Ezra 3 - Rebuilding pt.1

Transcript (Auto-generated)

Good morning everybody. Good morning. Yep, we're on. Well, I've been introduced so we don't have to do that. Thank you. It's great to see everybody here today. So what we're doing today is this is the second sermon in a series that we call Ezra New Hearts, the New Hearts Needed series. And we're going to work through the book of Ezra. In particular today, this sermon will be taken from Ezra chapter 3. So what we're going to do first up is we're going to just do the Bible reading and the Bible reading will be the whole chapter of Ezra 3. It's only a short chapter so it shouldn't take too long. If anyone wants to turn to that in their Bibles or their phones or whatever, I'll be reading from an NIV Bible today. My sermon is nearly all ESV so a little confusing. I need the giant print. I can't see. Okay. When the seventh month came and the Israelites had settled in their towns, the people assembled together as one in Jerusalem. Then Joshua, son of Jozadak and his fellow priests, and Zerubbabel, son of Shealtel and his associates began to build the altar of the God of Israel to sacrifice burnt offerings on it in accordance with what was written in the law of Moses, the man of God. Despite their fear of the peoples around them, they built the altar on its foundation and sacrificed burnt offerings on it to the Lord. Both the morning and evening sacrifices. Then in accordance with what was written, they celebrated the festival of the tabernacles with the required number of burnt offerings prescribed for each day. After that, they presented the regular burnt offerings, the new moon sacrifices and the sacrifices for all the appointed sacred festivals of the Lord. As well as those, they brought free will offerings to the Lord. On the first day of the seventh month, they began to offer burnt offerings to the Lord through the foundation of the Lord's temple, though the foundation of the Lord's temple had not yet been laid. Then they gave money to the masons and the carpenters and gave food and drink and olive oil to the people of Sidon and Tyre so they would bring cedar logs to the sea from Lebanon to Joppa as authorized by Cyrus, king of Persia. In the second month of the second year, after the arrival of the house of God in Jerusalem, Zerub... See, these are getting hard, aren't they? Zerubbabel, son of Shialtiel, Joshua's son of Babel, son of Shialtiel, Joshua's son of Jozodak, and the rest of the people, the priests and the Levites and all who had returned from captivity to Jerusalem began the work. They appointed Levites 20 years old and older to supervise the building of the house of the Lord, and Joshua and his sons and brothers, and Cadmiel and his sons, descendants of Hodeviah, and the sons of Hennadad and the sons and brothers, all Levites joined together in supervising those who were working in the house of the Lord. When the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord, the priests in their vestments and with their trumpets and the Levites and the sons of Asaph with symbols took their places to praise the Lord, as prescribed by David, king of Israel, with praise and thanksgiving they sang to the Lord, He is good, His love toward Israel and Jew is forever. And all the people gave a great shout of praise to the Lord because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. But many of the older priests, the Levites and the family heads, who had seen the former temple wept aloud and when they saw the foundation of its temple being laid, well, many others shouted for joy. No one could distinguish the sound of the shouts of joy from the sound of weeping because the people made such a noise and the sound was heard far away. That's the word of the Lord. Let's just quickly pray. Heavenly Father, we just thank You for this opportunity to come into Your Word and to learn, Lord. We pray Your Holy Spirit, prepare the hearts and minds of everyone here. Lord, to receive Your message, Lord, to receive Your Word. We pray, Lord, that You would grant me understanding too through Your Holy Spirit, Lord, that we would preach to glorify You and that Your people will learn, Lord, and grow. We thank You for this. We pray Your blessing over it. And Jesus, no. Amen. Okay. Ah, yep, we're up. First things first. Peace. Who doesn't want peace? The universal dream of just about every human being is to have peace. I know, I don't know about you, but I know I struggle with it a lot. Every time I hear the word peace, I feel like just sitting down under a tree somewhere. I'm lucky I got this property where we live up there. Yesterday it was cool, but the sun was shining. I pulled a chair up in the sun, sat down and I watched all the birds around the place. And I just loved doing that. Watching the birds. There's a little willy wag tail. He's the boss of all the birds. He's the boss of all the parts of the roof. And when the car alongs or the crows or anything, or those big birds come in, he comes and chases them all away. This is his spot, you know, the old willy wag tail. But we all struggle, don't we? We have relationships with people, with work, with... There's just so many things that put pressure on us all the time. We're busy. We're always too busy. And we just want peace, don't we? There's conflict in the world. There's trouble in the world, in the bigger picture. There's stuff going on everywhere. The thing that everybody wants is some peace. You know, they just want everything to work together and to have some peace, some peace and quiet. The English definition of peace, so in the English dictionary, talks about quietness and tranquility and not fighting. So, with that definition, you could still have two people sitting next to each other to win their hearts, hate one another, and are struggling with coldness and bitterness towards one another. But technically speaking, they're still at peace. Because they're quiet, in a sense, they're tranquil, and they're not fighting. So, from an English definition, they're at peace. But contrast this with the Hebrew definition of the word shalom. Shalom is the word that is most often translated as peace