Ezra 7:11-28
Ezra chapter seven, beginning
at verse 11. And to remember where we are,
this is a new era in the life of the returnees. This is fast
forward about, what, 50, 60 years since they first came back. They
came back under Zerubbabel, rebuilt their houses, rebuilt the temple. They had some trouble. And now
fast forward, and this is Ezra coming in. We were before at
about 538 to 515. Now we’re in the 460s, I think. So fast forward several years
and remember last time we looked at Ezra the scribe, the man skilled
in the law, he desired to know the law, do the law and teach
the law. And now we’re gonna look at the
blessing of God from Persia to fix up the temple a bit. So this
is a copy of the letter that King Artaxerxes gave to Ezra
the priest, the scribe, a man learned in matters of the commandments
of the Lord and his statutes for Israel. Artaxerxes, king
of kings, to Ezra the priest, the scribe of the law of God
of heaven, peace. Now I make a decree that any
one of the people of Israel or their priests or Levites in my
kingdom who freely offers to go to Jerusalem may go with you. For you are sent by the king
and his seven counselors to make inquiries about Judah and Jerusalem
according to the law of your God, which is in your hand. And
also to carry the silver and the gold that the king and his
counselors have freely offered to the God of Israel whose dwelling
is in Jerusalem. “‘with all the silver and gold
that you shall find “‘in the whole province of Babylonia,
“‘and with the freewill offerings of the people “‘and the priest,
vowed willingly for the house “‘of their God that is in Jerusalem.
“‘With this money, then, you shall with all diligence “‘buy
bulls, rams, lambs, with their grain offerings “‘and their drink
offerings, and you shall offer them “‘on the altar of the house
of your God “‘that is in Jerusalem. Whatever seems good to you and
your brothers, do with the rest of the silver and the gold that
you may do according to the will of your God. The vessels that
have been given you for the service of the house of your God, you
shall deliver before the God of Jerusalem and whatever else
is required for the house of your God, which it falls to you
to provide, you may provide it out of the King’s treasury. And
I, Artaxerxes the King, make a decree to all the treasurers
in the province beyond the river. Whatever Ezra, the priest, the
scribe of the law of the God of heaven requires of you, let
it be done with all diligence up to 100 talents of silver.
100 cores of wheat, 100 baths of wine, 100 baths of oil, and
salt without prescribing how much. Whatever is decreed by
the God of heaven, let it be done in full for the house of
the God of heaven, lest his wrath be against the realm of the king
and his sons. “‘We also notify you that it
shall not be lawful “‘to impose tribute, custom, or toll “‘on
any one of the priests, the Levites, the singers, “‘the doorkeepers,
the temple servants, “‘or other servants of this house of God.
“‘And you, Ezra, according to the wisdom of your God “‘that
is in your hand, appoint magistrates and judges “‘who may judge all
the people in the province “‘beyond the river, all such as know the
laws of your God. And those who do not know them,
you shall teach. And whoever will not obey the
law of your God and the law of the king, let judgment be strictly
executed on him, whether for death or for banishment or for
confiscation of his goods or for imprisonment. Blessed be
the Lord, the God of our fathers, who put such a thing as this
into the heart of the king to beautify the house of the Lord
that is in Jerusalem and who extended to me his steadfast
love before the king and his counselors and before all the
king’s mighty officers. I took courage for the hand of
the Lord my God was on me and I gathered leading men from Israel
to go up with me. Amen. This is the word of the
living God for us, his children. I have a little note card that
I keep usually in my Bible or it lands somewhere on my desk
from time to time. And it’s got this simple little
statement on it. And it says, make the invisible
visible. That is one of the great tasks
of the church of Jesus Christ. We speak of the lives of the
saints. We speak of God’s church on earth
as the visible church. It’s a visible manifestation
of the invisible realities of the heavenly places. Some have
rightly called the church an outpost of heaven. There’s a
glimpse, there’s a window of what heaven must be like, or
at least there should be, in every local church. Make the
invisible visible. In Exodus, in our studies on
Wednesday night, we have just landed on the passage where Passover
comes, the doorpost, the blood, The avenging angel of death passes
over those who have the blood of the Passover lamb, and Israel
leaves Egypt in haste, but not before asking the Egyptians for
their silver and for their gold, which the scripture says they
willingly gave to Israel. And so it is said of the Israelites
that they plundered the Egyptians. And you fast forward into the
