Sermon for Lord's Day October 29, 2023 pt3 Ezra 1:1b-4

The Opening Prayer and Reading of Ezra 1:1-4

Our Heavenly Father, as we come before Your throne again, as we sing in that last song, we praise You, Father, we praise You, Son, we praise You, Holy Spirit, three in one.

We thank You, O God,.

For Your great work of salvation that You have worked and wrought and brought about. Thank You, Lord, for the joy of knowing You. Thank You, Lord, for the witness of Your Holy Spirit. Thank You for the testimony of Your truth.

We thank You, O God, today as we're going to continue to read about.

And continue to see.

We thank You, God, for Your sovereignty over creation and Your providential working in and through creation itself. God, I thank You and I praise You today as we sang those songs, how it thrilled my heart, dear God, to hear these children as well as the adults lifting up their voice in praise unto You.

Dear God, it is an honor and a privilege truly to be in Your house today. We pray as we worship You in the preaching and the teaching of Your Word that You would show us Christ in the Scriptures, that You would cause us, dear God, to have a greater and a better understanding of who You are so that in order that we might worship and love You all the more.

Lord, our prayer is this for those who hear the Word today, that the lost would be saved, that the saint would be encouraged. I'd ask You as well one more time, Lord, please help me not to be in the way or to be an obstruction to anyone seeing the grace and the truth of God as we stand today.

Please, Lord, give me clarity in my thoughts, liberty with my mouth that we might speak forth the Word of life today and that You would get glory, honor and praise in all things today. For it's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Stand with us if you would.

Ezra chapter 1, we're going to be reading verses 1 through 4. These are the words of the living God. 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.

The writing says, 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, beside freewill offerings for the house of God that is in Jerusalem.

Thus far as the reading of God's holy word, you may be seated. If you are taking notes, you can just put a continuation of last week's message. Really, because our aim and our goal today will be the same as it was last week.

It will be the same for the next several weeks. Our aim and our goal is to demonstrate from the text of the scripture, number one, that the Lord is sovereign over all of his creation. He is sovereign over all of his creation, including lost and saved, believers and unbelievers.

This is number one, what we are striving to demonstrate from the text of scripture. Number two, what we want to demonstrate is this, that God, by his providence, or sometimes that term providence is used, given without a qualification, to define providence.

Providence is God's governance of his creation, how he functions within his creation. So we want to demonstrate that God, by his providence in creation, that he does meticulously cause all things whatsoever to come to pass.

And yet, very important here, and yet he is not the author of evil. He is not the author of evil. We are going to see in the text today who the Lord is, who the Lord is and what he did to bring about his blessing on his people, to bring them out of the captivity that they themselves put themselves in because of their idolatry and their sin.

We are going to see how God blessed them. All this, all this to the end, all this to the extent to pave the way for his dear son to come into this world so that Jesus, Jesus Christ, the only begotten son of God, in due time would descend that sacred stairway, so to speak, entering into this world through the womb of the virgin.

And he lived the life that we cannot live. He died the death that we cannot die. And he rose again on the third day. So that in order that on this day, on this October 29th, 2023, that we can stand and proclaim to you, whoever hears today that you, whosoever will, may come and take of the water of life freely and that you may be saved.

We have this privilege and this opportunity to declare to you that Jesus saves, Jesus saves. So as we look at the text, last week we looked at the first part of verse one. So we might say 1 1 A. What we're going to do this morning really is give an exposition of 1 B.

The second part of this text is what we want to focus on. And you'll notice in the text, as we read from verse one again, in the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled.

The scripture says the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia. And he did so, so that Cyrus made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom. And also he put it in writing. So let's little by little go through this text as we exegete this.

And remember what we're doing in these next several weeks, really it's just building kind of a base camp, if you would, a foundation for us to understand how impactful, how necessary and how important the sermons of Zechariah and Haggai were in this period of time.

Do you remember how long this book of Ezra spans? Some 90 to 120 years is the time span that this book is going to cover. But as we look here at the beginning, notice what is meant, I would ask this, what is meant by the phrase, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus.

And to ask a second question, who is this Lord that we read about in the text? Who is this Lord? And what does it mean that he stirred up the spirit of Cyrus? So to define who this Lord is, we need not go anywhere else, but to the text of scripture.

And we have a particular text of scripture that not only tells us who the Lord is, but gives us another foreshadowing and another prophecy that points to the work that God is doing here in the book of Ezra.

