Ezra Chapter 2

Let's pray. Lord God, thank you again for just everything that Chris prayed for and thanked you for, Lord. And we just thank you for the blessing that we can talk to you, Lord. And now God, we ask that you would speak to us through your word, especially through sections of scripture like this one, which are a little more difficult to sit through and understand why it's there, Lord.

So we just pray that you would bless this sermon and that you would teach your people in Jesus' name. Amen. Okay. So this morning we'll be reading from Ezra chapter two. I don't know if any of you have read ahead, but I had initially, I was thinking about skipping it or maybe not skipping it, but just sort of cutting out some of the detail because it's a list of names and it's a list of numbers.

And it's not that I don't think every word of scripture is important. Of course it is. We all know that. But I thought that maybe if I kind of cut it out a little bit, it might be easier to understand and maybe easier to sit through even with our little ones and maybe some of our older ones as well.

But you know, at the end of the day, I decided to just read it. And you know, who am I to know how God will use a list like this with our little ones or again, even our older ones, even if I'm mispronouncing all the names, even if I'm struggling through it, I'm losing my place, God can still use this and he put it here for a reason.

So I'm going to, I'm going to read the whole thing. So just kind of sit, sit tight and trust that God will reveal what he desires to reveal through the reading of his words. So this is Ezra chapter two.

The Details Matter to God in Ezra 2

These are the words of God. Now these were the people of the province who came up out of the captivity of those exiles who Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, had carried captive to Babylonia. They returned to Jerusalem and Judah, each to his own town.

They came with Zerubbabel, Jeshua, Nehemiah, Saraiah, Reliah, Mordecai, Bilshem, Mispar, Bigvi, Rahum, and Banna. The number of the men of the people of Israel, the sons of Parash, 2 ,172, the sons of Shepetiah, 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 Zechariah, 760, the sons of Bani, 642, the sons of Bebi, 623, the sons of Asgod, 1 ,222, the sons of Adonikam, 666, the sons of Bigvi, 2 ,056, the sons of Adon, 454, the sons of Atar, namely Hezekiah, 98, the sons of Bezai, 323, the sons of Jorah, 112, the sons of Hashem, 223, the sons of Gebar, 95, the sons of Bethlehem, 123, the men of Netopha, 56, the men of Anath, 128, the sons of Asmaveth, 42, the sons of Kirath, Arim, Shephirah, and Beroth, 743, the sons of Ramah and Geba, 621, the sons of Mikmas, 122, the men of Bethel and Ai, 223, the sons of Nebu, 52, the sons of Magbish, 156, the sons of Uther-Elam, 1 ,254, the sons of Haram, 320, the sons of Lod, Hadid, Ono, 725, the sons of Jericho, 345, the sons of Sennah, 3 ,630, the priests, the sons of Jediah, the house of Jeshua, 973, the sons of Emer, 1 ,052, the sons of Pashur, 1 ,247, the sons of Haram, 1 ,017, the Levites, the sons of Jeshua and Kadmiel, of the sons of Hadaviah, the singers, the sons of Asaph, 123, the sons of Gatekeeper, excuse me, the sons of the Gatekeepers, the sons of Shalom, the sons of Eter, the sons of Talmud, the sons of Aqab, the sons of Hatita, and the sons of Shobai, in all, 139, the temple servants, the sons of Zihah, the sons of Hasufah, the sons of Taba 'ath, the sons of Keros, the sons of Sihah, the sons of Paddan, the sons of Lebanon, the sons of Hagabah, the sons of Aqab, the sons of Hagab, the sons of Shamli, the sons of the sons of Gadel, the sons of Geher, the sons of Rea, the sons of Rezin, the sons of Nicoda, the sons of Gazem, the sons of Uzzah, the sons of Pasea, the sons of Besai, the sons of Asna, the sons of Minuam, the sons of Nephesim, the sons of Bakbuk, the sons of Hakufa, the sons of Harher, the sons of Basileth, the sons of Mihda, the sons of Harsha, the sons of Barqas, the sons of Sisera, the sons of Tema, the sons of Neziah, and the sons of Hatipha.

The sons of Solomon's servants, the sons of Sittai, the sons of Hasser-fereth, the sons of Peruta, the sons of Jaala, the sons of Darkan, the sons of Gedel, the sons of Sheth-tia, the sons of Hatil, the sons of Pokareth-hazabane, and the sons of Ami.

All the temple servants and the sons of Solomon's servants were 392. The following were those who came up from Tel-melah, Tel-harshah, 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 Tobeth, the sons of Nechodah, 652. Also, the sons of the priests, the sons of Habiah, the sons of Hagaz, the sons of Berzillai, who had taken a wife from the daughters of Berzillai and 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 Thimun.

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's garments.

Now the priests, 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. This is the word of the Lord. Lord, let's just pray again.