life of Israel in the wilderness, and they set out to build a tabernacle. They have a holy Ab and Bezalel
and others who are skilled craftsmen blessed by the Holy Spirit. Plus
all the freewill offerings of the Egyptians that were acquired
by Israel on their exodus from Egypt. And so the tabernacle
is built with beautiful tapestries and with gold and all kinds of
beautiful and wonderful things. And over and over in the book
of Exodus and other places where it speaks of the tabernacle,
it says that it was designed and it was built for glory. and for beauty. And there are
a lot of good biblical theologians who say when you look at the
description of the tabernacle, when you read the description
of the temple, and especially when you read of the description
of the new heavens and the new earth, every place where God
meets with his people is like a garden Eden. It’s a place of
glory and it’s a place of beauty. And so one of the realities of
the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, is that we have the opportunity
to build a building. We have the opportunity to have
a place where we do things that God ordains and institutes. And
it’s our task to make the invisible realities of heaven visible on
earth. It’s our task to be an outpost
of heaven. And several times in the scripture,
not just in the Exodus account and not just here with Persia,
but several times in the scripture, we’ll see that monies are raised
often from surrounding pagan nations. And there’s a little
phrase that says the wealth of nations enters into the temple
of almighty God. In fact, Isaiah chapter 60 is
a wonderful passage that speaks of the wealth of Lebanon. helping
to beautify the temple of God. You can imagine over the years
since Solomon’s first temple, all the way to AD 70, where we
mentioned today in our sermon from Acts, where the temple would
be destroyed. Almost a thousand years of various temples, first
and second temple, remodeled temple, temples with additions.
You have to figure with a little wear and tear, you know, global
warming and all that. The temple needed fixing up.
It needed pressure washing. It needed a new roof. Same as
us today. We have a building that will
soon be 60 years old. We recently replaced the hot
water heater. Just a few months back. We had
the fellowship hall floors waxed. That’s why they shine a little
it’s to protect those floors And so they’ll last a bit longer.
We we pressure wash a workday just a few months ago. We washed
windows We’ll put out some mulch will You know put a little money
in our legacy fund for the next round of heat and air units and
those sorts of things But we remember because the scripture
teaches us that the church, the visible church on earth is an
outpost of heaven. And it’s our task through what
we learn and what we say and what we believe and how we live.
But also there’s a sense in our visible manifestations, our buildings,
that is our sanctuary where we are presenting to the world a beauty, a glory, a place where
we meet with God, where we worship, where we hear, where sacred things
take place, where we are saved and baptized and married and
buried. You know, it’s going to be an
interesting day as we enter into the next 50 to 100 years where
churches will be small and Folks like us have a stewardship because
we have a building, we have something that is paid for, something that’s
in very good shape. And so we won’t in the next 50
years be laying on a next generation, oh, you better figure out where
to worship. We have a place and there’s a cross out that way
that reaches up to the sky. And as people drive by, maybe
they don’t say it as completely or as biblically as we might,
But at least they have to somehow say in some way, shape or form,
God is worshiped in that place. That is an outpost of heaven.
That is a place for glory and for beauty. And think with me
for a moment, if you will, about the last time we were together
and considered the first 10 verses of Ezra. Ezra was sent. to the promised land. He was
sent to a little bitty Jerusalem that is a fledgling rebuilding
of what used to be before the deportation, before Babylon destroyed
the temple and the city. And remember, it’s a day of small
things. It’s a day where the temple isn’t as big, the city
isn’t as big, not as many people return. Many have stayed in Babylon
and are scattered all over the world. But God first sent Ezra,
a man, a scribe who loved the law, lived the law, and taught
the law. And the first task we saw in Ezra was that he would
reform the church. He would reform the people. by
the word of God. Remember that when God builds
a church, he forms it. And over time, because of sin
and laziness and other things, it gets deformed and it needs
to be reformed. And we thank the Lord that we
are part of the Protestant Reformation. We’re part of the faithful remnant
of God’s people, whereby his word, by his spirit, by God’s
grace, he has kept us on track. serving him, the living God.
