Ezra: Rise up and build — David Vallance

Ezra and Nehemiah in a World of Materialism and Apathy

I would like you to turn with me now to the book of Ezra, so as you move through the first historical section of the Bible, and you get to 2 Chronicles, the next book, as you know, is Ezra, and then the book of Nehemiah.

Now before you think that this is going to be esoteric stuff, somewhat irrelevant, semi interesting, but not really applicable to my life, let me ask you a couple of opening questions. Do we live in a world of materialism?

Do we notice among us, not only among believers in assembly fellowship to some extent, but in believers in general, a clear lack of distinction from themselves in the world, a lack of separation? Do you think that that is something you have observed from time to time?

Do you think that there's something we might call apathy among Christians today? Do you think this is a day of small things, where nothing great is really happening, and we just put the effort in every week and nothing much happens, kind of small things?

Do you think that there is an epidemic of ignorance of the Bible? Certainly there is among the culture, what about among believers too? Do you think worship has been downgraded and has been dumbed down to a large extent?

Do you think that there has been wholesale compromise with the world among so-called evangelicals? Do you think the world is hostile to what we're doing? I think the answer to all of those questions is yes, right?

Obviously yes. Well, then we need to read Ezra and Nehemiah, because the conditions I described were not the conditions of today, although they are the conditions of today, but what I've just read to you were the conditions of Ezra and Nehemiah.

I have more to say than that. You say, I wish we lived in a day of miracles. I wish we lived in a day when a priest could consult Urim and Thummim. I wish we lived in a day when we could see the miraculous.

I wish we lived in a day when, well, do you know Ezra and Nehemiah lived in a day like ours, not only in the moral climate and the conditions among the people that I've described, but they only had two things to go on, the Word of God and prayer.

There were no miracles. It's a mistake to think that there are miracles throughout the Bible. This is one of the apologetic points we make when we speak about miracles. Miracles occurred at very specific times in the Bible when there was new revelation being given, but there are large tracts of the Bible where there were no miracles other than the miracles of salvation.

God always performs those miracles. I'm talking about sign miracles. So if you suspect that it would be hard to live and to believe when you didn't see evidence of divine superpower, well, that's not the case.

In fact, we are told in Luke 16 that even if Lazarus came back from the dead, the rich man's brothers, seeing such a miracle, would not believe because they were not inclined to believe. The only thing that will make a person believe is when the Spirit of God applies the Word of God to their hearts, and then they believe.

So those are the conditions of Ezra and Nehemiah, very much like our own. This is what we call remnant testimony, and you've heard that one before. But you know, this is what happens throughout the Bible in cycles.

We have new revelation, we have a fresh beginning, and we have the people agreeing to follow God as they did at the mountain, and then immediately beginning to grumble and to sin and to depart from God until the point where God judges them, and then they recover to some extent.

You certainly see this cycle throughout the book of Judges. But what we learn is that in the big piece of Israel's history, there was a time when there was no more remedy. We've talked about it this morning, and they were taken away captive to Babylon.

They had crossed a line, and God says, no farther. This is now going to be your fate. What came back from Babylon was a trickle, a small group, and we can relate to that ourselves. We're a small group, so maybe the encouragement God gave to this small group could be an encouragement to us as well.

Let's read then some excerpts from these two books. It's obviously a big chunk to bite off to try to cover two books in 40 minutes, but we'll just pull the major themes out, and I think it will still be helpful.

I trust it will be. Let's read the beginning of Ezra. Now 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, saying, thus says Cyrus, king of Persia, all the kingdoms of the earth, the Lord God of heaven has given me, and he has commanded me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah.

This is a miraculous thing right here. I said there were no miracles. This is a miracle. God's working on the heart of this pagan king, and this is the house of God in Jerusalem, which of course had been destroyed by the Babylonians.

Who 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 build the house of the Lord God of Israel. He is God, which is in Jerusalem, and whatever is left in any place where he dwells, let the men of his place help him with silver and gold, with goods and livestock, besides the freewill offerings for the house of God, which is in Jerusalem.

So the word of the Lord now comes to pass as God is going to recover his people from the punishment of Babylonian captivity. And so what we find is that there we get a list of the captives who returned to Jerusalem in chapter 2.

