July 15, 2018 Recalled To Life by Pastor Josh Sheldon

Now if you would please turn your Bibles to the book of Ezra. The book of Ezra follows 2

Chronicles. We will attend ourselves this morning to the first chapter of this historical record.

Ezra chapter 1, I'll read the entire chapter, it's 11 verses. In the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, that the word of the

Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and also put it in writing.

Thus says Cyrus, king of Persia, the Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem which is in Judah.

Whoever is among you of all his people, may his God be with him and let him go up to Jerusalem which is in Judah and rebuild the house of the

Lord, the God of Israel. He is the God who is in Jerusalem and let each survivor in whatever place he sojourns be assisted by the men of his place with silver and gold, with goods and with beasts besides freewill offerings for the house of God that is in Jerusalem.

Then rose up the heads of the father's houses of Judah and Benjamin and the priests and the Levites, everyone whose spirit

God had stirred to go to rebuild the house of the Lord that is in Jerusalem. And all who were about them aided them with vessels of silver, with gold, with goods, with beasts, and with costly wares besides all that was freely offered.

Cyrus the king also brought out the vessels of the house of the Lord that Nebuchadnezzar had carried away from Jerusalem and placed in the house of his gods.

Cyrus king of Persia brought these out in charge of Mithridat, the treasurer, who counted them out to Sheshbazar, the prince of Judah.

And this was the number of them. 30 basins of gold, 1 ,000 basins of silver, 29 censers, 30 bowls of gold, 410 bowls of silver, and 1 ,000 other vessels.

All the vessels of gold and of silver were 5 ,400. All these did

Sheshbazar bring up when the exiles were brought up from Babylonia to Jerusalem. Well the title of this morning's message you might have noticed,

Recall to Life. Now that's a shameless borrowing on my part from part one of Charles Dickens' The Tale of Two Cities.

That's his title for that part one, Recalled to Life. And his story,

Tale of Two Cities, begins with a banker named Jarvis Lorry being told that a man named Alexandre Manette, who had been thought to be dead, had in fact been spending his years in the

Bastille in prison. And they found that he's not dead, he had just been released from the Bastille.

Well now he wasn't literally called to life because he'd never been dead, but he is thought to be dead, and was thus called back to life.

It interested me as I was getting ready to preach this message, and I thought of this

Recalled to Life and the tie -in to Tale of Two Cities some weeks ago, that yesterday was

Bastille Day, which is the place where this fictional character was released from, released from liberty, released to liberty from prison.

But as I said, he wasn't really dead, recalled to life, not from literal death, but having thought to have been dead.

Well that transitions nicely to our opening of this Book of Ezra. The series will be in here in the morning service for quite some time.

Ezra and then Nehemiah, we're going to, Lord willing, go through both of those. And I chose that title,

Recalled to Life, because Ezra is the story of a seemingly dead nation recalled to life by the powerful and sovereign working of God.

And as you heard, it is his working through means, through human means, through the means of a pagan and powerful king, and yet this seemingly dead nation, adrift in exile, recalled to life.

Ezra is the story of this return to home, to life, if you will.

It's the story of Israel back in that day, some 2 ,600 years ago.

And in a very real way, it's the story of the church, severally and individually. It's the story of God's watch care over His people that long ago as a signal to us today for God's watch care over what we do even here in this place.

It applies as much to you if you are in Christ Jesus, it applies as much to you individually as it does to the church as a whole.

Ezra is the story of God calling to life that which seems to be dead. When there is no hope, when all human effort has found to be useless,

God is the God of hope, and God is the God who calls back to life. In Ezra, as we go through this book, as we go through this history, this record, we'll find at every point that it is

God who is at the center. It is God who you just heard in a reading who stirred up Cyrus' heart to release

God's people. It is God who stirred up His own people in their hearts to even want to be released and to leave this security that they'd had for some seven decades.

And we'll try to put the dates together a little bit as we go through this and return to a land that had basically been ransacked by Babylonia.

As we go through these books, Ezra and Nehemiah, we're going to see that God gets all the glory for His protection of His people from enemies within, enemies without, just as He has done, just as He will continue to do for us here in the church, at least until Christ's return.

Ezra and Nehemiah are the story of Israel's return from captivity. It is their story, it is the church's story, and it is your story.

Now there's some crossover between Ezra and Nehemiah in terms of their functioning and what they did, but in broad and general terms,

Ezra, who we're going to begin with, Ezra is concerned with restoring proper order in the temple.

