What if God wanted to do a “New Thing?” What if that “New Thing” was to restore a nation? What if God “stirred the hearts” of “His people?” What if one of those people whose hearts were “stirred” was yours? How would we know if it was our idea or God’s?
Sunday we are going to visit one of those events when God steps in and “re-awakened” not only the hearts of His people but “awakened” the hearts of pagan rulers. That hope is not a dream; it happened and the time is called “The Restoration of the Nation of Israel.” It is recorded in the Scriptures.
These are stories of our Fathers; they are our stories. What God did once He can and will do again. In these awakenings we learn what it means to know God. As the Proverbs proclaim “Keep these words in your heart… when you walk they will lead you… when you sleep they will keep you… when you wake up they will advise you… they are a lamp…a light… the way of life!
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Notes Transcript Video Audio iTunesGrace Fellowship Church
John Raymond
Series: One Story: Digging Deeper
February 24, 2013
Return: Worship – Word – Walls
Ezra 1:1-5; 3:10-11; 6:19-21
How are we doing tonight? All right, good. I love the 5:15. It’s a little more relaxed, a little more engaged. It’s not as crazy. If you are with GraceKidz, go ahead and take off to the back, or if you’re with the middle school, go off to my right, which is your left. If you need a Bible, we’re going to take these Bible carts around.
As we’re getting settled in, I want to remind us that last week Jon Stallsmith shared with us about the time of exile. The people were taken off to Babylon by King Nebuchadnezzar. They were a people who were totally depersonalized, dehumanized. They lived in a foreign land. They had to eat foreign food and learn a foreign language, and they were surrounded by foreign gods. This week we’re in the section of Return. That’s where we’ll be diving in tonight. We’ll be looking at the book of Ezra, primarily.
With One Story, we’ve been going at this for a pretty good while. If I’m honest with you from the beginning and up front, there have been times when I’ve felt this tension of, “When are we going to get to the New Testament?” We are really hunkered down here in the Old Testament. As I was studying this week the book of Ezra, which I’ve read before but haven’t really pored into until these past two weeks, I found myself kind of coming back alive to the Old Testament in a way I haven’t experienced in a while. I began to re-recognize the uniqueness and the precious gift it is.
With the Old Testament stories, these real historical accounts, you have basically these historical records of how the transcendent God, the Creator, has intersected and intervened into the life of the world. It’s this running record of how God has stepped in, how he has dealt with humanity and his creation. I’m just incredibly grateful there were people who recorded this and put this down.
Maybe it’s because we have these really nicely bound books, but I think sometimes we forget we’re walking around with these ancient scrolls, these books, these stories that date back thousands and thousands and thousands of years. That is a unique and precious thing. I was reminded of this as I was studying these past few weeks. I went down to Emory’s theological library, Pitts. They say it’s like the second largest in the world.
It’s this old, old, old building, kind of like this old castle. It’s like this storehouse of all of these ancient stories of God and his people. If you’ve seen The Lord of the Rings (this might be a stretch), there’s that scene in the first one where Gandalf is rummaging through the old scrolls trying to remember the ancient stories about the ring. I kind of felt like that as I was up in this little perched-up area in this old building, and the lights don’t work, and I’m reading these sacred, real, historical texts.
I think one of the ways we can look at the Old Testament is as these windows. These stories, these books…the book of Ezra, and the book of Nehemiah, and the Prophets…serve as these windows we get the privilege of peering through to look into the life and the nature of the infinite, ineffable, transcendent God. These are stories that serve us in that kind of way.
We can look through them and not just see God but receive wisdom and instruction through looking through the windows of the books of the Old Testament. When we begin to live a life that’s saturated in God’s Word, in his Old Testament, a life where we live by the window, where we’re always leaning in, what happens when we do that (this is kind of a paraphrase from Calvin) is we leave the window with a whole new lens, a whole new pair of glasses we now see the world through.
If we live saturated in the Word, close to the window, we leave from there, and now we see the world, we see God, we see each other, we see our situation, our culture, through the lens of Scripture. I just think that’s a priceless and beautiful gift. So I don’t know where you are with the One Story. Maybe this is just me. But I’d love for us to lean into these books tonight and see what they have for us, what God wants to show us, that we’d walk out with a different pair of glasses on.