We're not going to read that. We're going to go down to chapter 3. Now we need to introduce a couple of characters that were mentioned, that are mentioned now. Their names are Zerubbabel and Jeshua, and later on we're going to meet two prophets named Haggai and Zechariah.

The Three Returns and the Prophetic Structure of Ezra

So here comes the first thing we need to know about Ezra structurally. The first six chapters of Ezra are the first return of this trickle, this remnant who, obeying the word of the Lord, left the kingdom of Persia and went back to Jerusalem to build the altar of God, which had been broken down obviously, and to lay the foundations and then to complete the house of God.

Now they did that, but there's a gap between six and seven of about 57 years. Interesting little gap, because who fits in there? Esther. Esther and the story of King Xerxes, who's called Ahasuerus, that fits in this gap, this part that is enveloped or bookended by the two pieces of Ezra, okay?

So the first part, we have a king, Zerubbabel, we have a priest, Jeshua, and we have prophets, Haggai and Zechariah. Then we have this interlude, a very interesting one, where Esther is really working for God in a book that never mentions the word God.

And why do you think it is that Esther never mentions the word God? I'm sure there's 15 theories, at least out there in the audience, but I'll give you my take on it. I think the book of Esther is primarily about a group of Jews who refused to return to the land of Israel.

It is a picture of Israel in their current apostasy, and yet God still works among them. He worked among this young woman named Esther to save the people ethnically and racially from destruction. But it was not God's intention for people to stay in Persia.

He wanted them to come out from there and to return to the true worship of the Lord in Jerusalem. That's where the word God rightly applies. The second part of Ezra is the return of Ezra. So this part, starting to talk about Ezra, we get first-hand knowledge.

And again, we have a prophet and a priest and a king, sort of. Nehemiah is an administrator, so we're going to allow him to be a king for the purposes of my little structure here. And then, of course, Ezra is a priest who can trace his lineage all the way back to Aaron.

And we have another prophet, and his name is Malachi. All right? And the general principle is that when God is going to bring his people into a place of blessing, he needs to have the mediation of a prophet, a priest, and a king.

And, of course, those three positions, those three roles, those three offices, as we call them, are all occupied by one man in God's purposes, our Lord Jesus Christ. And God would not tolerate any circumstance where a person would be a prophet and a priest and a king.

There were some who had two roles. Jeremiah was a priest, for example, and he was a prophet, but he was never a king. Uzziah the king wanted to be a priest, and God smote him with leprosy. God will not allow a man to have three roles because only one man can have those roles.

And yet we see in this Old Testament story these three roles working as they ought to work to bring the people of God into the blessing God has in mind for them. So we will begin reading in chapter 3, verses 1 through 4, just a couple of selections here.

When the seventh month had come and the children of Israel were in the cities, the people gathered together as one man to Jerusalem. Then Yeshua, this is the name Jesus or Joshua, Yeshua, the son of Josedach and his brother and the priests, and Zerubbabel, who is a direct descendant of David now, so he's the Davidic king and he's in the lineage of the Lord Jesus, Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel and his brother, and arose and built the altar of the God of Israel to offer burnt offerings on it.

The Altar, the Temple, and the Priority of God

Now here immediately we come to one of the most illogical and paradoxical things in this whole story of these two books. And by the way, Ezra and Nehemiah are one book in the Hebrew Bible. They've been separated into two in the English Bible.

There's a number of ways I can prove that, but it's not important to my point, so we'll leave it. We're going to come to this interesting fact that instead of building the walls to protect the people first, and then building a suitable temple, and finally furnishing that temple with an altar, God wanted it to be done in exactly the opposite order, which makes no sense, unless you're thinking the way God thinks, all right?

He wanted the altar to be built first, then the temple, and finally the wall. You say, but the people would never be protected without a wall and the altar would never be protected without a temple, but the whole point of these books is this isn't man's responsibility.

God is there to protect. It's God's work, and when the people depended on the Lord, he protected them. He provided for them. The other principle and the reason for this order is very clear. God is first.

God is first. Every true believer says amen in his heart to that. God is first. His interests, his priorities, his worship, his prerogatives, they come first, and when he gets his proper place, everything else falls in order.