Ezra is more focused upon worship. And Nehemiah, when he comes, he's more concerned with civil order.

Ezra was working on the temple, so Nehemiah was working on the wall, that sort of thing.

There's some crossover between them, but those in the broadest terms, that's where they're focused.

That's what they're going to do. Now it would be good for us, since this is a historical record, just to take a moment and see where Israel really is here.

What is this context? What has happened to them? Now I'm going to call them

Israel. Israel is the tribe of Judah and Benjamin, and the

Levites were with them before and after the exile, but the Levites never get counted.

And I want to tell you, I call them Israel because in some of the earlier histories, before Israel, the ten tribes to the north, got taken by Assyria, we had to be very careful to call them

Israel, and the southern tribes Judah. But sometime before Ezra's time, the ten tribes have been taken away by Assyria.

So we no longer have to worry about distinguishing between Israel and Judah. I'll just call them Israel or Judah, it means the same thing.

I say that for those of you who are more keenly aware of that distinction in some of the previous histories.

In 586 BC, now BC of course is before Christ, as we go through dates, the dates get smaller as time progresses, because we're going from 586 down to zero, which of course is the time of our

Savior Jesus Christ. But just as a reminder for you, in 586

BC, the Babylonians came at God's whistle, and they sacked the temple, and they took

Judah and Benjamin captive. That was actually the third time that they'd come. The first two times they came, they simply took captors, they took some plunder, and went.

The third time, 586 BC, was their cataclysmic coming. It's when they destroyed the temple.

Now less than 50 years after that, in 539 BC, less than 50 years after they sacked the temple and took the people captive,

Babylon itself, the superpower of its day, was defeated by Persia.

And they're defeated by Persia under the rule, under the leadership of the same

King Cyrus, who we're introduced to in the first verse of Ezra's history.

And it's that same year, we don't know the month exactly, but it's almost as if he defeats

Babylon, that's 539, he gets back to his palace, it's still 539, it's still his first year, and his first proclamation is to send the

Jews back to Jerusalem for the express purpose of rebuilding the temple.

As we do this, as we go through this, remember it is God who stirred his heart. It is God who moved the king to say, you can go back.

When Babylon took Israel away from there, back 586

BC, and there were actually two exiles prior to that, but when they took them away, their situation was completely hopeless.

They had no army, they had no king, and they had no temple, which was the center, that was their identifying thing.

What were they about? They were about the temple. What made them unique? It was their worship. What made them special? It was that God had chosen them.

Where did they go to meet this God who chose them? The temple. And the temple lay in ruin.

They had nothing. They were completely devoid of hope. They're under the thumb of a brutal regime, that's the

Babylonians, the most powerful in the land. Now I'll read to you from Psalm 137.

It'll give you a flavor of just how desperate their situation was. Psalm 137, by the waters of Babylon there we sat and wept when we remembered

Zion. On the willows there we hung up our lyres, for there our captors required of us songs, and our tormentors mirth, saying sing us one of the songs of Zion.

How shall we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill.

Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy.

It says there Jerusalem, but what they mean of course is the temple that is at Jerusalem, my highest joy, that place where I can go for worship.

All the pilgrimage songs, Psalms from 120 to I think 133, singing with joy as they go to Jerusalem, as they go to the festivals.

That to be the highest joy, and yet that in their situation, gone.

How can they get back there? They can't. They're under the rule, they're under the captivity of the people who destroyed that one place.

Now imagine being this people, that you're on the waters of Babylon, say it's a group meeting, it's a prayer meeting, something like what we have here on Wednesday nights, and we're bewailing the fact that we are captive, that we are exile, that we're not in our homeland.

We're mourning the fact that we can't worship God properly, because the temple is the place where that is to occur.

And along come these people, teasing and prodding and making it as bad as they can.

Come on, sing us a nice song, sing us a mirthful song, sing us a joyous song, sing us the way you did when you were at the temple.

We want to hear it. Give us your best, come on. We're your captors, you must do as we say.

And the next day, the next day they get the news. Here it is on the headline,

Babylon defeated at a P .I .S., Babylon defeated. Cyrus's force rout

Babylon's once invincible armies. Wouldn't that be a joyous thing to hear?

That the people who took you captive, these very people who are poking you and trying to get you to sing these songs when you're obviously so sad, and they're getting theirs, aren't they?

