Ezra 2
Ezra chapter two, verses one
through 70, will be our reading tonight. And we’ll begin at verse
one. It says, now these were the people
of the province who came up out of the captivity of those exiles
whom Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, had carried captive
to Babylonia. They returned to Jerusalem and
to Judah, each to his own town. They came with Zerubbabel, Jeshua,
Nehemiah, Sariah, Eliah, Mordecai, Bilshan, Mispar, Bigvi, Rahom,
and Baana. The number of the men of the
people of Israel, the sons of Parosh, 2,172. The sons of Shephatiah, 372.
The sons of Arah, 775. The sons of Pahath-Moab, namely
the sons of Jeshua and Joab, 2,812. The sons of Elam, 1,254.
The sons of Zatu, 945. The sons of Zechai, 760. The
sons of Bani, 642. The sons of Bebi, 623. The sons
of Asgad, 1,222. The sons of Adonicum, 666. The sons of Bigvi,
2,056. The sons of Aden, 454. The sons of Eter, namely of Hezekiah,
98. The sons of Bezzi, 323. The sons
of Jorah, 112. The sons of Hashem, 223. The sons of Gibar, 95. The
sons of Bethlehem, 123. The men of Netopha, 56. The men
of Anathoth, 128. The sons of As-Mabeth, 42. The
sons of Kiriath-Arim, As-Shapira, and Biroth, 743. The sons of
Ramah and Geba, 621. The men of Mikmas, 122. The men
of Bethel and Ai, 223. The sons of Nebo, 52. The sons
of Magbish, 156. The sons of the other Elam, 1,254. The sons of Harim, 320. The sons
of Lod and Hadad and Onoth, 725. The sons of Jericho, 345. The
sons of Sinai, 3,630. The priest, the sons of Jediah of the house
of Jeshua, 973. The sons of Emer, 1,052. The sons of Pashur, 1,247. the sons of Harim, 1017, the
Levites, the sons of Jeshua and Kadmiel, of the sons of Hodaviah,
74, the singers, the sons of Asaph, 128, the sons of the gatekeepers,
the sons of Shalom, the sons of Atter, the sons of Talmon,
the sons of Aqab, and the sons of Hatita, the sons of Shobai,
in all 139. the temple servants, the sons
of Zeha, the sons of Hasufa, the sons of Teboath, the sons
of Keras, the sons of Siaha, the sons of Padon, the sons of
Lebna, the sons of Hagabah, the sons of Aqab, the sons of Hagab,
the sons of Shamlai, the sons of Hanan, the sons of Giddo,
the sons of Gehar, the sons of Riahiah, the sons of Rezin, the
sons of Nekodah, the sons of Gazem, the sons of Uzzah, the
sons of Passiah, the sons of Bessiah, the sons of Asnah, the
sons of Munim, the sons of Nephesim, the sons of Babkuk, the sons
of Hakufah, the sons of Harhar, the sons of Bazloth, the sons
of Mahida, the sons of Harsha. the sons of Barchus, the sons
of Sisera, and the sons of Tima, the sons of Neziah, and the sons
of Hatipha, the sons of Solomon’s servants, the sons of Sotai,
the sons of Hesopherath, the sons of Peruta, the sons of Jeola,
the sons of Darken, the sons of Gittel, the sons of Shephathiah,
the sons of Hatil, the sons of Pokoreth-Hazbaim, and the sons
of Ammi, All the temple servants, the sons of Solomon’s servants,
were 392. The following were those who came up from Telmele,
Telharshah, Cherub, Adon, and Emer, though they could not prove
their father’s houses or their descent, whether they belonged
to Israel. The sons of Deliah, the sons
of Tobiah, and the sons of Nakoda, 652. Also, of the sons of the priest, the
sons of Habiah, the sons of Hachaz, and the sons of Barzillai, who
had taken a wife from the daughters of Barzillai the Gileadite and
was called by their name. These sought their registration
among those enrolled in the genealogies, but they were not found there.