When we look at this story, one of the questions (I just want to be up front from the beginning) it begs of us (and we’re going to stick with this the entire time) is…What are you building? What are we building in our lives? It’s an inevitable law of life that we’re always building something in the different areas of our lives, from our family to our workplace to our communities. We’re always digging the shovel or striking the hammer. Every action or inaction, every decision or indecision, we are building something. I want to pause tonight and look and ask that. What are we building?
The book of Ezra is one where the people are returning from captivity. They get the chance to not only build the temple but to rebuild themselves as the covenant people of God. What happens is they come to Jerusalem and it’s in complete ruin. They have to start over and build again. One of the things I want us to consider tonight when we ask this question is…What are we building as the people of God, as the church in America?
I think, in some senses, we are building in the ruins of America. That sounds like a strong statement, and maybe it is. Hear me. I love America. I’m proud to be from here, and there’s beauty all around us. But when you look at things like the American family, I think to a certain extent it’s in a place of ruin. When you look at the corporate world, in a certain sense you could maybe say there are some ruins there. When you look at the way the systems of government maybe work, you can say that in some places our land is in a possible state of ruin.
Now hear me. I love culture. If anything I lean too far on that side. I’m pro-culture, pro-arts, pro- all of those things, but I want us to be honest and look at it for what it is and ask, “What are we building as the people of God in a nation and a culture where there are some ruins?” So let’s dive in. Turn with me to Ezra, chapter 1, verse 1.
“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.” (Ezra 1:1) What you have here is he’s saying “that the word of Jeremiah might be fulfilled.”
I don’t have time to dig into it too deeply, but Jeremiah in chapter 25 prophesies that they will be in captivity for 70 years. This is exactly what happens. To take it even further, in the book of Isaiah, roughly 200 years prior, Isaiah calls Cyrus by name and says Cyrus will release the people out of their captivity and rebuild the temple of Jerusalem.
It’s hard to get around, whether you think the Bible is real or true or not, when you have these prophecies… Two hundred years. Not just a king who’s going to go rebuild, but calling him by name. Some scholars even say Daniel possibly even showed King Cyrus this prophecy that set things into action. Let’s continue on in verse 2.
“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.” (Ezra 1:2-3)
Then he goes on in verse 5: “Then rose up the heads of the fathers’ houses of Judah and Benjamin, and the priests and the Levites, everyone whose spirit God had stirred to go up to rebuild the house of the Lord that is in Jerusalem.” (Ezra 1:5) So Cyrus, the new king of Persia, allows them to leave Babylon and return to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple, to rebuild their lives as the covenant people.
Chapter 2 is a list of some of those names. What you learn from that is there are roughly about 42,000 people making this trek back to Judah, which is a small, small fragment compared to the nation of Israel, which was at one time in the millions of its population. These people are given a new start as the people of God.
Now, they’re still under foreign rule, they’re still under the Persians, but they’re set out as this holy people to rebuild, almost similar to a religious colony, if you will, making the trek to be a people holy and set apart. As soon as they get there, they immediately set priority #1: “Let’s rebuild the altar and rebuild the temple.” We see that in chapter 3, verse 10. They’re doing this. They’re rebuilding. They’re laying the foundations. Let’s take a look at that.
“And when the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord, the priests in their vestments came forward with trumpets, and the Levites, the sons of Asaph, with cymbals, to praise the Lord, according to the directions of David king of Israel. And they sang responsively, praising and giving thanks to the Lord, ‘For he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever toward Israel.'” (Ezra 3:10-11)
As you go on, what happens is they lay the foundations, and you have the younger generation that responds by yelling and singing and shouting. They’re exuberant that they’re rebuilding the temple. But if you look on in there it says the elders, the older men, were weeping. They’re weeping because they remember the glory of the first temple. They remember how Solomon built the temple, and it grieves them to a certain extent.
What we need to see here is they understood that, to be a people of God, they had to first set as their foundation the worship of God. Remember, we’re asking the question…What are we building? What are we building in the different areas of our lives? They set worship as the very foundation. One of the things we need to ask of the different things we’re building in our lives… Are we setting this as the foundation with our families? Do we set worship, the worship of God, as the foundation of what we’re building in our families?