The same Cyrus, that king sent his armies against the Babylonians who had taken everything that was in their sight for so long.

And now they're gone. Persia took care of them completely. There's your headline,

Babylon defeated. Cyrus routs the Babylonians' armies. And now you have what?

We have a new dilemma. Because there's a new ruler, and he's just as pagan, and just as if not more brutal than the one that he's disposed to, he's gotten rid of.

And do you know what? You're still his captive. He has as much control over you as did

Nebuchadnezzar. You know, Providence can sometimes be very dark.

Weeds come sprouting up where flowers once grew, and brambles where fruit trees once thrived. We go higher and higher in our tiptoes to see over the tares, but they grow thicker, they grow faster.

They wrap us up so tightly that we can hardly move, and sleep escapes us, and nerves get frayed.

We hang up our harps, and we refuse to sing or rejoice. For 430 years,

Israel groaned under the weight of their burdens in Egypt. Conley read to you from Exodus chapter 35, and there's a very intentional reason for me having had him read that.

If you heard the tie -in between the Lord stirring up people's spirits, stirring up people's hearts to contribute to the temple, very much the language that we had here in Ezra.

And most commentators, most scholars will look at Ezra and this return from Babylon, now

Persia, back to Jerusalem as the second Exodus. And so it's right to look at Israel who for four centuries groaned under the weight of their burdens in Egypt, this dark

Providence they were under. They were there by God's decree. It was God who sent them there.

Remember the whole story of Joseph and how Joseph saved many alive? And then they became slaves when a Pharaoh was raised up who didn't know

Joseph. And so they groaned under the weight of their slavery here in Babylon.

For 70 years the Jews wept under this servitude, and now they're the property of someone who is probably even worse than before.

Providence can sometimes be dark. It can be hard. We can't see our way around the worries about what's going to happen tomorrow.

And Jesus says so clearly, do not borrow from tomorrow. You don't know anything about tomorrow. You can't do anything about tomorrow, a hair on your head, nothing.

And yet, praise God, he dwells according to our frailties. He knows our weaknesses because the worse things get, the more concerned we become about tomorrow.

The more tomorrow and worry about it distracts us from worshiping rightly today.

Romans chapter 15 verse 4 tells us whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope.

We can ask ourselves, you know, what are we going through today? We as a church, you as a family, you as an individual.

I mean, has it caused your harp to be put into storage? Has it caused your tongue to cleave to the roof of your mouth so that rejoicing in the

Lord cannot escape? Remember this, as we follow what the apostle says in Romans 15, looking at this history so many centuries before he wrote that for us, that God does know our situation.

And as dark as the providence can be, it's in his decree that we are there. What are we going through?

Let us not forget that whatever we are going through, God is still worthy of worship. That it is a

God who rescues his people. It is a God who delivers his people. Cyrus' first act is to release them.

Now there's a headline for you. Cyrus, ruler of all lands, today in an act of grace and compassion allows the

Jews to return home. If we think of this as the second exodus, as I think is proper, look back to Pharaoh.

Remember how much convincing he took with those many plagues that came upon him, the destruction of his people?

He finally let the people go. And here's Cyrus in this shocking act of grace, of mercy to these people.

Does the same. It seems that he had less prodding from the divine, but it's still

God who did the prodding. It is still God who gets the glory. Remember that it's the same

God by the same power, by the same loving concern for his own, is the one behind them both. Proverbs 21 .1

says, the king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord. He turns it wherever he will. I think we have no better evidence of it than here.

Now I may not know the answer to what you're facing today. I might,

I might not. I know that God does. I know that God knows.

I know that if you are his child, it is meant for your good, whatever it is. I know that Israel had given up all hope, that they wept at the waters of Babylon.

They had nothing else to do but to weep. They were stuck and they were powerless.

Cyrus was actually in very grave trouble. He was in horrible peril the whole time

Israel was in his custody, however short a time it was. You see,

God will not allow his people to be captive a moment longer than pleases him. When we think of ourselves in our personal situations, we think of what

Paul says in 1 Corinthians, that God is faithful and in the temptation he gives you a way of escape.

And understanding that we worship a sovereign God, you will step into that escape hatch, that escape tunnel, at exactly the time that he has decreed for you.

Now Cyrus was in horrible peril whether he knew it or not. Every moment he held those people beyond what

God would have. Jeremiah chapter 29 verse 10 said that the captivity would last 70 years.