The Lord Stirred Up Cyrus and Fulfilled Jeremiah's Prophecy

If you turn to Isaiah chapter 45, Isaiah chapter 45 verses 1 through 7, hundreds of years before we read in Ezra, this is what the word of the Lord said in the prophet Isaiah. The prophet Isaiah said in Isaiah 45 verses 1 through 7, quoting the Lord, Thus says the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have grasped to subdue nations before him and to loose the belts of kings, to open doors before him, that gates may not be closed.

No, and please pay careful attention to this. Take time this week to go back in to read and to reread and to examine this text because it is so rich with the sovereignty and the providence of God. He goes on to say, I will go before you and level the exalted places.

I will break in pieces the doors of bronze and I will cut through the bars of iron. I will give you the treasures of darkness and the hordes in secret places, that you may know that it is I, the Lord, the God of Israel who called you by your name.

He goes on, for the sake of my servant Jacob and Israel, my chosen, I call you by your name. And it is as if it is, it is in this prophecy where the Lord, the word of the Lord is spending time and making a direct speech to Cyrus to inform him that what he does is not by his own will, nor by his own power, nor by his own strength, but that it is the mighty hand of God at work.

Going further, he said, no, this, I call you by name, though you do not know me. Very important there. I am the Lord and there is no other beside me. There is no God. I equip you, though you do not know me, so that people may know from the rising of the sun and from the West, that there is none beside me.

I am the Lord and there is no other. I form life and create darkness. I make well-being and create calamity. I am the Lord who does all these things. The Lord, the Lord, when you see this word L O R D and all caps in your Bibles,.

That is intentional.

That is in the Hebrew there to designate and to denote that you are reading about Yahweh, the eternal self existent God, the first cause of all things, the creator of the heavens and the earth. And what does he say here in this prophecy pointing to Cyrus?

He reminds Cyrus that when Cyrus does all that he does, which is what we're going to read about. When Cyrus does all that he does, it's by God's own hand that he's doing it. It's by the mighty power of God.

So who is the Lord?

The Lord is Yahweh.

The Lord is Yahuwah, the great,.

The mighty,.

The self existent, eternal one. Moving forward in the text, let's notice a few other things. So the Lord stirred up Cyrus,.

Right?

And not only did he stir up Cyrus, but it says he stirred up particularly the spirit of Cyrus. So we know who did the stirring. That was the Lord. And so what does it mean to be stirred up?

So,.

First of all, first of all, the scripture itself is plain in saying that the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus. And that's why the why, why he stirred up Cyrus is important as well. Why did the Lord stir up Cyrus?

Why did the Lord do this work? And the answer is here in our text. Why did the Lord stir up Cyrus, the king of Persia? So that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled. That God would demonstrate that once again, that he is sovereign over all creation.

And that God, by his providence, governs all creation. Remember last week, means and ends. God's means is his creation. His ends is his goal. God uses creation to achieve the ends, which ultimately, which we'll get to this, which ultimately is bringing him his one and only son into this world.

That the world might have a propitiation for their sins. Here in the text.

Jeremiah's Promise of Restoration After Seventy Years

Why?

Why the scripture says that the word, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled. If you would turn to Jeremiah chapter 29, Jeremiah chapter 29. Again, hundreds of years before what we're reading here in Israel, the word of the Lord comes to the prophet Jeremiah in Jeremiah chapter 29.

And beginning in, we'll read verse one and then we'll read verses four through 14. The word of God says this. These are the words of the letter that Jeremiah, the prophet sent from Jerusalem to the surviving elders of the exiles into the.

Priests,.

The prophets and all the people who Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel to all the exiles who might sit into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.

And this is the word of the Lord to them, build houses and live in them, plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters. Take wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage that they may bear sons and daughters, multiply there and do not decrease, but seek the welfare of the city where I've sent you into exile and pray to the Lord on its behalf.

For in its welfare, you will find your welfare for thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, do not let your prophets and your diviners who are among you deceive you. Do not let your prophets and your diviners deceive you and do not listen to the dreams that they dream for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in.

My name.

I did not send them declares the Lord. Very important here. So there were prophets and dreamers and deceitful teachers running around saying,.

Oh,.

Beforehand that it's going to be all peace,.

Peace,.

But the Lord rebuked them.

What would he have said?

Who says peace,.

Peace,.

For there is no peace coming, but destruction is what is coming. It was not a popular message.

Nonetheless,.

It was the truth. But notice what the Lord goes on to say. Thus says the Lord, when 70 years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place.

Here we see the hope. I will bring you back to this place for I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord plans for welfare and not for evil to give you a future and.