And so they were excluded from the priesthood as unclean. The
governor told them that they were not to partake of the most
holy food until there should be a priest. to consult the Urim
and the Thumen. The whole assembly together was
42,360, besides their male and female servants, of whom there
were 7,337. and they had 200 male and female
singers. Their horses were 736, their
mules were 245, their camels were 435, and their donkeys were
6,720. Some of the heads of the families,
when they came to the house of the Lord, that is in Jerusalem,
made freewill offerings for the house of God to erect it on its
site. According to their ability, they
gave to the treasury of the work 61,000 derricks of gold, 5,000
minas of silver, and 100 priest garments. Now the priest, the
Levites, some of the people, the singers, the gatekeepers,
and the temple servants lived in their towns and all the rest
of Israel in their towns. Amen. This is the word of the
living God. Well, I could feel it, see it
on your faces as we began reading that passage. 70 verses. Most churches would never read
70 verses in a month of Sundays, but there we just did it. 125
names, towns and beast and precious metals. Maybe some of you thought,
well, last Sunday, the mention of 5,400 pots and pans, that
was enough to do us in. What does all this have to say
to us? I chat sometimes with other pastors,
whatcha preaching Sunday? And I remember chatting with
the pastor one time, oh, that’s up next for you, what a dud.
What a dud of a passage. And I said, no, no Rich, full
of wonderful good things. Probably seven or eight years
ago, my family, when we had a Sunday off, went to another church,
which shall remain unnamed, but not too far out of the area.
And the new pastor, this was a reformed church. He got up
and read one of the genealogies, I think from the gospel of Mark,
maybe. And if there’s not a genealogy in Mark, I can’t recall, then
it was in one of the gospels. And he was about to read it and
he apologized to the congregation. I’m sorry, I have to read this
list of names to you. Who apologizes for reading the
Bible? And especially in light of the
fact that Peter tells us that holy men of old were carried
along by the Holy Spirit to write down these things for our instruction.
Paul says in 2 Timothy 3 to young Timothy, all scripture, he didn’t
say except Ezra too, All scripture is breathed out by God and is
useful for teaching and rebuking and correcting and for training
in righteousness so that the man of God may be competent and
fully furnished, equipped to do the work of the ministry.
And so what we see, I think, in this passage is that Yahweh
sustains his covenant people. And he sustains his covenant
people past, present, and future. So if you zero in on this particular
point in human history, you say, well, I’m not an exile. I’m not
going back to rebuild my church in Jerusalem. I’m not going back
to rebuild my walls and my house and my city. Well, maybe that’s
not the case, but all kinds of wonderful spiritual connections
and parallels, not just because these are the people of God whom
Christ saved just as us. But these ideas of exile and
temple and worship and future and hope are all wonderful things
that all Christians need to hear about, know about, believe and
take comfort in. So I think tonight we’ll see
from these 70 verses, evidence of Yahweh, evidence of Almighty
God sustaining His covenant people. Just as Jeremiah would write
in his Lamentations after the destruction of the temple, He
would say, the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His
mercies are new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness. And
don’t you imagine after 70 years, these exiles who are getting
to make their way back to Judah and Jerusalem have passages of
scripture like that on their mind. Yes, it’s been hard. Yes, it’s been painful, but the
exile is over. The steadfast love of the Lord
never ceases. They get to go back home. They
get to go up to Jerusalem and they get to establish worship
and a community because God has moved in their hearts and their
minds. Well, in this passage, there’s three lists. There’s
a list of leaders, there’s a list of returnees, and there’s a list
of resources. And I think as we look at each
of these lists, we will see that God, Yahweh, sustains his covenant
people in such a way that they have a hope and a future. Let’s
think of the list of leaders. Every cause needs a group of
leaders. Not all people should lead, not
all people can lead, right? You know, the little proverb,
too many chiefs and not enough Indians, right? We’ve lived in
an era where, you know, you join a church and you have to join
a committee. And what do committees do? They
have meetings and they take minutes and they table it. And then when
the elders make a decision, they say, well, that’s not what we
wanted to do. And so it’s good not to have committees who have
meetings and take minutes. It’s good just to let those who
were called by God to lead. I don’t think I’ve seen an Ephesians
4 where there ought to be pastors, teachers, and committee members.