in the Old Testament. And it's about something a fair bit different. Peace to them is about completeness, wholeness in harmony with, lacking nothing. Being in alignment with. So, this understanding of peace implies a divine connection. In Psalm 23, King David says, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. Some versions of the Bible say I shall not lack. I shall not lack for anything. So, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. When God is my number one priority, then I am complete. It's a bit like the young couple who says, he completes me. When God completes us, when we have him with us, when we're close to him, I will lack nothing. I will be in harmony with God. This is the true definition of peace. So peace is being in alignment with God. When we're aligned with God, when we're in harmony with God, that is when we have true peace. Because that's where we belong. Anywhere else, we're going to struggle. That's where true peace comes from. Proverbs 3, 5 to 6, which is quite a well-known verse, says, trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Alright, so, he will make straight our paths. We'll be in alignment with God. I've got a little illustration I'm going to give now, which when I edited my my notes here, I was going to take it out, but I like the story, so I'm going to tell it. Anyway, it's about the demon-possessed washing machine. Alright, so, Lee and I had four kids, and when they were young, there was no end to washing going on. We went through quite a few washing machines over the years, and at one point we had this second-hand machine. Anyway, it used to get unbalanced really easily, and it didn't have a switch to switch it off when it got unbalanced, and it didn't have like a warning beep-beep or anything like that. And all of a sudden, we'd have the washing on, you'd start to hear this bang bang bang bang bang going on, and you think, what's going on? We go into the laundry, and this washing machine was walking around the laundry. He was like, bang bang bang, walking around. When you turned it off, it was scary. You had to sort of jump in there and try to smash the turned the thing off, because it wouldn't turn itself off. It was just really out of balance. It was crazy, and we reckoned it was demon-possessed. But anyway, we never cast the demons out, and we just got a new machine. But, I sort of saw that, that's like us when we're out of balance with God. You know what I mean? When we're not in alignment with God, we're not in harmony with God. We're like bouncing around all over the place, thrashing around us. They're probably making a fair bit of noise, and not really achieving much from a Christian point of view. You know? Because we're not aligned with God. We're off track. So why am I talking about Shalom Peace, that in a sermon on Ezra 3, you probably wondered why I'm coming with it. It was important for the returning Israelite exiles like anyone tasked to rebuild a destroyed temple and inevitably to rebuild an entire city to first prioritise where they were going to start work. So when they're coming in, they got this job from, I was a project manager for a while, so I can think like this, and they come in and what's the first thing we're going to do? I used to, when I was a project manager, initially I used to think, oh, we've got to understand what the concept is in the building and how big it's going to be and where it's going to fit and how it's going to... But that's not the first thing. I learned in the long run the first thing you do is go and talk to the stakeholders, the people who are involved. And you talk with them and you understand what they really need, you know? And they connect with you and it makes a big difference to the project in the long run. You end up getting something they need, not something that someone else wants. So, it was important for those exiles to prioritise where they were going to start work. The priority for the returned exiles needed to be that shalom with God, that peace with God. You know, they'd gone through a whole lot through being exiled and living in Babylon, in a foreign culture and all the rest of it, and then coming back. And the whole reason it took place in the first place was because they were not obedient to God and they were doing what they weren't aligned with God, right? And so, what they needed to do as a priority to get back in alignment with God, right? To fix that up, to get that shalom thing happening with God. They were fearful of their enemies and they were vulnerable. They were very vulnerable. There were no walls, there was nothing. But, rather than prioritise repairing the protective walls and rebuilding the defences, they put connecting with and pleasing God first. Even though they were vulnerable, they could be attacked at any time. They decided that the first thing they needed to do was get things right with God. Isn't that true of all of us? In this way, we can see God drawing this remnant to himself. His priority was first rebuilding their hearts to be in harmony with him. To be as King David was, a man after God's own heart. King David's heart was aligned with God's heart, right? The heart of God. He had a heart like God. The priority was not a building program for these exiles, but a heart transformation program. That's what needed to take place for this. Just working a clicker out here. I'll just get you a next slide here. Thank you. What we're going to do now is we're just going to go through some points of application from Ezra 3. It's only a short chapter, but we're going to pull three particular things out of this chapter that we can apply, that work for us and we can apply in our lives now. The first one is, a heart in sync with God chooses God's path. I'll just quickly read from Ezra 3.1-2 again. When the seventh month came and the children of Israel were in the towns, the people gathered as one man and arose Jeshua, the son of Josadak, with his fellow priests and Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtel with his kinsmen, and they built the altar of God of Israel to offer burnt offerings on it as it was written in the law of Moses, the