Now we turn to a different need, and it’s not just that the people
of God needed reform and God so richly provided for that in
Ezra, the scribe, the teacher of the law. But now we’re going
to see that for some reason, after 70, 80 years, the temple
of God, the house of God, the temple precincts need a little
fixing up. And perhaps it’s a bit more than
pressure washing. It seems that the vessels maybe
have worn out the vessels for sacrifices and other ordinances
of the church. And it seems that they need to
do some rebuilding, some remodeling, some fixing up, perhaps an electrician,
or maybe they need to increase their internet capabilities.
Who knows their live streaming. You get all that’s a joke because
they didn’t have all that back in those days. And we remember
that the motives of Persia aren’t, 100% pure. When you’re a leader who is occupying
multiple territories, it’s to your advantage to give them their
religion so that they give you their allegiance. But nevertheless,
we see tonight the second wave of the second exodus of God’s
people. The first wave came from Zerubbabel
and others who in Ezra chapter 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 were there
to reenter Jerusalem and to rebuild the temple and to reestablish
the worship of God through all the feasts and festivals. Now
the second wave, some decades later, comes with Ezra. And this
is a letter of credentials. This is a letter saying, Ezra
has permission to come, Ezra has permission to bring, Ezra
has permission to do. And so the reformation of the
people of God through his teaching, but also through the provisions
of fixing up the temple are there. And I want you to remember two
things. In the church, both the people and the building can get
dilapidated. Now, generally, we spend too
many efforts on the building. You can go into a really nice
church building. Everything is neat and in order, but their
doctrine is rotten. I was reading Charles Haddon
Spurgeon recently on liberal churches. Now, this was a hundred
and some years ago in London in the 1800s when he was pastoring
there. And he said, you can go into
a church that has beautiful music, a glorious organ, have these
grand choirs with beautiful singing. but the doctrine is empty. And
he said, you may as well just go to the opera house for the
beauty there has greater purpose than the sacrilege of almighty
God. And so if we want to live as
witnesses in this world, we ought to be a beautiful manifestation
of the glory of God and the gospel and the doctrine of grace as
a visible church. Now in God’s providence, he protects
and preserves his church in the world. And sometimes his church
is more visible and less visible. Sometimes it, and it may be in
the future years that the church may be less visible because of
the persecution we believe that is coming in our own country.
But even more sadly, I think the church is sometimes more
and less pure. You’re reading the news out of
annual church meetings, and the Southern Baptists seem to want
to be faithful. The Associate Reform Presbyterians,
we did a pretty good job, though we didn’t win everything I wished.
The Presbyterian Church in America, which we’ve all been watching
with bated breath on what they’ll do with the homosexual issue,
thankfully came out of their national meeting a week or so
ago. Very encouraging news, but not so with the Methodist, not
so with the mainline Presbyterians, not so with many of the other
denominations. In fact, our confession of faith
tells us sometimes the church is so full of mixture and error
that it degenerates into a synagogue of Satan. So sometimes you ask,
when should you leave a church? You should leave a church when
it no longer preaches the word, when it no longer administers
the sacraments, and when it no longer practices church discipline.
Probably one, two, or three, one, two, or all three are good
reasons, and we should take care in prayer and counsel. But there
will always be a church on earth. That is the good news of the
scripture. There will always be a church
on the earth. There will always be a remnant.
There will always be a lamp stand. There will always be some faithful
witness of God’s people who seek to desire or who seek and desire
to worship God according to his will, not according to the will
of man. And one of the things we remember,
Christ sanctifies his church by his word through men like
Ezra, or you’ve had Many pastors over the years of your Christian
life, Christ sanctifies his church by the water and by the word.
He’s getting us wedding ready. And I have a little pun here
in my notes. He’s getting you wedding ready.
But since we’re talking tonight about them fixing up the temple,
you want to be a church a bride wants to be married in, don’t
you? And so there’s kind of a play on words, at least in my own
thoughts there, but we’re looking not for an earthly church, are
we? We’re looking for the new Jerusalem. We’re looking for
the church above where the spotless bride will one day meet with
the glorious groom. But now we find ourselves in
a little spot in the scripture where under the reins of Cyrus
and Darius and Ahasuerus and Artaxerxes, We’re in that what
was described in chapter four as the hundred years war where
there’s opposition to everything God’s people are trying to do.