You can tie that to the 70 Sabbaths that they faithlessly did not give to the land in accordance with the law.

And we can prove that 70 years is exactly what happened according to this decree. We can bring it with amazing precision, just like the 430 years of the first exodus.

When we look at this history as a matter for our encouragement, as a matter so we might have hope, what do we get from that?

How do we find hope there in this 2 ,600 year old history? Well some of what

I've been saying for the last few moments, that wherever you are, you're going to be there for every moment that God has decreed for you.

You know it is for your good if you're in Christ Jesus. You know he is bringing you into a providence. When you come out you'll be closer to the image of Christ Jesus, his son and our

Lord. We know this and know from this history that we have historical evidence and proof that it is

God who decrees the time when we will exit, when we will come back into the light. Think back to Genesis.

Do you remember in Genesis 19 after the fall of Sodom and Gomorrah and Abraham takes his wife

Sarah and they go to Gerar which is the Philistine land and there's a king there named Abimelech and he sees

Sarah and he wants Sarah so he takes her to be his own. And in a vision at night

God says to him, you are a dead man because of the woman. You're a dead man because of him, because of her.

Now of course Abimelech says, wait a second, I didn't know. Lord you know that I didn't know that she was his wife.

And God says something like, right I know that you didn't know. Now I'm telling you, you're a dead man because she's not where I would have her, which means at risk of you.

And before that in Genesis 12 the king of Egypt suffered much the same fate for much the same reason.

Egypt was going to be destroyed because of her, because he was hanging on to her beyond what God would have.

Maybe that was only for a moment. Understand that God will have his people wherever they are.

He will not share them. He will not share you if you're in Christ Jesus with another. And no king is going to be able to withstand him.

We have in Ezra no evidence that Syrah gave any resistance. So praise

God for that, that when God first stirred his heart, Syrah's obeyed. And this applies directly to us.

Matthew chapter 12 verse 28, Jesus is the one who comes and binds up the strong man who is the devil and plunders his goods, which is us.

The strong man is Satan. The goods are you and me, and it is everyone who believes in the Lord Jesus Christ.

And just as Israel was in Egypt for 430 years, and it says in Exodus that they left on that very day that God had decreed.

In this second Exodus, this one begun here by Cyrus in the first chapter of Ezra, 70 years to the day exactly as God had decreed.

And Jesus entering the strong man's place, which is his incarnation, and coming here and walking amongst mankind, and then plundering his goods, you and me, giving us this

Exodus ourselves to come out of the world, to come out of darkness and into his light.

Jesus said in John chapter 10 that he is the good shepherd. He's the one who gathers together all that the Father has given him, and not one will escape his clutches, his gentle clutches though they may be.

Jesus said all that the Father has given to me will surely come to me. J .I.

Packer in commenting on Romans chapter 8, part of what Conley just read to you, he makes the point something like, and I'm paraphrasing here, something like, you know, you're not strong enough.

You're not powerful enough to take yourself out of God's love. If you're in Christ Jesus, you don't have the wherewithal to do that.

It's the same here. We haven't the power, we haven't the strength, we cannot overcome

God's design for us. When we're in those dark places, you know, these hard providences, these places where we're by that river and we're just weeping, we don't know what to do.

All we know is that we're powerless when we're in that place. What is it that usually gets forgotten?

What gets left behind first? I would say often it's worship. It's worship.

And I don't mean by that coming to church, I mean real worship. And when God rescues us, when he gives us a way of escape, we need to continue to worship him.

Notice I didn't say worship him for it, because whatever he does or he doesn't do, worship is due to him.

But when we have this exodus, that's what it's for, that we might, that he might be worshipped.

I get this from the very idea of both these exoduses that we have in the book of Exodus, the second book of the

Bible, and now Ezra. In the first exodus, the one with Moses and Aaron going before Pharaoh, Pharaoh's told over and over again that they were to be freed for a particular and singular purpose.

It says that they might serve me, that they might worship me.

Moses was told this will be assigned to you, you shall worship me on this mountain. And here in Ezra, what do we have?

We have Cyrus, this pagan king, this conqueror of Babylon, who from Babylon inherits as it were this people.

His heart stirred up to send them back to build the temple. And for what purpose?

How does the second exodus play out? Just like the first one, that they might worship me.