So this is a wonderful day when they build this altar and they start offering burnt offerings and they celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles at this point. Now, then we're going to drop down and just read in chapter 3, verses 10 through 13.

When the builders laid the foundation of the temple, this is, of the Lord, the priests stood in their apparel with trumpets and the Levites, the sons of Asaph, with cymbals to praise the Lord according to the ordinance of David, king of Israel, and they sang responsibly, praising and giving thanks to the Lord, for he is good and his mercy endures forever toward Israel.

And all the people shouted with a great shout when they praised the Lord because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. But many of the priests and Levites and heads of the father's houses, old men who were older than 70, right?

That's how many years it had been since the captivity had been done. They had seen the first temple and they wept with a loud voice when the foundation of the temple was laid before their eyes, yet many shouted for joy.

The young people were all happy about it. The old people were bittersweet at the very best. And why was that? Because this house was so much smaller, so much less glorious, it seemed, than the house of Solomon.

And yet there was this cacophony, we might say, of joy. Some people crying, some people laughing. The noise was difficult to sort out. There was happy people and there were sad people, and the sad people were happy and they were sad at the same time.

It's an interesting commentary, but you know what? The size of the house isn't what matters. What matters is whether God is in the house. And there was a day when Solomon's temple and all of its glory was vacated by God.

And therefore it was not a house of God at all, no matter how pretty it looked. But now this new structure, quite humble maybe in comparison, was going to be filled with the very presence of God. I might add, though, that this was not going to be the Shekinah cloud that we saw in the first, because this is a day of no miracles.

This is a day of no sign gifts. And so this is going to be a spiritual presence very similar to what we have today in the assembly. So the heart of God is the first thing that gets ministered to. That's through the altar.

And now we have the house of God. Foundations are laid. We don't have too much more to read in Ezra. We're going to scoot through the rest of the book. I do want to read, though, in chapter 4 to discuss some of the opposition, because the people of the land were not going to take this lying down.

They did not want the worship of God restored. They did not want God's people in the land. They would rather they had stayed in Persia. And so this is what happens. When the adversaries of Judah, verse chapter 4, verse 1, heard that the descendants of the captivity were building the temple of the Lord God of Israel, they came to Zerubbabel and the heads of the fathers' houses and said to them, Let us build with you, for after all we're all serving the same God.

Allah, God, they're all the same deity, so we might as well work together on this. We seek your God as you do. We have sacrificed to him since the days of Esarhaddon, the king of Assyria, who brought us here.

But Zerubbabel and Jeshua and the rest of the heads of the fathers' houses of Israel said to them, You may do nothing with us to build a house for our God, for we alone will build it to the Lord God of Israel.

And so what was an ethnic situation and a religious one to them parallels our own day when we have people who want to compromise with us and say that we have some sort of lowest common denominator agreement on religion.

And we might as well agree on the things we agree about and forget the things we don't agree about. Well that wouldn't work here and it doesn't work today either. So this first call is to compromise and we're going to come back and talk a little bit about that.

Ezra, Esther, and the Return to Jerusalem

I do have one other quick reading in Ezra because I do want to introduce to you the second piece. So between 6 and 7 in Ezra you have the whole story of Ezra, Esther, excuse me, all right? There's 57 years give or take.

Now at the beginning of chapter 7 we're done with Zerubbabel, we're done with Joshua, we're done with Haggai, we're done with Zechariah, and we're now coming to the prophet Ezra. Excuse me, the prophet is Malachi in this case and then the priest is Ezra and the administrator slash king is Nehemiah himself.

What chapter 7 does is it gives us the genealogy of this Ezra who is probably the chronicler, probably the man who wrote Chronicles or at least compiled most of the Chronicles and also the books of Ezra and Nehemiah.

A very important person in the closing of the canon of the Old Testament, that would be a different topic but I thought I would mention it. You can see he can go all the way back to Aaron the priest through the line of Zadok, through the line of Phineas, through Eleazar, all the way back to Aaron.

That's very important that people be able to prove their genealogy in this book especially if you're a priest. If you're a priest and you can't prove you're a priest then you can't work. You have to wait.

