Lessons From Ezra

Good afternoon, brethren. Thank you, Nathan. That was quite beautiful. I always love hearing live piano. Thrilled to be here, and I appreciate the invitation. This is the first time I've been here since you got in this new building. I think I was speaking to someone before services, and I said, oh, you've been here about a year or so. They said, no, it's been two years. Time flies when you're not paying attention. But it's great to see it in person.

Boy, that says it's been a long time since I visited Indianapolis, too. Last time I was here was up in the northwest corner of the outer belt in that large church. I love this. This is really nice. Thank you for hosting the ABC Sampler. It's always a pleasure for us to be able to come out and visit. I'm speaking for Mr. Myers and Mr.

Cubitt, but I'm pretty sure they have the same things to say. Mr. Creech mentioned slipping me an extra cupcake, but I'd have to say, actually, that's not necessary. We're always recruiting. We love to have people come to ABC. I brought, actually, some copies of our catalog. If anyone would like to see what the courses are like that we offer and some of our policies, I brought several extra of these that I'd be glad to just hand you and let you keep.

I even brought some of the applications. I do that mostly because some people say, well, how do you apply? What's it like? And when you see the application, it's, oh, that's not so hard. Actually, I've been saying for years, getting accepted to attend ABC is the easy part. It's finding a place to stay when you're going to be there that's more of a challenge, but not an insuperable challenge by any means. We have members in the area that have rooms that they rent. Sometimes young adults go together and share an apartment, so there are ways to do it, and I'd encourage you, if you have it in mind, please talk to one of us and give it a thought.

You don't have to be young. I'm glad we actually have two of your congregations members with us this year, and Sue Robison is not the oldest member of our ABC class this year. We have two other retirees, so we're thrilled to have them. Glad to have all of that, and I've got to stop talking about ABC eventually and get into my sermon.

You'll have to pardon me. I could talk about that all day, but I wanted to begin with a question that, after I'd wrote it, I thought it had wrote. Had written, I thought it could be misconstrued. The question is, have you ever wished that you had lived at a different time in history? Now, I say that could be misconstrued because I don't mean it, do you wish you could get away from what we've been putting up with for the last couple years?

You might think, yeah, I'd like to live at a different time, but rather I'm thinking of opportunities that existed at other times. You know, some of us may have romanticized. If you like movies about the Middle Ages with knights in armor jousting to win the favor of fair maidens. Or perhaps if you're an outdoorsman, you might think, wouldn't it have been great to live during the times of the pioneers, moving across the countryside and clearing land and exploring new territories?

When I was in, I think, late teens or early 20s, I had a friend. One day he said to me, Frank, we were born too late. I thought I came right on time. I said, what do you mean? His reasoning was that if we had been born three or four decades earlier, we would have come to adulthood during the greatest economic boom in American history.

He said, with our work ethic and our brains, we could have become captains of industry and think what we could have accomplished. I don't know if that was true, but, you know, looking at the state of America when I was a teenager, I thought, well, maybe I was born too late.

At that time, we were in a very bad recession and the country was demoralized because of the Vietnam War and Watergate. The state of God's Church left some room to, I guess, maybe be nostalgic. We just come through a receivership. And, you know, the growth of the 50s and 60s and the time when the World Tomorrow program was booming across radio every night of the week, you know, that was past. And instead, the Church seemed to be going through divisions and difficult times. It's easy to think that a different era might have been better. And to be honest, I think every time in history, people might have thought that.

Makes you wonder, did people that we read about in the Bible ever think that? Did they ever look back at some of the big events and say, oh, I wish I'd been around for that. Could they ask, now that that's past, what's left for me to do? Well, with that thought in mind, I'd like today to look at the life a little bit and the work of a young man in Scripture who, well, I say a young man, he was young once.

At the time we're going to read about him, we're not sure of his age. I tend to envision him as being younger, but he might have been older. But he, if anyone, could have said, I missed the big things. Although I don't think he did. So today I do want to consider the man that's described in Scripture as Ezra, the priest, the scribe. Discover some things we can know about him. Many people are familiar with the name Ezra, if for no other reason than he has a book of the Bible named after him. We believe he is the one who wrote that book, and also that that book may at one time have been one with also the book of Nehemiah.

They might have been joined together, although much of Nehemiah would have been penned by Nehemiah. It's considered to have had his chronicles, but Ezra is thought to have put that together, possibly also 1 and 2 Chronicles.

In his writing, Ezra doesn't tell us a whole lot about himself. We do know that he was a priest. He was of the tribe of Levi, and as I mentioned, he was a scribe. I'll talk a little bit later about what that means. He appears late in the Old Testament.

His story comes in a period that the scholars call the Post-Exilic period. It's funny, when we changed our curriculum around at ABC at one point, we divided a class that we call the Writings, and then we ended up with what we call the Post-Exilic Writings. That's a name I came up with just because I like to say Post-Exilic. Well, that's not the only reason. It's an accurate name, but sometimes it's fun to latch onto things that are fun to say. But what does that mean? It was the time after the nation of Judah had been conquered by the Babylonians. Most of the population killed or taken away captive, but then after 70 years, being allowed to return and to rebuild. And they're in that in-between period, waiting for the Messiah to come.

Let's consider briefly what all had happened before Ezra's time. If we do a timeline of the Bible in general, we can hit some of the big points that those people missed, starting with creation. That was a big one. Only Adam and Eve got to see the tail end of that.