Maybe what that translates to us (and hear me; I’m not a parent, and I’m not going to pretend to be one) is do we set God as the ultimate Father of our children? Do we try and play that role of God in their lives? Is there some tension in us letting our children be developed by God, or do we try and rush in there and take that position? Maybe in our workplaces. Is what we’re building there, is the foundation of it a deep worship of God, or do we maybe see the company or our supervisor as trying to take that role in our minds?
I think what you could say worship is… When you come in contact with the infinite God, the Creator, worship is rightly responding to God. When you really see God, when you really come to a deep faith and revelation of God, worship is that response of complete awe and reverence, just overwhelmed by his nature and his presence. I think to have a foundation of worship is to recognize we are not at the center of the universe, that we ourselves are not God. We’re not at the center of all of the things around us.
Here’s another question, and maybe a tougher one. As the people of God, the ekklesia, the church, is this our foundation in the ruins of some of American life? Do we set worship as that foundation? Our God is not the president or the government. Our God is not the stock market or the economic status of our country. Our God is none of these things. God is God and God alone. Are we known for being a people who radically worship this God?
As we move through the story, in chapter 4 construction is halted. For 16 years the people in the land oppose them. In chapter 5 you have the prophets, Zechariah and Haggai, who are prophesying the people back into action. Then we move into chapter 6, when they’re beginning to finish the temple. Let’s look right there at chapter 6, verse 19. They’re having their first Passover celebrated in the new temple.
“On the fourteenth day of the first month, the returned exiles kept the Passover. For the priests and the Levites had purified themselves together; all of them were clean. So they slaughtered the Passover lamb for all the returned exiles, for their fellow priests, and for themselves. It was eaten by the people of Israel who had returned from exile, and also by every one who had joined them and separated himself from the uncleanness of the peoples of the land to worship the Lord, the God of Israel.” (Ezra 6:19-21)
This is a big moment in their history. What happens in chapters 7 and 8 is Ezra finally comes on the scene. Ezra is this great scribe. He’s this great man of the Word. He lives a life that leans into the windows of the Torah. He arrives 60 years after the temple has been built. He comes to teach the people the Word of God. If they’re going to build something, they need to be built up on these pillars of truth. Buddy always says this. I think this is key. “If your worship and your life are not formed by the Word of God, you’re on bad foundations.”
Plenty of people in our culture will say they have a certain worship of God, that they believe in a higher power. There’s this New Age pop psychology, if you will. They believe in a higher power. They even tell you they worship that higher power. But if their understanding of that higher power is not formed by what the Word of God says, then their worship is on bad and faulty foundations. In many ways, they’re not necessarily making contact with the real God. They’re making contact with an image they’ve constructed in their own finite mind.
Tozer (you’ve probably heard this quote a million times here) has that great saying of what comes to mind when we think about God is the most important thing about us. When we ask the question, “What are we building in our lives?” and we have the foundation of worship, we have to also ask…Do we have the pillars of God’s Word in what we’re building? Are we formed by those words of truth in our families, in our workplaces, in our communities? Are we known as a people who saturate ourselves in God’s Word? (A lot of this may be review. This is from how Buddy has preached on Ezra.)
You have worship, Word, and then that third movement is the walls. We’re moving right through the story of Return. There are really two ways to look at the walls. You have the walls of Nehemiah that are being built around this time Ezra has come. Nehemiah comes roughly 12 years after Ezra, and he builds these literal walls around the city of Jerusalem. Then you have the walls of Ezra, which are different walls. Nehemiah’s are walls of definition within a government-ruled land. The other walls, the walls Ezra builds, are walls of identity in a pagan land. One of the biblical scholars says it this way. This’ll really help us understand these walls.
He says, “In fact, this new situation under foreign rule meant that the Jewish people, again, became more strictly a covenant community and not a nation as in the monarchy. The community’s identity did not now depend on its political institutions and identity as a nation, but on a special covenant relationship to God. In God’s providence, this was a step in the preparation for the New Testament transition to the church under a new covenant in which all believers are one in Christ, and where physical, ethnic, political, and geographic distinctions are overcome.”
Israel was used to being a nation, a certain political identity, and they’re returning under still foreign rule, so they can’t grab that as their identity, as a nation, as a monarchy. Rather, their identity has to be more deeply rooted in being a people set apart who have a special covenant relationship with the One God, Yahweh. Really, within the community we’re looking at, then, there were kind of two views. I think you might see some similarities with our situation today.