man of God. So the seventh month, it says there that when the seventh month came the seventh month was the most important of the Israelite religious calendar. It included the Feast of Trumpets, the Day of Atonement which they call Yom Kippur, and the Feast of Tabernacles which is also called the Feast of Booths. You might have that in your version. Many sacrifices were to be made throughout this month. The altar was foundational to the execution of these festivals and became a priority for them to build. The first priority in the building program was to be the altar because they wanted to be obedient to God. They wanted to take part of all of these festivities, these religious festivals that God had ordained for them to do. They wanted to please God and they wanted to obey God so it was only natural the first thing they had built as the altar. Rather than fix their house, fix the wall, build a temple, instead they put the altar first. That was their priority. The first one states that the people gathered as one, one man to Jerusalem. The Hebrew word for gathered does not mean like forced or brought in together, but it's more like drawn. It's as if one voice calls and they all answer. God calls and those in harmony with him, those with renewed hearts call him and answer his call. They all respond even though they are scattered around and surrounding towns. They didn't come back to Jerusalem. They went to whatever town their relatives lived in. They were all over the place and they heard the call of the Holy Spirit. God put the call out and they all heard the call independently and they all came in. They were attuned to God. They were in harmony with God. And seeking God and he drew them in. This gathering together of God's people to do God's work reinforces to us the importance of Christians meeting at church. I hear lots of sermons and I myself I'm involved in prison and ministries and I've been for 30 years and we talk all about not just Sunday but the other days of the week. I've put very little effort and time into talking about church on the one day a week we come together. This is really showing me stuff. This is great. We gather at church on Sunday and what we do together with God lays the foundation for our week ahead. As part of these prison and ministries we helped start and run a ministry called Restore which was over in Italy and it was a post prisoner ministry. Prisoners who were getting out of jail we would connect with them and they would come to us and then we would work with them, we would mentor them we would help them in a whole lot of different ways and we would support them. We would help them in their walk with God lead them to Christ because we knew that was the most important thing and we knew the most important thing was a changed heart. Anyway we were going to stop these guys going back so many of them just do that circlic thing where they keep going back coming out and going back and so we were trying to stop that from happening. We were meeting with them over there and we did church on Saturday afternoon so Leanne and I would drive from Woodford to Beanley every Saturday afternoon to do church and that became our church on a Saturday afternoon. And whenever we were getting ready to go to church everything would go wrong and we would start to feel sick Leanne would say I'm not feeling very well and I'm not feeling well easy and I'm so tired and we'd think it's a long way to go why bother why bother going all the way over to Beanley it's a long drive and we might even disagree with stuff and we'd eventually force ourselves to get in the car Leanne had usually fall asleep because she was tired and I'd sit there moralizing why am I going over here again and it's a long way to go and we'd finally get over there to Beanley and then you'd see some of the guys who had not long been out of jail and you'd start connecting with them and then we'd praise the Lord we'd start seeing and doing praise and worship and we'd have testimonies, we always had a lot of testimonies really powerful stuff we'd do some teaching and we'd learn we'd fellowship afterwards and have tea and coffee and then we'd often grab one or two of the guys and take them out for dinner just so we could get to know them better and we'd go, by the time we got in that car we were just floating on cloud nine we were like, the spirit was just we were filled with the spirit, we're thinking there's no better thing we could be doing anywhere at any time yet we had all these reasons why we were struggling and you're encouraged by one another and people can pray for you and you're just mixing with your brothers and sisters in Christ and learning and growing from the sermons and the teaching and the fellowship and all of that really set you up for the week ahead and one thing I really noticed when we did occasionally not go to church because we gave in maybe to that struggle the following week wasn't so great you know? for some reason you can't even explain it but things just aren't the same it's important we come to this church is an important thing we're called together together God's calling us to come together you guys are responding here and it makes a difference you might not notice it but it does alright, our second point second slide yet okay, so thank God for the beginning trusting he will bring the conclusion that's three you've got one, three and four alright okay, Taipei I was sick, I'll be cruel anyway, I'll come up with an excuse alright, so thank God for the beginning trusting he will bring the conclusion in Ezra 3 8-11 Zeruba Bell I keep making myself say all these names Zeruba Bell, Jeshua and many other Israelites enthusiastically celebrated and praised God after laying the foundation the beginning of the second temple so they've done the altar the altar in place and they're using that but now they've just laid the foundation anyone's seen a foundation for something like that it's just flat ground with big rocks, they're basically compact all the soil around it and then they put great big huge stones slabs all the way around and so they can build a temple on top of it and the temple's got a