How many times did he say, go back and build the temple and worship your God? Now I'm paraphrasing, here's all the the accoutrements that you need, the plates and the bowls and so forth.

Go back and build that temple and worship your God, an exodus for the purpose of worshiping the

God who initiated the whole thing. We have to understand though that worship cannot be held back until we've gone through the way of escape.

I mean that'd be like saying that God only deserves it when he's come through for us on our terms. But worship is too often what's missing when we're in that Babylonian kind of exile.

As we go through this introduction to Ezra really, I want to think of how big

God is. I want us to think about that. How many times he's rescued his people? How many times he's rescued you?

Wherever we are, whatever we're going through, what do we need to think of is how big

God is, how consistent he is. Cyrus says some really good things about him.

At the end of verse three, did you hear what I said when I read that? At the end of verse three, his decree, Cyrus's decree, he is the

God who is in Jerusalem. Oh God is so much bigger than just Jerusalem. I mean how small

God must have seemed to him to have said that. I mean here God's temple has been sacked, his people are few and their exiles in their conqueror's hands, the precious accessories meant for his worship on display in front of the idol credited with the defeat of Yahweh, the

God who is in Jerusalem but couldn't even protect his own people in their temple. It reminds me of the

Syrians back in the history we have in Kings where they were going to fight

Israel and they lost and they fought them in the valley. So let's go fight them in the mountains because their God is the God of the valleys. So they go to the mountains.

Whoops, well he's the God of the mountains. We have to find another place. No, he's God. So much bigger than we can usually conceive.

Cyrus says he's the God who is in Jerusalem. Doesn't that sound good? He's the God who's in Jerusalem. Yes, that's where we worship him.

That's where the temple is. No, he's in Jerusalem. He's the

God who is in Persia. He's the God who is in Egypt. He's the God who's in the USA.

He's the God who's in Sunnyvale. He's the God in our homes. If there be faith in you, he's the God who's in you.

No, not just Jerusalem. Think of how

God, how big God really is. Conley read to you

Romans 8 32. He who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all. How will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

God having given his son for you cannot then be thought of as stingy as though there's something after Jesus that he'd hold back.

I mean can you imagine God saying something like, hey now I gave you my only begotten son to die for your sins.

I gave you my beloved son but this other thing you need, well no, that's too much.

I don't want to give that up, whatever that might be, and we mustn't look at that and say as we sometimes hear that God gave us his best.

Have you ever heard that in relation to Jesus? God gave you his best because to say

Jesus is best doesn't begin to explore the love that gave Jesus to walk in the flesh as we do, to do no wrong before man or God, to obey the entire law perfectly and constantly, and then to pay the penalty for sins as if he committed them all when in fact he committed them none at all, and then to credit all his obedience to we who did nothing.

How does best describe that? That's as close to best as dirt clods are to a diamond.

We can't do it. You know the exodus is sort of a motif that runs through the scriptures.

We have the exodus in the book of that name, the people for 430 years groaning under slavery, and then

God hears their groanings and raises up Moses. God visits his people and delivers them with great signs and wonders, showing the power of his right arm as the people come out of that exodus, and then into the wilderness as God had decreed and as God had said was the purpose to worship him.

We have here in Ezra and Nehemiah this second exodus as they leave that foreign land,

Persia, not Egypt, but a foreign land nonetheless, and Israel from Egypt going to the promised land and from Persia back to the promised land in exodus.

This idea runs throughout scripture. God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. This is one reason

Romans 15 .4 sort of works, if you will. Why does it work? Because God works the same way, not without surprise, not without things that make our jaws drop, but when we look at it in the record that we have, there's a consistency because God's mastery over history is consistent with himself.

As the heavens declare the glory of God, so does history show his eternal

Godhead and his divine attributes. Luke's account of Jesus' transfiguration, remember where he's talking to Elijah and Moses, and it says in our

English Bibles that he's talking to them about his departure. Well, in Luke's gospel, the word behind that departure is exodus.

Jesus was talking to them about this exodus that he was going to accomplish. Now, Jesus was not redeemed by an exodus.

Jesus led the exodus. He redeemed us by his exodus. He departed after he had accomplished salvation by way of the cross.

His exodus was a return of his rightful glory and place at the father's side, but the exodus of redemption, the exodus from slavery into the freedom of Christ, that's ours.

My sermon's name is recalled to life. What was dead was found to have been alive all along, and so begins in Charles Dickens' time, one of the greatest novels ever written.