They had to wait until the Urim and Thummim perhaps could be reinstituted and they could get God's mind on the matter because they were not going to accept people who could not prove their birthright just as we today of course are only interested in fellowship with people who are truly children of God.

Now we won't read any more in the book of Ezra except as we turn over the pages we'll notice that this issue with intermarriage with pagans comes up. We're going to see this again at the end of Nehemiah and how that was necessary for them to separate from the people of the land with whom they had entered into relationships including marital ones.

Nehemiah’s Burden and the Call to Rise Up and Build

Now as we move we're going to read a few selections from Nehemiah. Remember this is one book in the Hebrew Bible. So we get to Nehemiah, the words of Nehemiah the son of Hakaliah, this is 1 .1 of course, it came to pass in the month of Kislev in the 20th year I was in Shushan the citadel and Hanani one of my brethren came with me with men from Judah and I asked them concerning the Jews who had escaped, who had survived the captivity and concerning Jerusalem.

So of course Zerubbabel and his group along with Yeshua, they had been there some you know 60, 70, 80 years before now at this point and he's getting a status report. So what he finds out is mentioned in verse 3, they said the survivors who were left from the captivity in the province are there in great distress and reproach.

The wall of Jerusalem is broken down and its gates are burned with fire. So Nehemiah is very upset about this and he prays. Verse 5, I said I pray Lord God of heaven O great and awesome God you who keep your covenant and mercy with those who love you and observe your commandments please let your ear be attentive and your eyes opened that you may hear the prayer of your servant which I pray before you now day and night for the children of Israel.

So this is one of the extended prayers of Nehemiah. In case I forget to mention it though it's interesting you move through the book of Nehemiah you see it in several places right in chapter 2 we'll see an example of it and if you go to the very tail end of the book right at the very last verse you're going to get it again I think these it's occurred some six or eight times I forget the exact number where we get these prayers where Nehemiah is in the middle of the action and he says and I just prayed to the God of heaven.

We talked about this last night. There was no formal our God and Father we come to the end worthy and precious name of our Lord Jesus Christ none of none of the formality of public prayers which are unnecessary in a case like this it was simply a matter of looking up to heaven and saying God I need help and I need it right now please help me Lord some some of these prayers didn't don't even have words but I prayed to the God of heaven and God God knew what I was thinking.

He knew what I needed. I just appealed to him for help. That's a great habit to learn from Nehemiah all right. That's a by the way let's turn to chapter 2 and here we see Nehemiah in his role as the cup bearer of the king here and this king Artaxerxes has Nehemiah as a trusted counselor.

Now if you're the king there are people who want you not to be king anymore. They would like you to be a dead king and they would like to replace you. So they give poison to you and you drink the poison and you die.

Right. So a very important role was a person to be a cup bearer in that day who would taste the wine first and make sure it was safe. But not only that such a person who would obviously have to be trusted himself was a very close confidant of the king.

Right. So the king depended very much on his cup bearer for advice. And you can tell from the story here that Nehemiah was quite close to Artaxerxes even though he feared him as the king. So we'll let the story speak for itself.

He says it says in verse number one. It came to pass in the month of Nisan in the 20th year of King Artaxerxes when wine was before him that I took the wine and gave it to the king. Now I had never been sad in his presence before.

That's because Nehemiah knew what it was to control his emotions which is a good lesson for some of us to learn. By the way he needed to understand that you need to be pleasant and this is a matter of the will your your heart can be sad but you're not supposed to show it on your face.

But he couldn't help it here. So the king says Nehemiah why the long face. Right. Well why is your face sad is actually what it says since you are not sick there was nothing. This is nothing but sorrow of heart.

And I became dreadfully afraid because I had let my cover down and he was really seeing what was in my heart. And I said to the king may the king live forever. Why should my face not be sad when the city the place of my father's tombs lies waste and his gates are burned with fire.

And the king said to me what do you request. I don't think Nehemiah was expecting this. So what's the first thing he said does. So I pray to the God of heaven. Lord I can't believe this. He's actually allow.

He's actually asking me what I would like to do. He's he's going to give me a blank check. So I prayed to the God of heaven and I said if it pleases the king and if your servant is found favor in my sight I ask you that you send me to Judah to the city of my father's tombs that I may rebuild it.