One of the views of the people is that they believed they should accept the political status quo and concentrate on the development of an exclusively religious community. They kind of had the idea they should be political quietists, that they shouldn’t really be engaged with the culture or what was going on at the time. They should completely separate themselves, build up some really, really high walls, and just be a separate religious colony, a subculture.
The second was very different, very opposed. It was a view that they should overthrow the foreign ruler, the foreign domination, and reestablish political independence, grab onto that identity, under their own king. This is exactly the situation Jesus steps into.
You had some people who thought we were supposed to be off on our own, be this religious, pure, holy people, not engaged with what was going on, and then you had this other, the zealot mindset, that we need to overthrow, that the Messiah is strictly about a king in a political office who needs to kick out the foreign rule, the Romans, and that our identity is rooted in that.
I don’t know that our situation is all that different as the church of the kingdom of God in America. We have to accept where our walls lie as these people of God, the land we inhabit. Jesus, by staring Pilate in the face and saying that Pilate is not really the king but that he is the King over all, and saying that his kingdom is not of this world, this cosmos in the Greek, not of this system and of this order… That is a strong sociopolitical statement. He’s saying, “My kingdom is higher than yours, and it’s of a different order.”
What you can take from that is that Christ’s kingdom is one that is socially engaged. It’s not off on its own. It’s not to be a subculture, but it is to be involved in the culture it’s around. Secondly, what you can take from that is that his kingdom is radically distinguished and different than the kingdoms of the earth. The kingdom of God is one thing, and the kingdom of America, or of any nation, is a totally different thing.
It’s not our role as the church to try and overthrow and take over and try and take political office and have the reins of voting and legislation. That’s not necessarily what we’re to do as the people of God. That’s not the way of the kingdom. At the same time, we’re not to just be off on our own, hiding in our churches. We are to be a people in a foreign land who are engaged. This whole thing of being relevant I find interesting. I could be wrong on this, so take it for what you will.
For me, for the church, the people of God, to talk about being relevant, to me means we’re always one step behind. Do you see what I mean? We’re always one step behind and we’re trying to catch up to what the world culture sets. I think the nature of the kingdom of God is one that is socially engaged, not hiding off as a subculture. It’s one that is strongly defined by its walls, and it’s one that is not trying to be relevant, but it is culture creating. It is at the forefront.
My good friend Brian Burchik, high school pastor, and Randy as well… They’re always saying we as the people of God should be at the forefront of the different spheres of life. We should be building the best families. We should be the most creative people. We should be at the forefront of the business world and the corporate world and the political world, all of the different spheres of life.
We are a people who are incredibly engaged, but engaged as a different kingdom, serving in our land. There is a clear distinction. There are walls of definition. Now, walls aren’t about exclusivity. They’re not about, “Here’s where the wall is; you’re out here and we’re in here.” You can’t have walls unless you have a defined people. Identity first has to be there. That’s what erects the walls of definition.
The second walls, the ones Ezra is after, are walls of identity. What’s going on as you look at Ezra 8 and 9 and onward is that the people have intermarried with the people of the land, the pagans of the land. Ezra, when you look at it, causes the men to separate from the foreign wives, which just reading it seems incredibly harsh. What Ezra understands about walls, about distinction, is that if they intermarry, they run the risk of the Israelite people dissolving, that their birth line would soon run out.
Not just that, but they also run the risk of beginning to worship the idols of the foreign people, to begin to worship their gods. Once again, I don’t know if we’re in all that different of a situation. As we engage as the distinct people of God’s kingdom in the different ruins we see around us, are we distinct from the world and its ways? Do we have clear walls of definition? Do we sometimes look like the world and sound like the world and so forth?
Hear this. This is not anti-world or culture or so forth. I work with the college students. It’s a little different. Sometimes they can… Well, I’m sure you can fill in the blank. They just haven’t lived a lot of life yet. They’re in their college bubble. I think it’s hard for them to see that within the world are very black and white systems of injustice and deception, anti-life. Sometimes it’s hard for them to see that.
Remember, as we’re asking the question, “What are we building?” we have to look at this. As we peer into the windows of Ezra, we see this is the order: a foundation of worship, a structure, the pillars of God’s Word, of his truth, not the wisdom of man, but the wisdom of God, and that we have clear walls of definition, of Christian identity as the people, the ekklesia of God. We are his and his alone.