Lord, we ask for understanding. We ask that your word would have its promised effect on us and our souls and our little ones and the big ones as well, God, that you would use the reading of your holy word in everyone's hearing to accomplish its mission, Lord.

In Jesus' name, amen. So thanks for sitting through my butchering of those names. But we all heard the words of God from Ezra. And so, you know, let's just be honest about it. There are some sections of scripture that really grab our attention.

Like last week's was pretty easy to understand and kind of an interesting narrative. And, you know, it's easy to understand why sometimes, you know, a lot of, especially a lot of the stories from Samuel, you can really understand them very easily.

They're exciting. And then there are passages like this where it doesn't really make sense. Why is this included? Why would we need to know this? God's word has a lot of sections like this. In fact, this list that I just read is actually listed twice.

It's also in the book of Nehemiah, which is kind of, a lot of people think it's sort of the companion book of Ezra. And it lists this whole section a second time. So this is twice that God puts this in his word.

There are some differences in the Nehemiah list, but it's basically the same. So God saw fit to record these names. He saw fit to record them twice and all the details about the numbers, what kind of resources they had, their animals, all of this thing.

And so for some reason to God, these details really matter. And I think that's one of our first sort of applications. The details matter to God. I think that's very obvious in a passage like this. He records it in his infallible word.

And so it's important for us to consider why he would do that. I think it's also encouraging for our own lives because in our own lives where there's all kinds of details that might seem mundane or small or just kind of tedious, but God is obviously into the details.

He cares about the details, even in our own lives. Like last week, we saw God working through King Cyrus and King Cyrus is a powerful man. King Cyrus is an important man historically. And we talked about how God uses a man like that to accomplish his purposes.

He uses a king sometimes for good, sometimes for bad, but he always is using kings to accomplish his plan. This week is a little bit of a contrast. We see that God is likewise accomplishing his plan through normal people, through everyday folks like you and me.

And so we see that he meticulously names and numbers these people and all of the resources, and he's accomplishing the same plan through King Cyrus, but also through all of these people as well. And so hopefully by the end of the sermon, you can recognize some of the awesome ways that God uses common people.

I think he does this more today than he ever has before. The first thing I wanna point out about today's passage is that even though it mentions priests and leaders and things like that, people with status, it emphasizes and highlights common people first.

If you look at this list here and you cross-reference it with the Nehemiah list, what you will see is that both times the very first people mentioned, the first families mentioned, it's not the priests, it's not the elite, it's not the leaders, it's not the prophets, it's the regular Joes.

It's the regular Joes that are mentioned. They are named and known and recorded just like all of the others. Just like King Cyrus is called out and named by God, also the common families that come out of Persia, they are also personally named and personally known by God.

That is such a cool thing, in my opinion. Like the Lord of the universe personally knows each and every one of his people by name, everyone. Deeper than you are known by anyone else, you are known and used in critical ways to work out God's plan.

Like it's easy to see how God would use King Cyrus, right? It's easy to see how God would use a president or a senator or something like that. But it's not just those kinds of people. God is using common folk as folk as well.

And here's the thing, you're all being used by God in this way right at this moment. And some of you might not even know it because you're not doing anything that seems special in your eyes. You're not doing anything that seems quote unquote radical.

You know what I mean? Like these Israelites that we've named here, meticulously named, they're not doing anything death defying here. It's not like this is super special what they're doing. They're not rebelling against Cyrus or anything.

They're not setting out to do this amazing work and Cyrus is opposing them. No, Cyrus gave them approval and he gave them money and he gave them official declaration, an official letter that says, you know what, you guys can do this.

And they said, okay, we'll do it. Nothing earth shaking about that. That's mundane stuff. But God saw fit to call them out anyway and emphasize all of those that were doing these seemingly mundane works.

That's pretty encouraging to me. That's pretty encouraging to me. All you mothers and fathers, all of you going about your daily lives, loving your families, obeying God, raising your children, going to work, loving your neighbor, all of these kind of everyday normal things, this is all being used by God in ways that we may never fully understand.

And none of it looks radical to the outsider. To them, it all looks just kind of mundane. It just looks kind of normal. But it isn't. It isn't. God knows you personally and he knows the work and the plans he has for you and he uses it for his kingdom to expand the gospel and the kingdom of God, just like he used these folks in Ezra chapter two.

That's not to say that there isn't use for like the classic sort of superhero type person, right? That's not to say that God doesn't use the people that do these radical things. The classic sort of person that you think of as someone who would be in ministry, he does use that kind of stuff.

Even in the book of Ezra, he uses those kinds of people. So we'll see that as well. But remember that for every heroic King David, there are countless faithful subjects, everyday people in the kingdom of God.

For every Luke Skywalker, there are countless regular citizens who support and hope with the rebellion against the empire. For every courageous Jim Elliot, there are countless families like yours and like mine who love the Lord, support the mission, but on a daily basis just go about their normal business.