A hope.

Then you will call upon me.

Then you will pray to me and I will hear you. You will seek me and you will find me when you seek me with all of your heart. I will be found by you declares the Lord and I will restore fortunes and gather you from all nations and all the places where I've driven you declares the Lord and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.

Can you see how that the Lord in his sovereignty by means of his providence is working all things that whatsoever come to pass you again, we are not talking about something that just happened in the span of a 24 hour time frame or a one month time frame or a one year time frame.

We see hundreds of years where the word of the Lord has been perfectly fulfilled to the job and to the title. This is amazing. What does this do? This should cause us to worship God. This should cause us to look unto the Lord our God and to understand that we truly can trust him for his our lives are in his hands.

We sang that song when you remember when you were a little child. He's got the whole world in his hands. Well, that's the truth. If children and adults both understood the depth of the to make us want to shout the whole world is in his hands.

So what we have here in Jeremiah is a message of hope. So what we have is the old song says pardon for sin and a peace that endures not only your presence to cheer into God. What we have is strength for today and a bright hope tomorrow.

Blessings all mine and 10 ,000 beside. Why? Because great is thy faithfulness. Great is thy faithfulness. Morning by so concerning that. So we have who and what? Who is the Lord? The Lord is Yahweh, the eternal self-existent God as we see him himself telling us in Isaiah's passage in Jeremiah, we see the word of the Lord that was to be fulfilled that is being fulfilled here in the book of Ezra.

So we have that great message of hope. Now let's look a little bit deeper here at Cyrus, the king of Persia and see not only through the biblical text, but history itself, how history itself glorifies and magnifies God.

And it demonstrates that history, all of time and all of space is subject to the will of God. Cyrus reigned in Persia as we gave you some dates last week, and we're still going to make them approximate dates, approximately from 560 to 530 BC.

So approximately for some 30 years, could be 2030, could be 3040.

Nevertheless,.

Let's look at a brief historical account now of how Cyrus came to his kingship. We don't necessarily have the step by step, how Cyrus came to his kingship in the scriptures, but we do have it in history.

And what history does is attest to the truth of the scriptures. So the historical account goes like this.

At the time,.

And I have greatly summarized this because I figured that most of you really would not be interested in a lot, like four pages of history on King Cyrus. So I did my best to summarize this. And the history is like this.

At the time of Cyrus, at the time of Cyrus's birth,.

Actually,.

Which is likely probably somewhere around 583, Osteogus ruled the Medes. So we know Cyrus was the king of the Persians,.

Right?

Osteogus ruled the Medes.

Now,.

What is interesting about Osteogus is that what Osteogus did during his rule as Medes, he gave his own daughter to a Persian prince. And this Persian prince's name was Cambyses. Now you say,.

So what? Well,.

Cambyses's father was Cyrus the first. So what happened was shortly after giving, after Osteogus gave his daughter to marry Cyrus the first son to marry him, she became pregnant with child.

He did not,.

Osteogus did not know this, but what Osteogus had done, he had had a series of dreams that warned him that the child that his own daughter and Cambyses was going to have was going to be a ruler over all the nations, even the nations that he possessed.

So the first thing he did at this time, because of superstition, he thought he would step into action and he determined he would bring his daughter home. And when his daughter came home after she delivered their child,.

That child,.

He would have the child killed so that that child could not be ruler over the nations as he had these dreams about. So nevertheless, the child was born in 583 BC. Shortly after the child was born, Osteogus ordered his servant.

His servant's name was Harpagus. He ordered Harpagus to take the child out anywhere and just leave the child to die.

However,.

Harpagus, he was plagued with a conscience. He could not in good,.

In good conscience,.

Kill a child of royalty he knew to be an heir to the throne. So what he did is. Harpagus took the child,.

Or I'm sorry,.

Harpagus, he couldn't leave the child to die. So he called for one of his servants, basically one of his herdsmen. Now his herdsman name was Mitrogates. Again, these names,.

You don't,.

You can or cannot remember them. It doesn't matter. But the point is,.

This is historical fact.

Harpagus,.

Because he was plagued with conscience, couldn't do this to the child. So he called one of his herdsmen,.

Mitrogates,.

And said,.

I want you to do this. Mitrogates took the child to his own home. And as Mitrogates arrived at his own home, his wife had just given birth to her stillborn child. So the wife of Mitrogates begged Mitrogates, because Mitrogates told her what the plan was.