This recall to life that I'm speaking of, anything but a novel, this recall to life that Israel goes through, and Paul says, that's for your encouragement.

That's for you to have hope in God. That's for you, the individual, to look and say, this is me.

Ezekiel was one of the exilic prophets. We have that famous passage in Ezekiel 37, remember the dry bones, where God sells and prophesy over these bones, and the

Spirit comes and all of a sudden the bones get flesh, and sinews, and muscles, and they grow up, and they become a living thing.

Well, that's Israel returning from where they were back to Judah, back to Jerusalem, excuse me, for the temple.

I think Ezra 1, if it tells us anything, it tells us that God is a God of life. God calls the dead back to life, recall to life as Tale of Two Cities has it, and this becomes an individual story.

This becomes your story and my story. So Romans 15, verse 4 says, they're written for you, so that you will have encouragement, so you can read the scriptures, and in them find hope.

Remember what God has done for you. The Jews in time past remembered every year with the

Passover. They still do the Passover. They shouldn't do the Passover, because Christ is our

Passover, so that festival is over with, but they remembered the exodus. We remember

Christ's redemption of us with the Lord's table every afternoon here, every Sunday afternoon here. This is your story.

If you are in Christ Jesus, let me read to you the first five verses of the book of Ephesians, chapter 2.

I think as I read, you have no doubt that this is God by His word speaking to you, speaking to me, and you are dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.

Let's pause for a second. We know that all are under the sway of the evil one.

We know that we are by nature children of wrath. We know that we are born enemies of God.

We hate God. We can't stand the thought of God and the conviction He brings to us.

We're dead in trespasses and sins, walking dead men, living, breathing, biologically, physiologically, alive in that sense, but that sense only in God's eyes, dead, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and we're by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.

And see if these next two verses don't repeat this exodus motif that we have in the scriptures.

But God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together in Christ.

Is this your story? Do you know that if you are in Christ Jesus now, that you're alive, and you're alive now because you were dead, recalled to life, if you will, an exodus from that world, from that death, from that darkness, accomplished by Christ Jesus, our

Lord, the author and perfecter of our faith, as He, by God's eternal decree, suffered for you.

And exactly the moment, in Egypt it was 430 years to the very day, in Persia it was 70 years to the day, for you, some of us can remember that very day, not a second before or after the day, the moment, that nanosecond that God decreed, you should move from there to Him.

In Ezra 1, it's the same Lord who stirred up Cyrus' spirit to do

His bidding as the Lord who stirred up your spirit to believe in Jesus Christ, if indeed you do believe in Jesus Christ.

This is the same with salvation. Everyone whose spirit God has stirred. Titus 3 .5

says, we're saved not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy

He saved us by the washing and regeneration of the Holy Spirit. Do you believe in the

Lord Jesus Christ? Do you know that if you don't, you are now dead in trespass and sin?

That you are there in Persia or Babylon or Egypt or wherever it might be, and you should be weeping by the rivers of Babylon because there's nothing you can do except to fall on your face before God and plead with Him for mercy, for forgiveness of your sins, ask for His spirit and showers of refreshment to be poured out upon you, that you might look up with faith upon the cross of Jesus Christ and see there your

Savior suffering in His sinless self for your sins.

It's God who can stir the spirit and only God who can do that. John chapter 3, we won't go there, we're all familiar with that, but Jesus gives all that to the

Spirit of God who moves how He will. You don't know where the wind blows, you don't know how the

Spirit moves, but He moves and He does change hearts. You must be born again.

It is God who calls us out of darkness and into His marvelous light. There's great exodus as we read these grand histories, these movements of nations.

I think it's good for us as we go through this book to remember Romans 15 .4 that these were written for your edification, for your encouragement, that you might have hope if you know the

Lord Jesus Christ. Remember this exodus that He accomplished on your behalf. If you don't know

Him, if your faith and trust and hope are not in Him, I pray that today would be the day of salvation for you.

Amen. Heavenly Father, we do thank you for this day that we have to worship you and for this word that you have given us.

I thank you, Father, for the exodus that Jesus accomplished on our behalf and for the record that we have of what you have done in history for that nation, so it may look and have the encouragement and hope that you intended.

I do pray, Father, for hearts to be stirred to come to the Lord Jesus Christ and worship

Him rightly this day, that today would be the salvation for many. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.