solid base and won't sink and won't fall over you know and so it's really nothing to look at all you're looking at is some blocks on the ground basically, it's not much to see so they built that and after laying that foundation which is the beginning of the temple of the second temple the first temple was Solomon's temple they're building the second one the Solomon's one was destroyed the difference was is they were celebrating the beginning in Solomon's temple when Solomon's temple was built until it was completed and then they had a huge ornate celebration after it was finished it was completed whereas here we have the exiles rebuilding the temple, all they've done is the foundation and they're celebrating now they're not celebrating not waiting until the thing's complete they're celebrating just the foundation going in place okay so these guys were basically sorry, I just lost my place so the return to exiles for them, this was essentially an act of faith that God would see the second temple completed so they started it and they started building it they had the foundation down, they're celebrating but they have faith that God will complete what they've started they've started and they have faith that God will complete it we don't do our work before God to celebrate our achievements in other words the things that we've completed at the end which we think will make us right with God we praise Him, we serve Him we work for Him because of what He has already done for us we don't work for God so that we can earn brownie points with Him alright we work with God because He's already He's already done the work with us alright He's taken us in, He's accepted us as His child and He is doing the work He loved us before we ever knew Him alright He loved us first like the temple builders we sing to God for God is good He's steadfast love and Jews forever the famed English preacher Charles Spurgeon often spoke about how human strength and efforts failed to impress God human strength and effort fails to impress God noting that God actually looks for our emptiness so He can fill it that's what God is looking for He wants to fill us and grow us He wants us to be His children well He's not impressed with the things that we think we can do and usually do without Him Philippians 1.6 says I am sure of this that He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ He who began a good work in you when you started this walk with Jesus you began that walk but He will see it through to completion we celebrate the good work God is doing in us and we have faith that He will complete it I struggled a lot with this as a Christian I went to college I did all these things and I wanted to be the perfect Christian the type that goes into the church the perfect church and destroys the church because there's no one that's perfect and I was always trying to be this good Christian trying really striving and really trying hard to be this good Christian and all the dippas burned me out I got so tired and I remember I was out in the desert and I went into the desert to speak with God and I said to Him I can't do this anymore I take one step forward two steps back, two steps forward I try and I try and I try and I just can't seem to make it work and I felt compelled in my heart to say to God when I was praying to Him Lord, You need to do it for me, I can't do it anymore I just can't do this anymore You need to do it for me and I felt God whisper in my heart not an audible voice but just in my heart I felt Him say at last Duncan You're going to give me a chance after years and years of me trying to be a good Christian God said at last You're going to give me the chance and I went back to my donger and went to bed, woke up the next morning I thought I'm going to pray to God with this renewed understanding and I said to the Lord I said God give me the strength to be the man you want me to be but straight away I felt God say to me in my heart Duncan I don't want to answer that prayer and I thought why He said you just want to be strong so you don't have to rely on me anymore and I thought and He said Duncan my grace is sufficient for you my power is made because my power is made perfect in weakness His power is made perfect in my weakness and I'm out there trying to not be weak all the time and in a sense pushing God away and God will start something and He will have faith that He will finish it rather than in a sense I'm not trusting God I'm out there trying to fix myself and make myself this great Christian person what makes you a good Christian is walking in harmony with God just being with Him it's like Enoch walked with God and he was no more because God loved Enoch because he just walked with God walked with Adam and Eve in the garden initially that's peace, that's true peace we'll go to 4 is it? 4 ok so always looking back will prevent you from effectively moving forward in Ezra 3 11 to 13 during the celebration for the laying of the temple that we just talked about for the temple foundation all the people shouted and praised the Lord however many of the older men who had seen the wonder of Solomon's temple wept loudly drowning out the praise looking back shows a person's heart and affections are still anchored to what they left behind when they focus on this they venture away from the straight path ahead Luke 9 61 to 62 says yet another said I will follow you I will follow you Lord just let me say farewell to those at my home and Jesus said to him no one who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God that's strong isn't it? that seems really unfair in some sense you know what? just looked back and he's not fit for the kingdom I thought that's pretty tough you know I was a chaplain out west the flying fly out chaplain for the resource industry so I'd do two weeks out one week back and I'd run church on Wednesday and Fridays and for all the flying fly out workers at the villages out west in Rome and all around that area west in Queensland for origin energy and I was doing a sermon once a lot of country boys out there and I was doing a sermon on this very passage that Jesus where Jesus talked about putting a