One of the ways we can look at this… I don’t want to just preach and then not give you some good tools. We do this conference with 3DM. The staff gets to hear all of this great wisdom and teaching and concrete tools. Sometimes I don’t know how good we are at passing it on. We did some stuff this morning with the student ministry, which was really helpful.
They call this a SWOT analysis. As we’re reading this story and we’re asking the question of, “What are we building in the different areas of our lives?” I think this’ll be a grid to help us answer that. Up here you have… This represents strength, this is weakness, this is opportunity, and this is threat. Let’s talk about something concrete. Let’s say you’re asking the question…What are you building in your workplace? Are you building on the foundation of worship, on the pillars of his Word, and on the definition of Christian identity?
Let’s say one of the things you want to do in your workplace is to start to integrate more kingdom principles into the way you do business. What you can look at in this grid is…Is there a high opportunity to do that? Let’s say it’s this way. Let’s say there’s a strength. You know the Word well.
You already have some of those principles in mind that you can integrate into your practices, but let’s say there’s a threat. There are people in the company who don’t really welcome that kind of thinking. What you have there is a battle. But if you have a high opportunity and a strength, what you have is a breakthrough.
Let’s take another example. Let’s say you’re a mother, and you want to build a certain foundation with your family. Let’s say you have a daughter. We’ll be real detailed. You want to work on more meaningful communication, having really good conversations of substance with your daughter.
Maybe she’s 16 and she’s kind of changing a lot and growing up. Let’s say (parents will connect with this)… My mom always said, as I was kind of moved on, the best time to always talk to your children is when you’re driving them in the car, because they can’t get away. They’re sitting right there, and that is the best time to have conversations.
So let’s say with your daughter, every day you drive her home from school. There’s a high opportunity for you to have those conversations. But let’s say there’s a weakness. You just don’t know how to start it. You don’t know how to initiate the conversation. What you have there is a frustration. Then if you have a weakness and a threat, then of course you have a failure.
What I want to leave us with is that you see that list right here. We just gave a list of different areas in our lives that we’re building: in our devotional life, in our families, in our friendships, in our discipleship, in our work, recreation, and rest, in our local churches, in our communities. What are we building? Are we building on worship, the Word, and that Christian identity?
I want to leave us with this. I think one of the things we have to understand, one of the things I’m more deeply understanding as I’m getting older and engaging more with the world around us, is that the kingdoms of the world, the cultures of the world, rise and then they fall. They’re built and then they crumble. You see this cycle throughout history, over and over and over again.
But the kingdom of God doesn’t operate in this way. The kingdom of God does not rise and fall. It’s not built and crumbles. It will endure into eternity, because it’s built on this deep foundation of worship, it’s hoisted up by these pillars of God’s Word and has these walls of definition and identity. Yes, we want to ask tonight, “What are we building in our own lives?” but we also have to ask…What are we building as the church in this land and in this time? What are we laying down as our foundation?
I’m convinced… We might not see it in our time or our generation. Usually these things work over multiple generations. But I believe that in the future we will see something like another Great Awakening in this land. History tells us it’s bound to come again, if you look at the history of this nation. I strongly believe that will come. Whether I see it or not, I don’t know, but my role is to build for the kingdom in such a way, for the kingdom of God in the land of America, that someone can come behind me and something of that magnitude can happen in this land.
What are we building in Snellville, our faith family at Grace, and what are we building in our own lives? Together as a 5:15 gathering, let’s ask this question this week. I strongly encourage you to sit down, maybe with your wife or with your family, and look through that. Let us be a people of the kingdom of God that advances in this land. Let’s pray.
Jesus, we recognize you as King. We recognize your kingdom as the kingdom that’s over all of the world. We just say together as a community, as your people, that we want to build on good foundation. We want to have structures that are built on your Word. We want to be defined by the identity you’ve given us.
Lord, I pray that here in Snellville and in our nation we’d be a people set apart who engage and who build by a deep service of others, and that your kingdom would advance here in the ruins we see around us. We just say, Holy Spirit, only you can do it. Only you can do that kind of work through us and among us. We welcome your work and your presence in our lives. We worship you. In Jesus’ name, amen.