy and excitement,
it sat dormant for 30 years until the prophet Haggai. But the prophet
Zechariah also preached. And you know what he said to
those men who wept, those men who wailed, and he said, do not
despise the day of small things. You see, brothers and sisters,
we never know how God is at work. It’s often secret. It’s often
afterwards we can look back and say, look at how God was at work
through my cancer or through my suffering or through my loss
of home or through my reading of the Bible. Or or maybe we
as a church look back and say things aren’t the way they were
in the 50s or 60s or 70s or 80s or 90s, but they’re where they
are now. And God is at work. And let that profit. and his
message speak to us and encourage us. Don’t despise the day of
small things. Oh, the world wants big. Even
the church world wants big. But you know what God wants?
He wants faithfulness. One body, one altar, one way,
one reason, one hope. We work and we worship until
Jesus comes. Oh, don’t despise the day of
small things. God is at work. He moves in mysterious
ways, his wonders to unfold. He never leaves us or forsakes
us. He gives us his church to nurture us and help us to get
safely on to heaven. Don’t despise the day of small
things. No, join up. Hammer, chisel, treasury, labor,
yoke yourself together and let us work until the day breaks. And the shadows flee and the
heavens open up. And with a great trumpet sound,
Jesus comes and he takes this little church home to be with
him. Oh, that temple, my friends,
will not be little and it won’t be as great as Solomon’s
temple. Oh, it’ll be greater because
guess who will be in the midst of it and never leave us? God
himself. I will be your God and you will
be my people. My dwelling place will be with
you. And we’ll see Jesus bearing those five bleeding wounds we
sung up just a few moments ago. And forever and ever, we will
be in the presence of God and in present company, along with
the saints who have gone before us, and we will be worshiping
in a temple far greater than any human hand could ever design,
conceive, build, carve, or lay stone to. That is what God has
promised for us. But until then, we need to work
here. And we need to be faithful, even if it’s dark, even if it’s
hard, even if it’s small, even if it’s difficult, even if the
world says, nanny, nanny, boo-boo, what are you doing? We say, Jesus
has called us and commissioned us, and so we go. Let’s pray
together. Our Lord and God, we thank you
that you’re always at work, that when the world seems dark or
when we are weary or when things aren’t what they used to be or
what we hope they might be, help us to see that you’re the God
of the universe, and that you will work in all your holy ways. You work out your holy ends,
your sovereign will. We want to be part of it. And
so help us not to despise the day of small things, but to join
together and to serve side by side with one another until you
come. This we pray in Jesus’ name, amen. Let’s stand in response
to God’s word as we sing together, we are God’s people.