hand on the plough and looking back you know it's not fit for the kingdom and this young fella he said he got up and said to me he said when I was five dad taught me to drive the tractor as they do when you're five years old back in the country you learn to drive the tractor he had a plough and he wanted him to plough a field and so he said jump on the tractor and he knew how to start the tractor and drive the tractor and let's see how you go plough on the field I just want straight lines on the field straight furrows down the field he was on the tractor and he said he just straight away heard a noise and he looked around and looked back and kept going a bit longer and they said I can't see anything in front of me how am I going so he turned around again and had a look back again and he realised he was off track and so he tried to correct himself and he turned around and he ended up with this tracks all over the place and I can really vouch for this I got a zero turn mower at home and I like to make one track about 300 metres long on the grass and I try this I pick out something right in the distance just pick it out keep my eye on it and drive just look at that nothing else not looking around and I have this perfectly straight line so this is exactly what happens and of course this guy's father pulled him up and pointed out what he was doing wrong he said find that point and keep focused on it and isn't that a great picture of us keeping our eye on the Lord turn your eyes upon Jesus keep your focus on him and when we take our focus off of him we go away from that straight path David in Psalm 23 he talked about our shepherd guides us on paths of righteousness for his name's sake anyone remember that part of Psalm 23 and it's really interesting because obviously the shepherd is Jesus and he leads us on that path but what can happen in the context of shepherds back in a couple of thousand years ago they would have fields of wheat growing with no fences they didn't have any such things as fences around the place and they'd have straight roads with paths between them and so the shepherd when he needed to get to the other side to take the sheep he would take them on the straight path he would walk out front and the sheep would follow but the sheep would see that wheat and that started to get tempted wouldn't they and they'd start turning off and going into the fields and start eating the wheat and the shepherd would turn around and where's his sheep they're all in the fields they've gone off the straight path and not following him anymore and they're in there and of course they bring disrepute onto the shepherd because it's against the law it's against Jewish law for the sheep to go in there and eat that and so it brings disrepute to the shepherd and this we're talking Jesus Christ people who know where Christians and they see us out off the straight path are doing the wrong thing we're bringing disrepute to our Lord we need to stay on that path and all they need to do is keep their eyes fixed on the shepherd it's the same as us we need to keep our eyes fixed on the shepherd but when we look back and this is what happened these fellows were looking back to Solomon's temple when you look back you go off track there's problems I mean these people are praising God and yet they're drowning out the praise with their wailing and crying about the fact that it's not Solomon's temple being rebuilt okay when we look back we're not keeping our eyes on God and we break our shalom peace that alignment with God and we wander off the straight path we must be careful with comparison also we can become disillusioned and discouraged when we compare by always looking back to the good times when we look back to the good times we're taking our eyes off the present and where we are with God okay so just in conclusion we just get the next one okay so for us Christians the cross has replaced the altar so let's bring it into questions now where we're talking about a Jewish world back then Christ is our Lord and Savior for us Christians the cross has replaced the altar so the altar that they used to make the sacrifices on the altar the atoning sacrifices to make them right with God but Jesus has become the ultimate sacrifice and he was offered up for our sinful and hardened hearts in our service to our Lord Jesus in a right relationship with him a shalom relationship we must turn to him first obey him and thank him for what he has done for us Jesus is our foundation this is something Lindel talked about Jesus is our foundation he is our cornerstone the foundation that they were laying for the temple and all the hope they put in that which is temporary we now have in Jesus Christ he is our foundation and our priority all that we do is be built upon him first Corinthians 311 says for no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid which is Jesus Christ a favourite modern day hymn called all glory be to Christ I listen to this every time I get in the car and I turn my plug my phone in and the YouTube algorithm comes up and because I've been watching the same thing every day it keeps giving me the same song every day and I love it I keep listening to it every day I love a version by the Petersons who are a country group in America who are Christian and they do an archipelago version of this which is amazing but the first verse in this song all glory be to Christ says should nothing of our effort stand no legacy survive unless the Lord does raise the house in vain its builders strive to you who boast tomorrow's gain tell me what is your life a mist that vanishes with the dawn all glory be to Christ all glory be to Christ let's pray Heavenly Father we just praise you and thank you for your word we thank you Lord that you love us Lord you provide us with the opportunity to pull in alongside with you to be in harmony with you Lord we just pray that you would help us to recognise when we're going off track when we take our eyes off you when we break that that completeness Lord help us to have peace and rest in you Lord Lord we praise you and we thank you we pray all glory and honour and blessings to you Father Amen