When Christ ascended on high, he did not give committee members.
I think the devil did that. But anyway, I’m sort of making
a joke here, but we need leaders, right? We need people who are
called by God, who are full of the Holy Spirit, and are indeed
called by the people to lead them in a cause. And in particular,
we have in our set of verses tonight, a list of, there’s 12
leaders who over this hundred years will be God’s men. God’s men on sight, on scene
to lead God’s people. Now you remember last time, last
time Israel was in the promised land, it was at the end of 2
Chronicles. And they were at the end of Judah, the one tribe
there in the promised land. Judah and Jerusalem was it. All
the 11 northern tribes had been hauled off 150 years or so before,
125 years or so before by the Assyrians. And so the Assyrians hauled off
all the Northern tribes and they repatriated, they repopulated
the Northern tribes with what in Jesus’ day we are known as
the Samaritans, a mixed race, a mixed breed of people. The
people in Judah and Jerusalem were snooty. They were snobby.
They were, well, they were racist, I suppose. And they did not like
the Samaritans. That’s why when Jesus tells the
story of the good Samaritan, not the good priest, not the
good Levite, but the good Samaritan, it shocks them all. But that’s
the end of the kingdom of Judah and Jerusalem. Jehoiachin was
the last king. He was the last king of the line
of David on the throne. Now here’s the way I remember
it was Jehoiachin. I had an Old Testament teacher in college
who made us memorize the chronology of Israel and the kings. And
he said, you always remember Jehoiachin was the last king
because he took it on the chin. He took it on the chin as Israel
went off into Babylon, into exile. But there’s two leaders we want
to think about, particularly from our passage tonight. There’s
Zerubbabel and Jeshua. Zerubbabel would have been the
grandson of Jehoiachin. And Zerubbabel comes back in
the Davidic line, but not as king, maybe more so as governor. Israel never will have a king
again. Actually, that’s not true. They will, and he’ll come riding
on a donkey. And he’ll come to the Hosannas and the praises
of just a few. But Zerubbabel would be one of
the governors, the leaders of this effort of returning and
rebuilding. And then there’s Jeshua, name
sounds like both Joshua. And Jesus, Yahweh is salvation. And he’s of the high priestly
line. He’s of the line of Aaron. He’s of the line of the priest.
And his uncle is Ezra, who likely is writing this history. And he is the one who will be
the lawgiver, the law prosecutor, as it were. And so you’ve got
these two leaders and we’ll hear their names. We’ll hear the names
of others along the way. Um, we don’t do this in our bulletin
anymore, but we used to have the list of, you know, who the
elders were, who the deacons were, who the trustees were,
um, you know, who was in charge of this, that, and the other.