Doing ordinary looking things for the Lord. The gospel is spread by so many different means. So many different means and every one of us, whether or not you're going to a jungle in the middle of Central America or not, all of us are part of God's nation, his holy nation.

Even your children, all of us have individual roles to play in God's kingdom and to the outsider, most of it looks completely normal. God cares about normal everyday individuals and uses individuals to push his plan forward and to spread the gospel of the kingdom of God over all time.

Normal everyday people like you and me are critical to his plan. And I think that this list in Ezra makes that point very clear. You know, Chris kind of mentioned this earlier, but the history of sort of media and communication is trended a certain way over the years.

Things are getting easier and easier. Things are getting easier to spread messages, whether good messages or bad messages, they're getting easier and easier to spread. Media is completely turned upside down.

Think about this for a moment. All the progress that we've made, regular people like you and me can have a huge impact. Back in Ezra's time, for example, like very few people could read, right? And so if the people that went to Jerusalem and Judah, they probably knew about the prophecy of being in captivity for 70 years, but they hadn't ever read it themselves.

Like they knew about it, but only from somebody else, a class of people who can read, the elites. And even then, they probably only had bits and pieces of it maybe memorized. They probably maybe had a few sections or maybe even just concepts that they understood.

They didn't have any of it memorized. Think about how many scrolls existed, probably not that many. Hand copy and scrolls, that was an expensive, expensive thing and they were probably very rare. But the message of God still spread.

It spread, but it was slow. And think about the printing press got invented, right? And so things got a little easier with the printing press. It was easier to produce things, but still very hard. Like people still couldn't read.

How many people do you think owned a printing press? Probably not that many. So if you had a message to spread, it was still gonna be kind of person to person, very slow kind of spreading. And then TV and radio was invented.

Books got easier to get. So more people could read. You could print out tracks. You could give them to people. And it was a little bit easier to spread the message as well. But still, common people couldn't buy a TV station and broadcast themselves over the radio so easily.

So the cutting edge was always for the elite and you just kind of had these gatekeepers and individuals like you and me, even in media, couldn't really have too much of an impact. But look at where we're at now.

Like the common man has access to the internet, right? Anyone can broadcast themselves now, for good or for bad. Even in the underdeveloped countries, like I can't tell you how many Facebook friends I have from Ethiopia or like Ecuador or even El Salvador, Haiti even, tons of them.

Anyone can spread this message and anyone can have an impact. I mean, God is sort of making communication easier and easier and that's gonna be used to the advantage of the kingdom of God. Even just through a cheap camera and a microphone and a cheap laptop, I can talk about what we do at Redemption Church to hundreds and thousands of people.

God uses these kinds of things every day. I'm just a normal person. I'm not a professional, despite what Chris said on the internet the other day. But you see this list in Ezra 2, it's just regular folks doing regular things.

We can do that now. So the list moves on though. It does talk about the priestly class. It does mention the importance of the Levites and the gatekeepers and the different things like that. And so sort of that's kind of what we typically would think of like sort of like the hero class, right?

Like the religious leaders are sort of like the people we typically think of as being in ministry. At least that's how I think about it. Not that I'm a hero or anything, but. But they're the ones we think of when we think of who's working for the kingdom of God.

Oh, religious leaders. Yeah, they're working for the kingdom of God. And of course that's true. God works through religious leaders as well. Not only through regular Joes and Janes, but even though he does work through the religious leaders, you should notice that he lists those second in this list.

It's the common folk that are emphasized. It's the regular people. And so then after that, we move on to something else. Because this list isn't just names. It's also a list of resources. It lists donkeys, it lists, you know, you notice that.

It lists camels. Those are resources. Those are livestock. And then it also lists money as well. God sees fit to list very mundane things like money and animals and the different things that they took along with them.

And again, if you kind of cross-reference this with the Nehemiah list, Nehemiah goes into actually a little more detail about the resources. And so what do we glean from that? What do we get from that?

Well, the first thing I would say about the list of resources is that this makes it very clear that our offerings, our resources that we give to religious work and things like that, that matters in the kingdom of God.

You know, despite all the damage that's been done in the Christian world regarding our view of money, despite all the kind of prosperity money-grubbing preachers that you might see on TV, despite all that, money itself is not dirty.

Money itself is not bad. Having lots of money and having lots of resources is not a bad thing. It's always a matter of what you do with your money. That's what really counts. And in this case, and according to Ezra chapter two, the people contributed to the mission out of their own pockets.

The people wanted to rebuild the temple of God and they did so through their own offerings. But that's not the only thing that I noticed about this passage that it's not the only way God uses our resources for his kingdom by giving for a special offering or something like that.