The wife begged Mitrogates. Mitrogates said, or the wife of him said, please let's keep the living child and raise this child as our own child. And Mitrogates thought to himself,.

Aha,.

I can still not be in trouble. So what he did, he took his dead child and he presented the dead child to Harpagus. So Harpagus could present the child to, to Astyages, as though they had done all that they had been commissioned.

To do.

But brothers and sisters, this was the act, an act of the sovereignty and the providence of God, keeping even this godly king in the line of his succession. What they did, what they did not know, they had no idea that the child that they were raising would one day be named Cyrus the Great.

And that is who we are reading about here in the book of Ezra. That is who we are reading about. And this is how the Lord providentially ensured his divine will. So we see how the Lord preserved the line so that Cyrus could come back because you must know this today,.

God cannot lie.

Why?

Because he is truth. God cannot be dark because he is light. God cannot be imperfect because he is. He cannot be unrighteous because he is righteous.

He is.

So whenever,.

Whenever as we consider how the Lord stirred up Cyrus, whenever you read any promise in the scripture, remember whose bond it is. William Grinnell, one of the old Puritans said this, it is none other than the word of God.

When you think of God, be sure, be sure that you do not confine him with the little compass of your finite apprehensions, but conceive of him always as an infinite being whose center is everywhere. His circumference is nowhere.

And he said, and I love this.

And when you have raised your thoughts to the highest, then know that you are still yet as far, even infinitely farther from reaching his glory.

And his immensity.

Than you are as a man is climbing up on a mountain to touch the sun. We will never reach that Zenith,.

That pinnacle.

So the Lord stirred up the word in the Hebrew here. It means to stir, it means to rouse, it means to insight. So what the Lord did in stirring up the spirit of Cyrus was that he roused him up. He incited him to do these actions.

Now,.

Another place in the scripture, so for scriptural context, another place where this Hebrew word is used for stirred up, it's in Deuteronomy chapter 32, Deuteronomy chapter 32, verse 11. The scripture says this in Deuteronomy 32, 11, like an eagle that stirs up his nest, that flutters over its young, spreading out its wings, catching them and burying them on its pinions.

It's the picture of an eagle going into his nest, first stirring up the little eagles to rise up and to fly and to do as he has commanded them. The time was no longer to be still, but the time was to move.

So what the text is saying is that by God's actions, by God's actions, by God's will, he roused up and he incited Cyrus to action.

The Meaning of Providence and the Sovereign Will of God

Next,.

What we see here,.

The Lord stirred up. So the Lord roused,.

Incited,.

Stirred up his spirit. The word spirit, the Hebrew word there, it refers to the disposition of various kinds. So uncontrolled, unaccountable and uncontrollable impulse. What God did was cause Cyrus by stirring him up.

He brought him to where he was and stirring him up to make this declaration. Now we can always go back. If you want an easy point of reference for God's sovereignty and God's will, you can always go back to Genesis to the account of Joseph,.

Right?

The easy place that seems to be kind of the place where everybody goes,.

Right?

Joseph's brothers sell him into slavery. All this bad stuff happens. The Lord raises Joseph up. Joseph goes back to meet his brethren. And he tells them the famous words,.

Right?

What you meant for evil, God meant for good. And so my friend, God can use the evil in this world to bring glory unto himself. He uses the good in this world to bring glory unto himself because all things are and were created by him.

Therefore,.

All things are subject to him. Again, in Genesis chapter one,. Genesis chapter one,.

One, three,.

Three.

In the beginning,.

God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void and darkness was over the face of the deep. And what does the text say? And the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

And God said, let there be light. And there was light. If God can cause something to come from nothing, then God can certainly use something to do anything with that. He chooses to do next.

There,.

There are those, there are those in the world today. When we speak of the sovereignty of God, when we,.

We,.

When we speak of,.

Of,.

Of the providence of God working in and through creation, there are those in the world that have the opinion that it is. Quote unquote unfair.

It is unfair.

If God were to guide and to direct the affairs of men, it is not fair that God directs and controls all things.

These,.

These who would say this really champion the cause of what's referred to as libertarian free will over against compatible free will. And what they say, the libertarian free will holders, they'll say it's unloving and it's cruel for God who is a gentleman.

They say that's, that's the big argument over the years. You all have probably heard that through the years,.

Right?

God is a gentleman and he will never intrude on you. That's one of the dumbest things that I've ever heard. Because if you're going to be saved, it's going to be because God changes your heart. Not because you offer something to God, but because God has opened your eyes, given life to the dead soul and spirit within you and brought you out of darkness into his marvelous and his glorious life.