And maybe we can take some encouragement in this because the people of
God underestimated Yahweh, they underestimated their enemies,
and they underestimated God’s ability to give them provisions
to be a church. But Zerubbabel and Haggai and
Ezra in the next phase of what we study, Nehemiah will help
them through these things. Just a couple quick notes about
our passage. This is a letter mostly of the
king, of the Persian king given to Ezra to carry with him. This is Ezra. He has permission
and he has blessing to go to Israel, to go to Jerusalem, to
take the four months journey. And he takes all the people who
want to go. He takes all the provisions he can muster up and
the ones we give him out of the king’s treasury. These are his
credentials. This is his clear path to success
as he returns. to the promised land. And so
verses 11 and 12 give us a description of this letter. And then the
bulk of this letter is the decree, verses 13 to 24. The favor of
God comes to the people of God because of Artaxerxes, the king. He says to go. He says, recruit
as many people from my kingdom that have been brought here from
the deportation by the Babylonians. Now we’re Persian ruled, but
recruit as many as you want. Go make spiritual inquiry to
what’s taking place there in Jerusalem. Deliver the gifts,
not only the new vessels and the new things for the ordinances
of God, but the money to fix up the temple. purchase all the
offerings you need to purchase. And there’s a little phrase in
there and you can keep the change. You can do with it as you see
fit, Ezra. And so they’re going to deliver
the vessels and he’s going to evaluate and anything else that
needs to be purchased. It was up to a limit, but you
know, you, apply for a little credit card these days, and maybe
they give you a $1,200 limit. Well, that won’t last two hours
of retail therapy, will it? But you get the gold card. No,
you get the platinum card, $30,000 limit, or just spend it all and
the rest of your life pay it off. The king has given them
the platinum card, hasn’t he? All the wheat you need, all the
oil you need, all the gold you need, all the silver you need.
It’s up to a limit, but it’s a pretty high limit. They will
never swipe. Persian credit card and it be declined. And isn’t
that an amazing provision of the decree of this wicked king,
this ungodly king who in God’s sovereignty has given them what
is needed to rebuild the temple, to fix it up and to carry on
in the ministry of God. Could it get any better? I think
of some times in ministry where somebody would come to you and
say, you know, whatever you need in order to do the thing that
you see fit to do, I’m here for you. There was a fellow in my
congregation in Charlotte named Richard and Richard was a second
career into some government job. And he told me one time over
lunch, he says, God has given me the ability to make money
and to give money. And he’s given you the ability
to do ministry, which needs money. So you ask for whatever you need
and we’ll see. And what a blessing that is. Of course, there’s room for that
to be abused and there’s room for that to make you confident
and stop praying. But isn’t that a gift when God
provides for his church in many miraculous ways? In a sense,
they almost have a blank check. So there’s the letter, there’s
the decree. There’s also an important part
of this decree that on a single out, and you find it in verses
25 and 26. And it’s basically this, the law of the Lord is
the law of the land. You find in verses 25 and 26,
something akin to King James ordering that the authorized
version of the Bible be translated. And so the King James version
of the scriptures, a majestic translation still used by many
to this day, and from which many of our faithful translations
are built so that maybe they’re a bit more readable because we
don’t understand 1611 King James. So you ever bump into somebody
that says King James only, King James only, point out to them
they probably can’t read the original King James, that they
have a later version. That always gets their goat.
But it’s interesting that the king, In his sovereignty, and
under the big king’s sovereignty, we have the King James Bible.
But even, I think, more important, we have, by order of Parliament,
the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms. In order
to organize and bring unity among the churches post-Reformation,
Parliament in the 1600s said, let’s get a group of learned
men, And let’s have them sit down and bring about a unified
order of doctrine. And so in 1647 or so, we had
the confession of faith and then afterwards are shorter and larger
catechisms. And if you’ve studied the catechism,
which the men and the women are doing, maybe you’ve learned the
shorter catechism as we’re doing in the young adult Sunday school
class, or maybe you’ve done it as a family or with your kids.
It’s pretty amazing theology. And it’s an act of parliament.