You don't have to sow a seed into somebody else's ministry in order to reap some kind of magic reward for yourself. That's not how it works. You should give to the advancement of the kingdom of God. You should give to your church, of course, but also the money that you keep for yourself and your family, that is also used for the kingdom of God.

Because think about it, the scripture says here that the people gave according to their ability, right? So some people gave nothing. This is not everybody gave, but some people gave, you know, poorer people gave a little bit, richer people probably gave a little bit more.

And the passage totals it up. It says it was 61 ,000 derricks of gold, 5 ,000 minas of silver, and they gave according to their ability, right? But obviously all of them didn't give all of their money.

They kept some back for themselves because think about it. They were giving their whole lives to the mission. They were leaving Babylon for good and they were going back to Judah. And so they needed a travel fund, right?

Like when they got there, they still had to eat. They still had to find housing. They still had to put on weddings when people would get married. They still had to do the festivals and holidays. They had to keep money back for themselves.

They still had to, along the way, entertain themselves and their children. They still had to run businesses, normal stuff, plant crops, buy equipment. They had all that stuff. They still had to do. They still had to live their lives.

And so in a way, though all these people gave special offerings, freewill offerings, according to their ability, in a very real sense, because they decided to live their lives on mission, really everything that they had, their whole lives, all their money, all of it was given to God.

And it's the same way today. Look, we're all on a mission, all of us. We're not rebuilding the temple in Judah, but we're all in the same kind of position now to what the Israelites were in back then.

We're building something. We're building the kingdom of God through the power of the Holy Spirit. We're reconstructing what has been lost. We're restoring God's will to rule over all the people in every area of life.

And so just like the Israelites, our tools are the same. We have a special sort of freewill offering of money and resources. Some of us give to the church only. Some of us give to other sort of missionaries and different benevolence funds and things like that.

So we all do that kind of freewill offering type thing, but all of us, all of us, our whole lives, everything that we do should be given to God. Even down to the food you eat, the clothes you wear, the house you live in, everything is given to God and everything is used for God.

Even your entertainment, even your rest and the money you spend on holidays and things like that. We all know that that stuff is optional in a sense, but even that is used by God and brought into his service by his people.

You know, when I told you the book of Nehemiah goes into more detail about the stuff that they have, when you see the detail, what you'll notice is that the common people, everyday people like you and me, they're the ones that provide the vast majority of the money and resources used in this project.

Without God's everyday people, there wouldn't have been enough money to do it. You see, God uses everyday folks with everyday jobs, doing everyday things to accomplish his work every day. And so even if you're not the superhero ministry with the inspirational books written about you, even if that's not you, even if you aren't the ministry that has well-produced video documentaries about your work in the community, even if that's not you, even if you're not taking your family to a third world country to preach the gospel of Christ, be sure of this, God still uses everyday folks doing things that might seem simple or mundane.

God uses people that all they do is raise their family and give to their church and support the mission, but they don't ever go out, they just stay home. God still uses that. That's one way God expands his kingdom.

It's been done this way since the beginning. He does it here in Ezra chapter two. We have the record of all the names of the people that are just doing normal stuff. And he cares enough to write their names in this book.

And so as you sit home with your children and spouses, you teach them about the world and how it works, how to honor God, how to play, just understand that you're doing a lot of the heavy lifting in the kingdom of God.

God is empowering you to do the lion's share of the human side work, this side of eternity. So I hope that encourages you, especially when life seems monotonous and bland and maybe just stressful or tiring or whatever it is, I hope it encourages you to know that you're doing a lot of the work, at least on the human side here on earth for God's kingdom.

And I hope it encourages you to do the best work you can in every situation, even when you're tired and stressed out and just bored or whatever it is, because God is using your work to spread his gospel and to expand his kingdom every single day through normal means.

God Uses Everyday People to Advance His Kingdom

Let's pray. Lord God, thank you for forgiving us of our sins. Thank you for using us to accomplish all kinds of amazing things here on earth, God. You don't have to use us, God, but you do. And we see evidence of that here in Ezra chapter two, and we see it all over the place, God.

You work through fallible, weak creatures in order to do your work and you do it perfectly, God. And so we thank you for that. God, I pray that we would all be encouraged to know that you work through us for all of your plans, whether we're doing something amazing and radical that looks so awesome to everybody.

Or whether we're just raising our children, loving our neighbor, doing that kind of stuff, Lord, where it's just everyday stuff. God, we understand that you're building your kingdom here on earth, wherever we are, whatever we're doing.

And so God, I pray that you would encourage us, that we would not be discouraged in any of the work that we do. And God, that you would reap a big harvest through us, God. That's ultimately what we want.

We want more people to enter the kingdom of God, want to be made more like you, Lord. And so thank you for just the gift, the gift that it is to be a co-laborer, God. Thank you so much, in Jesus' name, amen.

Looks like we got bread ready, I guess. That's okay.