And it took up a lot of real estate and it’s kind of not necessary
to print that every week, but it’s good from time to time to
look at the names of our leaders. Uh, maybe particularly if it’s
on a prayer list. The Bible says we should pray for those in authority
over us, kings and governors and so on, but we should also
pray for our spiritual leaders as well. Hebrews chapter 13,
both in verse seven and 17 says, remember your leaders, those
who have spiritual charge over you, they’ll give an account
for you. And then it goes on to say, make it easy for them
by, this is my paraphrase, by not being a pain of a church
member. Be a good church member, not
a pain in the neck. That’s the paraphrase of Hebrews
13, 17. But when we have leaders, when
we have people God has placed over us, people that we’ve prayed
for, that are filled with the spirit, elected by the church,
we should rejoice. We need leaders. This little
cause here needs leaders. And it’s wonderful, I think,
too, not only to think about people in our own lives, maybe
in our own church, or in the history of the church, but I
think it’s good also to think about maybe some of the giants
God has raised up. You know, I won’t name names,
but there’s people we listen to, famous preachers, famous
theologians, and they’ve been given the gift of these really
big, sharp minds. And they’re a great gift to the
church. They’re a great help to the church, giants of the
faith, giants of our thinking and our theology and our Bible. And it’s wonderful, I think,
to think on these things and to give God praise. But I want
us to think under this list of leaders of the great name that’s
not mentioned, and that’s Jesus Christ. Jesus will come to fulfill
the role of the prophet He’ll come to fulfill the role of the
priest and he’ll come to fulfill the role of the king all in one. And so anytime we think of leaders,
anytime we think of those over us, whether it’s a mom, a dad,
a elder, a deacon, a school teacher, a police officer, we should think
of the servanthood of Jesus Christ. He who was rich for our sakes
became poor. He loved us so much that he left
the throne of heaven, came to this earth. Think of Philippians,
have this mind in you, the mind of Christ. Consider others better
than yourselves and serve their greater needs. We have a list
of leaders here. All these ought to point us to
Jesus Christ. There’s also the list of returnees,
and maybe that’s the most painful portion of the passage we read
tonight. I have this little book on my
shelf in my office, How to Pronounce the Names and the Places of the
Bible. Well, I can assure you I didn’t get it out and one by
one make sure that I pronounced each name. I’m sure you could
say potato and patato, but you hear in these names, the rich
and wonderful hand of God protecting his people. We said at the beginning
that our Lord sustains his covenant people past, present, and future.
Had you been alive, your name might’ve been here. Had you been
alive, perhaps God may have moved in your heart to be on the list
of returnees. And you think about why names
are important. Why couldn’t have God just under
the power of the spirit told Ezra, hey, look, one verse is
all it takes, Ezra. Just say about 10,000 people
went back and some people sitting in the pew on a Sunday night
in 2023, they would have been okay with that. Well, let me
ask you this. Every time when you were in school, And the yearbooks came out. What
is the first thing you did? You opened that thing up, and
you made sure your mugshot was in there. You made sure your
name was in there. It spelled right. You flipped
to the back to see if you were going to be the biggest loser
or the greatest asset to the honor of that school. That’s
what we do. We love to hear our name. On
my morning walk, one of the routes I sometimes take is by the Willowbrook
Park War Memorial they just finished a couple years ago. And slowly,
but surely, families are having their loved ones who served in
some war, they’re having their names etched on a brick that
surrounds that eagle or whatever is there. And so I stopped to
look at that from time to time. And I recognize some of the names,
you know, because I lived here before and grew up here. So I
recognize some of the names. But how important is it for a
family to walk up to that thing and to see. I remember some years
ago when they put out the, I guess it was the World War II Memorial
up in Washington, DC. It was brand new, what, 10, 12
years ago, something like that. There was a program where they
were flying veterans from all over the world to that place. And so somehow, someway, we got
my grandfather, who was in his mid to late 80s, on a plane in
Greensboro. And he flew to DC. And my brother,
who lived up there at the time, met him. He got wheeled out to
the memorial and there he found his name. And how important that
must have been to him. And so this list of returnees
is not just boring Bible, right? You may tell somebody, you know,
people ask you, write your favorite Bible of your life first. Maybe
you’ll have a Ezra too. Because we’re exiles, aren’t
we? And our hearts have been moved to name our name with the
cause of Jesus Christ. We hope that our names, we trust
that our names, we believe that our names, we know that our names
by faith in Jesus are written in the Lamb’s book of life. And in this list, you have several
generations. You have some really old folks
who would have been exiled and 70 years later would have been
by God’s grace alive and able to go back. You have some middle-aged
people, we might say, and even some new ones who maybe weren’t
babies and small children, but maybe teenagers on up who said,
I’ll make this dangerous journey. And we recognize that everyone
is needed in the life of the church. When we get to Nehemiah,
maybe around chapter five, They’re rebuilding the sections of the
wall around the city. And we’re going to get through
another list. There’s a few more. Don’t worry. It’s not so bad,
but there’s a list. And I remember reading it for
the first time, really the first time I recognized it, maybe it
was because I had two girls. It speaks of Shalom and his daughters
repairing the wall outside their house in Jerusalem. And it reminds
us just as all the names listed at the end of all of Paul’s letters,
it reminds us that the body of Jesus Christ is made up of all
kinds of people with all kinds of talents and all kinds of gifts.