And so it’s wonderful when the law of the Lord is the law of
the land by the rule and decree of a pagan king or an earthly
ruler. It’s not the norm, it’s the exception. But Ezra, the man of the law,
the scribe of the law, the teacher of the law, the one who wants
to live the law, love the law, do the law, teach the law, he
has the blessing of the king basically saying, in your little
realm under my big realm, The law of the Lord is the law of
the land. You can teach it, you can require it, you can enforce
it, whatever way, shape or form you see fit. And how much of
a blessing that is when Christians can live in a land and worship
as God commands. We can live in a land and raise
our families as God commands. We can live in a land and serve
God without our consciences being damaged or injured by unjust
or ungodly laws. Remember the delight of the Israelite
was here, O Israel, the Lord your God is one. You shall love
the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, all your
soul, and all your strength. And here they’re allowed to do
that without limit. But there’s something to think
about here when it says the law of the Lord is the law of the
land. You know, we’re so blessed with freedoms. We can come to
church on Sunday without being persecuted. We can come to church
without our front doors being chained and padlocked. We can
worship God in freedom and safety, but that’s not so in other places.
And what have we done with our freedom? Well, just in my lifetime,
we’ve seen the Sabbath desecrated. Just in my lifetime, we’ve seen
church attendance decline rapidly. Just in my lifetime, we’ve seen
so many failures on the part of the church and on the part
of Christians. And that’s true in generations past, but isn’t
it wonderful when God gives us graces like the freedom to have
a confession of faith, to have copies of God’s word and to have
church without much or any opposition at all. And that leads us to
the final thing in this passage, and that is doxology. At the
very end of our passage, verse 27, blessed be the Lord, the
God of our fathers who put such a thing as this into the heart
of the king to beautify the house of the Lord that is in Jerusalem. That’s the whole point. or at
least half of the whole point of Ezra. He’s returning to rebuild
the hearts of the people who’ve been worn down by the world,
worn down by sin, worn down by forgetfulness, worn down by the
devil. And he’s going to rebuild them
because they’ve become dilapidated. They’ve not been, in the law
as they should have been. But he’s also going to reform
or reshape or remodel the building of God, where the visible manifestation
of God’s glory on earth makes itself known. You know, in our
church service every Sunday, we have these things that we
believe we must do. We believe God requires certain
elements in worship. We sing the word, preach the
word, pray the word. We see the word in the Lord’s
Supper. We see it in baptism. But it’s a word-centered service
with things that we believe must be there. A lot of the word is
spoken. Some of it is sung. A lot of
it, or sometimes it’s seen in the outward elements of baptism
in the Lord’s Supper, but it’s a service full of word content. And one of the things we like
to do in service is sing doxologies. Basically, doxology, glory, don’t
say glory, ology is a word, so it’s a glory word. This morning
we sang Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise him,
all creatures here below. Praise him above the heavenly
host. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. We sang another doxology,
I think after our creed. Tonight we sang the doxology
from Psalm 72 at the end of book one of the Psalter. And so it’s
good for us to have these glory sayings. God has done so much
for us. Therefore, we want to praise
him. We see echoes of this, not only in our church services,
but we see it in the Psalms. Got him in a hard spot. Deliver
me. Oh God, you delivered me. I’ll
go to your house. And I’ll sing doxology. Or at
the end of the Lord’s prayer, for thine is the kingdom, thine
is the power, thine is the glory forever. Or Romans 11, where
Paul is diving deep. Chapters nine, chapters 10, and
chapters 11. He’s diving deep into theology.
And at the end of chapter 11, three chapters of mind blowing
who God is and what he’s done. Oh, the depths of the riches
of the knowledge of God. Who can search out his ways?
for from him and to him and through him are all things. God is the
sovereign one and the riches of Persia have now come into
the coffers of the church of God’s people. And notice at the
end of this doxology, what effect it has on Ezra and therefore
what effect church and God’s word ought to have on us. It
encouraged him, it strengthened him for the hand of God was upon
him. Maybe you’re discouraged. Maybe
in your church work, in your personal life, in some of your
struggles, let the word of God encourage and strengthen you.
Be strong in the Lord, Ephesians 610 says, and stand in the strength
of his might and put on the whole armor of God and live the Christian
life out of the riches of heaven. Do pray with me. Our God, we
thank you so much for the strength of your word and how it strengthens
and encourages us. Bless us now. As we prepare to
go into the world to serve you with your help and blessing and
your strength, we pray for it now in Christ’s name, amen.