And of course the king grants his request. It's a wonderful thing. Now we turn over to chapter 2. We're on chapter 2 excuse me we're going to. I want to read one other verse in chapter 2 verse number 18.

And I told him of the hand of God that was upon me which had been good to me and also the king's words that I had spoken to me. Sorry I need to. I need to fill in the gap here. I'm sorry without reading this random verse.

So Nehemiah goes. He inspects the wall and he gets the people of Judah and Benjamin together. And then he says what I'm reading in verse number 18 I told him of the hand of my God which had been good upon me and also of the king's words that he had spoken to me.

And they said let us rise up and build. And they set their hands to this good work. That's a very important verse. Let us rise up and build. So one of the things I like Matthew saying you finally get to the point you're trying to bring across halfway through the message let us rise up and build would be a good title for what I want to talk about today because we have an altar Hebrews chapter 13 we have of course a house of God the pillar and ground of truth.

And we have the need for a wall of separation. And we need to make sure that we're rising up and building today. We're going to use all these as analogies to our present world as soon as I'm done with the reading which seems to be taking a long time although it is annotated reading.

So in chapter 3 they rebuild the wall from gate to gate. It's quite interesting. We're not going to read it. In chapter 4 they have to defend the wall against the enemies. We're going to talk about some of that opposition again again.

This comes up in chapter 5. In chapter 6 we have a conspiracy against Nehemiah but despite that the wall is finally completed at the end of Nehemiah. Chapter 6. Chapter 7 gives us a very long list of people who were involved the captives who would return to Jerusalem.

The Centrality of Scripture, Prayer, and Holiness

And now we to chapter 8 where we're going to take our last readings. We'll actually grab the last phrase in chapter 7 when the seventh month came the children of Israel were in their cities. Now all the people gathered together as one man in the open square that was in front of the water gate that may be symbolically important because the water of the Word of God is now what we're going to talk about.

And they told Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the law of Moses which the Lord had commanded Israel. This is the same book that Josiah of course through Hilkiah had discovered and took heed to many years before.

So Ezra the priest brought the law before the assembly of men and women and all who could hear and understand on the first day of the seventh month. Then he read from it in the open square that was in front of the water gate from morning until midday before the men and women and those who could understand it and the ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the law now as described stood on a platform of wood that they had made for this purpose and beside him were a number of other men.

These are men who were now going to take the Word of God to the people. And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people for he was standing above all the people. And when he opened it all the people stood up and Ezra blessed the Lord the great God.

There are many churches today where when they're reading the Word of God everybody stands up and you know I think that's an interesting gesture. I think it's it. I think I actually admire it in one sense it's obviously showing respect for the word not a tradition that's common among us.

But this is where they get it from that the Word of God is so important that when it's read the people actually change their posture to one of respect and one of obviously careful attention. And all the people answered amen amen while lifting up their hands all right.

So what happened then is these men who are listed again in verse 7 they go among the people and they read from the word of the Lord distinctly or clearly. And they give the sense and they help the people to understand the reading.

What we're going to find a couple chapters later is that for this period of time that people spent three hours a day listening to the Word of God being read and three hours of day worshiping and praying.

So my 40 minutes this morning sounds rather paltry. There are people more serious than I and I'm surprised to learn that not all of us have six hours. This is a very special occasion in Israelite history and it's also very a special occasion in this book.

This is probably not sustainable for most people who work for the rest of their lives. But maybe there are periods of time in our lives when we need to take it. This this far six hours of the day were spent in either reading the Word of God or praying and confessing their sins.

Amazing thing. So the Word of God has a wonderful place now. What we've done so far using up a good portion of my time is we have surveyed. I haven't got to the end of Nehemiah. We're going to get at the end another issue with separating from the world with these mixed marriages.

We'll talk about that. We've talked about worship and the restoring of the altar. We've talked about the house of God and the laying of the foundations. The fact that the people stopped after they leave the foundations because they were discouraged and their people harassing them.

They were making fun of them. So what are these feeble Jews. What are they doing. Sanballat and Tobiah you know they come and they say you know if a fox goes up on the wall the weight of this Fox is going to be so great it'll knock the wall over.