And it takes every one of us. And there’s different lists in
this passage. There’s lists of families. There’s lists of towns.
There’s lists of priests and Levites and temple servants and
the servants of Solomon. And there’s even that list of
unproven people who can’t tell who their ancestor was or what
town they came from, but they’re pretty doggone sure that they’re
supposed to be there. And what is Zerubbabel, or what
does the governor say? You’re going to have to wait
until we get a priest who can consult the erm, the erm and the thuman
or whatever. There’s, you know, there’s stones
that can discern the will of God. Um, the body of Christ, the people of God, it’s a necessary
thing. We’re, we’re, we’re living in
a time. I know, I know we harp on this
all the time, so don’t tune me out. I know I read 70 verses
and 125 names to you. And I know we say this all the
time, but church membership is declining. Church attendance
is declining. But I think the real reality
behind that is people believe, well, one of the realities is
that unsaved people have been in the church and now they’re
not in the church because it’s, well, they got an excuse not to go
because of COVID. But I think one of the other
realities that we have to see is the debodiment of the church. I know that sounds kind of weird,
but people believe nowadays, I do not have to be part of the
body of God’s people. to be a Christian. I do not have
to be in a body to be a part of the church. And it’s good,
I think, to read a list of names like this and to say the body
of Christ is a beautiful thing. To have my name named among the
people, to join and become one of the pioneers and one of the
pilgrims of the church is a great blessing. So we’ve looked at
a list of leaders and we thank God that he’s provided leaders
for this endeavor among the covenant community. We’ve looked at a
list of returnees and we’re grateful that God has moved in the hearts
of people to do the work of the church. But now we look at a
list of resources. And we remember, we remember
it takes money. It takes resources to do the
work of the church. Somehow, someway, Christian work
does not get a free pass. Now there are some perks, like
we don’t pay property taxes on our building, but that’s an American
thing. That’s a kindness of the American government. I don’t
know that that’s true in other countries. It may be that they
pay more taxes and it may be that someday in the future we
put in our church budget a line item for taxes. We may at some
point in time have to pay the government off to let us have
church. Who knows? But, but usually there are not
perks. There are not perks. But isn’t
it amazing that God prospered the exiles in Babylon? That’s
where that Jeremiah 29 passage comes into play. For I know the
plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you,
not to harm you. Plans to give you hope and a
future. There’s those places in the scripture that where God
tells the exiles, go into exile. Marry. build a house, be fruitful
and multiply, start a trade, make a living, make the nation
where you live prosper. You know, we’re fooling around
in America with Christian nationalism. That’s one of the big topics
today. We’re fooling around with how many kingdoms there are.