They'll say it's unloving and it's cruel for God to do that. He's a gentleman. And I would, I would point you to a quote by Horatius Bonar. Horatius Bonar said this, I do not deny that in conversion man himself wills, in everything that he does, in everything he thinks, in everything he fear of necessity wills.

In believing,.

Bonar said, man wills. In repenting, he wills. In turning from his evil ways, he wills. All this is true. The opposite is both untrue and absurd. But while fully admitting this, there is another question behind it of great interest and movement.

And that question is this, are these movements of man's will toward good the effects of the forthcoming of God's will? In other words, is man willing because he has made himself so, or because God has made him so?

Does he become willing entirely by act of his own will? Or by chance? Or by moral persuasion? Or because acted on by created causes and influences from without? Bonar said, I answer unhesitatingly. He becomes willing because another and a superior will, even that of God, has come into contact with his, altering his nature,.

Its nature,.

And its bent.

This new bent is the result of a change produced upon it by him who alone, of all beings, has the right without control to say, in regard to all events and changes,.

I will.

Only God has that authority. The man's will has followed the movement of the divine will. God has made him willing. God's will is first in the movement, not second.

It is.

I would ask this question to consider that as well. Is it unloving for a king to rule and to reign in his own domain? Is it cruel for a parent to disallow their children to do a thing that would harm them?

The answer again is no. Is it unfair that the potter has power over the clay to make of it whatsoever he desires? Again, the answer is no. Elisha Coles, another of the great Puritans, said this, I shall treat of God's sovereignty.

He speaks on sovereignty and he says this, the sum lies in this proposition,.

Namely,.

That the great God, blessed forever, has an absolute power and right of dominion over his creatures to dispose and determine of them as seems him good. That there is such a power and that this power belongs to God.

No other reason needs to be assigned, but simply this, he is God. Now, Elisha Coles didn't sound country right then,.

Like I did.

Right?

He was probably more proper, but he said no other reason needs to be assigned but then this, that he is God and that there is none beside him. There can be no more, Coles said, because number one, there can only be one infinite.

For such a being feels heaven and earth, so no place or room for another. Number two, there can be but only one omnipotent. For he that is such has all others under his feet. Number three, there can be but one supreme.

And number four, there can be but one first cause from which all beings else derive their origin. And that is this blessed one of whom we are speaking. For the scripture says in 1 Corinthians 8, 6, of whom and for whom are all things.

And Coles closed and he said this, if he be the author of all, he needs must have a sovereign right and power to determine all both as to their being, to their order, to their efficacy and to their end.

So church, it is very, very important as we move through this and we examine and we consider this thought of God's sovereignty, God's providence. It's very important for us to note here that God directs man's steps.

God directs man's steps, even when man's heart wants to do something else. We have plans fixed and set in our mind. I'm going to do this and I'm going to do that. On such and such a day, I'll go here on such and such a day.

I'm there.

We're talking in the New Testament. If the Lord wills, we ought to say. If the Lord wills.

Right,.

But we have plans in our, but the Lord, the Lord directs the steps of man,.

But no,.

This God, capital does capital. Not. God does not cause men to have sinful thoughts or to sin. Very important distinction there. God has every right to direct his own creation's actions from the scriptures.

We can rightly infer that God causes many people to think holy and righteous thoughts, but God never causes people to think evil thoughts or to commit evil deeds. So how do we make this connection? So understand this and I'll, and I'll probably be saying this here in a minute too, but Cyrus was not a godly king.

He was a pagan. God did not cause him to be a pagan. And yet God caused him to allow for his people to be brought out of Babylonian captivity.

God did that.

God brought him out. He was a sinner because that's what's born in us. We can't help but do anything else from the day of our birth.

That's right. Then sin,.

We don't become sinners. You don't grow into sin. You don't learn, learn how to sin. You learn how to sin better. But you don't learn how to sin. Sin is natural. It's a part of who we are. Our sin nature.

That is why boys and girls, men and women alike must be born again. Samuel Craddock said this. As God created the world and all the creatures therein by his almighty power, so the scriptures teach that he upholds,.

Directs,.

Disposes and governs them all by his providence. Nothing so casual, but he disposes of it. No agent so free as to be exempted from his control. No affliction of evil or punishment, but he has a hand in it.

But as for sin, he neither is nor possibly can be the author or the approver of it. You've heard this at least three times today. And it would be very easy for those skeptics of the word to say that God is the author of evil.