That's how flimsy this stupid wall is. And you know you know the people were discouraged but that comes. That's it. That's a separate story in EMI. I'm actually in Ezra right now. But it's very similar type of jeering mockery.

And you know it takes the words of a Haggai to come along and say look you people have done pretty well since you moved back to Jerusalem. The Lord's cleared the way he's given you prosperity. You've got nice houses you've got beautiful paneling in your houses.

Nice paneled houses. And the house of God is lying in ruins. The foundation is not good enough. You must lay the foundation. No other foundation can man lay than what is laid. That's Jesus Christ. But now the gold and the silver and precious stones and I need to be put into that house.

And so the people then complete that so the house of God is completed. Then we have this issue of separation that is separation by the wall and separation from relationships with unbelievers. And then we have the issue of the Word of God and its centrality the recurrence of prayer throughout this whole story.

And the fact that the people are just basically willing to work that they have overcome their apathy. So this is a great analogy I think for us I think we could probably relate to and benefit from each one of those things which I will now spend a few minutes discussing.

Ministering to the Heart of God Through Worship

So let us talk first about ministry to the heart of God. I've already mentioned that God must be first. He must be first in our affections. He must be first in our service. He's first in everything. And if we give God his rightful place then everything else in our life will fall into its proper place and we will have a balanced and godly life.

The minute we start to put our own priorities above God's then everything's upside down and our life will not go along the path that God wants it to go. So I ask you then is it important that we minister to the heart of God.

See this is a distinction that is made throughout the Bible. I'll just mention it briefly. There are two directions for example of the priesthood that is mentioned in 1st Peter chapter 2 we have a holy priesthood and we have a royal priesthood.

And without going into the whole story let me just make this simple. A holy priesthood offers sacrifices and worship to God. A holy priesthood ministers to the heart of God. It's God word where the royal priesthood shows forth the praises of him who called us out of darkness into his marvelous light.

A royal priesthood is centered on ministering to the house of God and to the world at large. Both are important roles of priesthood. God doesn't want us doing only one and not the other but very often we give God the short shrift.

We're interested in the activity of the house of God or even in the gospel which are very important things. But we've denied God his rightful portion. Now you see this in many other cases and I'll bring up another one from Ezekiel 44.

In Ezekiel 44 we're talking about the Millennial Temple the final temple that will be built. And that's temple like all other temples has to be staffed by priests. But there were two types of work to be done in this temple.

One was to offer sacrifices to draw near to me God says and to offer to me. And that was going to be limited to the Zedekite priests very quickly. Now we have Aaron Eleazar Phineas dot dot dot dot. We have Ezra in that line dot dot dot we go all the way down to the Millennium.

We have people named Cohen or Cohn or these priests that are that it will have their Levitical heritage certified and identified in the Millennium. And they if they are of the line of Zadok Zadok who is faithful to David they will be able to minister to the heart of God.

They will get that top priority. Then we have another son of Aaron his name is Ithamar. Ithamar dot dot dot Eli Hoffney Phineas dot dot dot dot Abiathar who abandoned David people are still priests but they are not going to be able to minister to the heart of God.

They will be limited according to Ezekiel 44 limiting to the house of God. Now the house of God is great. The heart of God is greater. And I'm asking us today is our priority worship. You see Satan would want us to do everything we want in Christian service but worship God now.

Don't get me wrong. He'd love to stop us preaching the gospel. He'd like us to stop using our gifts to edify each other. And he does those things. But his top priority is to shift us off the worship of God.

So if he can turn the Sunday morning meeting into a sharing session or if he can turn it into therapy for believers in need he'll do that. He'll alter the very purpose of the communal relationships of Christians in the church in order that their priority might no longer be offering praise to the awesome God and offering thanksgiving for his son and explaining to God all the things we have learned of him from the scripture and bringing these words and presenting them to God is the fruit of our lips.

Giving thanks to his name. That is the number one priority for an assembly. And it's the number one priority for you in your closet and in your house you give thanks to the Lord and you adore him for being who he is.

That's your first thing. And we understand that from this because the top priority these people was not to look around them but it was to look up to heaven and make sure that altar got built properly and the sacrifices started going morning and evening.