We’re fooling around with, you know, should churches be in the
city for the city? Should churches be in the ministry
of making flourishing communities? There’s been all these questions
and the simple answer to all that is no. The job of the church
is to go into all the world and make disciples by preaching and
baptizing and discipling. That’s our job. If the city gets
better, great. Um, you know, if, if, if, if,
if things get better in culture, wonderful, but it’s because of
gospel change in the lives of people, not because we, you know,
went and painted something every other weekend around town and
made the town look better. Um, that’s for the taxpayers
in the city to do. Uh, but this list of resources
shows that God prospered the Israelites, He prospered the
Israelites while they were in exile. And the reason he prospered
them is so that when they leave, when they have their exodus and
they plunder the Babylonians as it were, or they receive free
will offerings from the people of God for the rebuilding of
the temple, it sort of echoes, doesn’t it? What Israel did when
they left Egypt. And as they got in the wilderness,
they needed gold and silk and linen, and they needed all the
things for the priest garments and for the construction of the
tabernacle. The same we can see here, the
wealth of the nations, the generosity of the people of God is what
will build, it’s what will build the temple, the new temple, the
reconstructed temple, the second temple back in Jerusalem. And it’s a good reminder for
us as God prospers us, according to the New Testament, we should
set aside part of our earnings for the work of the church. The
Old Testament had the tithe. I believe the New Testament teaches,
yeah, we should tithe, but we should also set apart so that
we can be generous to God’s work and God’s people. God loves a
generous and a cheerful giver. And so we see that example in
this list of resources. I want us to think as we close
tonight about the journey that these people and these things
are about to take. All these beasts, all these people
and all this stuff. They’re basically going to go
to Jerusalem and find a FEMA site, right? This is going to
be a destruction zone. This is going to be a city of
rubble. The sewer is not going to be
working. There’s not going to be running water. The electricity
is going to be spotty. The internet is going to be out.
You kind of get the idea, right? This is a FEMA site. Not only
that is there’s going to be trouble. All these squatters, all these
squatters have come in from all kinds of places and they are
going to cause the Israelites trouble. Remember Satan hates
the work of the church. He hates the work of the people
of God. And so there’s going to be trouble, trouble, trouble.
And then there’s going to be spiritual trouble. We’ll see
very quickly by the time we get to chapter five of Ezra, God
has to send a prophet in to say, what are you people doing? Oh,
you’re doing nothing. That’s what I figured. So get to work,
build the temple, quit putting the fifth coat of paint on your
houses and build my temple that I might be worshiped and there
might be a witness. So this, this journey is going
to be a difficult one. This task ahead is going to be
a hard one and we can for sure take spiritual cues from these
lessons for our own lives to be a biblical church in today’s
culture. Boy, you’re standing against
the wind, aren’t you? But if God has called your heart,
if he has brought you into a place like this and you see the sovereignty
of God, we sacrifice. We talk as elders every month,
maybe sometimes every week. how faithful God has been here.
This is a really small church, but it has a lot of great strength
to it. And we see the sacrifice of the
people in helping us make our budget. We see the hard work
of people to make this place shine. And we realized that we’re
headed somewhere, right? We’re headed to a heavenly city.
Our task though in the meantime is to make the invisible realities
of heaven visible here on earth. And that’s what this little band
of people were doing. They were going back to Jerusalem
to establish the public witness and presence of almighty God
in a land of rubble. And maybe you can make some spiritual
connections. We’re living in a dark time. We’re living with
rubble of culture all around us. The great American culture,
which, you know, grew up over hundreds of years is now in serious
decline. And maybe in the eyes of this
world, you know, our little church, our little fellowship is small
or unimpressive. And maybe, maybe even to some
of us it is. Maybe we’ll cry out like, um,
the old men who saw the temple go back up and they despised,
they were told, do not despise the day of small things. We need
to ask the Lord for eyes to see and a heart to perceive what
God is doing in this world and how we are helping to make possible
the reality of the coming of the glory of Jesus Christ in
this world. Let’s go to him in prayer now. Father, we thank you for showing
us the list of leaders and returnees and even the list of resources,
how they remind us of you, the covenant God, the sovereign God,
provide for your people throughout all ages. And we thank you that
in this little stretch of history, this little part of the world,
you’ve done all that for us. Every day we see your hand in
our church’s life. We see leaders and we see people
and we see sacrifice and provisions. And most of all, we see Christ
without his blood. None of this would be possible
or even necessary. And we give you thanks and pray
now that you would bless us as we go into the week ahead. In
Christ’s name, we ask all this. Amen.