But after Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden, about 1600 years or so went by, and then there was Noah's flood. That passed, and a little while later, God began working with the patriarchs. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob.

Jacob's descendants went down into Egypt, where they grew into a nation, but also were enslaved and served the Egyptians. Sometime later, God called a special man named Moses, who was prepared in a very interesting way, first raised in the royalty as a prince of Egypt, then being humbled as a lowly shepherd in the land of Midian, and then leading the children of Israel out. Being the mediator between God and man, and giving them the law and the religion that God would have them have, until right at the brink of entering the Promised Land, his assistant Joshua led the nation in there. Now, for a while, Israel was somewhat divided, loosely organized, ruled at times by various judges. And during that time, the Bible says every man did what was right in his own eyes. Then came the kingdom, the monarchy, first King Saul, then David, considered the greatest, followed by his son Solomon. Solomon built the temple. All of this was still long before the time of Ezra. Of course, building the temple was a huge project. You can read about in 2 Chronicles 2. I'm not going to turn there, but I can imagine as a priest growing up, Ezra might have read about that account and thought, I would have loved to have been there then. When the temple was finished, Solomon led a special dedication ceremony with special sacrifices, and God literally sent fire from heaven to ignite the sacrifice. And what was called the Shekinah Glory filled the temple. The power of God was so great, the priests couldn't be in there. They had to go out. Wow! I can imagine if I were a young man preparing for the priesthood, I might have said, wish I could have been there for that. I would have loved to have been there. What's there for me? What am I going to get to experience? In the centuries that followed, Israel split into two kingdoms. The northern one retained the name Israel, and maybe the bigger part of the population. The southern kingdom took the name Judah, but they did retain the dynasty of King David and his heirs. Now, the northern kingdom fell away from worshiping God, and they never really had a good king. Eventually, they were conquered by Assyria and taken away captive. The southern kingdom, with the heirs of David, sometimes were better, sometimes worse. I'm sure Ezra would have paid more attention to that history of that kingdom. He might have looked at the reign of King Josiah when they discovered the book of the law in the temple. Can you imagine that it had actually been lost? But think of the excitement for the priesthood to say, we've found it. We're going to restore dedication to God. Again, Ezra might have thought, wouldn't that have been something? What's there for me? The big events are past. Of course, something big was yet to happen, one of the worst disasters. The Babylonian army came, and this time Judah was conquered. That beautiful temple, one of the wonders of the ancient world, was destroyed. The Ark of the Covenant, well, the thought is that it had already been lost. It certainly was gone now. And God revealed through Jeremiah the prophet that the people of Judah would be captive for 70 long years. And the 70 years passed, and then Cyrus the Persian emperor reversed the policy of the Babylonians. And the Babylonians and the Assyrians before them liked to take peoples away from their land and put them somewhere else. It would sort of, it seems the idea was to reduce their tendency to want to rebel and restore their homeland. People don't have a lot of reason to rise up to free some strange land where they have no roots.

I want to turn, if you will, to 2 Chronicles 36, because we're moving into Ezra's story. 2 Chronicles, there we go, comes before, coincidentally, just before Ezra. 2 Chronicles 36, and we'll begin with verse 22.

I like the way this lectern is situated. It's down low enough I might not need my reading glasses. Here near the very end of the book, it says, 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, the king of Persia, and you know it was written like that, All kingdoms of the earth, the Lord God of heaven is given to me, and he has commanded me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Who is among you of all his people? May the Lord his God be with him, and let him go up. That's where the book of Ezra begins. If you're looking, you can see that same proclamation is repeated there in the first chapter of Ezra.

In the first several chapters of the book describe people who were moved to go, go and begin that rebuilding process. Now, I'm going to give a little warning. I guess I would say confession, but I didn't write the book. Much of Ezra doesn't make the most interesting reading. It has lots of lists of people and lists of things and copies of official proclamations. And I say that because I don't want to take the time to go through all of those now. But one thing that's interesting in the first part is it tells the fascinating story of a people struggling to build this new temple and to re-establish the true worship of God. Now, to be honest, this is not Ezra's story. But to understand his story, we need to understand what happened, and I'm sure that's a lot of why he put it in the first part of the book. If you will, turn to chapter 3. We'll begin reading in the first verse.

The first verse is that the Lord offered the first offerings on it as it is written in the law of Moses, the man of God. Though fear had come upon them because of the people of those countries, even besides, in spite of that fear, they set the altar on its basis. They also kept the Feast of Tabernacles as it is written, and offered the daily-burn offerings and the number required by the ordinance for each day. So we see the formal worship that God had established is restored even before they began building that temple. Let's skip ahead to verse 10. We'll see the temple is next.

And the Levites, the sons of Asaph, with symbols 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, for his mercy endures forever towards Israel. Most likely, as it says, they were singing. This was musical. Then 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 the Levites, the heads of the Father's houses, the old men who had seen the first temple, remember that was 70 years ago, so these were indeed old men if they remembered it, they wept with a loud voice when the foundation of this temple was laid before their eyes, yet many shouted for joy. The people couldn't discern the noise of the shout of joy from the noise of weeping of the people. For the people shouted with a loud shout and the sound was heard afar off. Now, in just a moment, we'll consider some of why the folks were crying. But first, let's notice that for a time, forces were gathered against them. There were people around that didn't want this work of God to go forward, that would marshal their energies to put a stop to it. So we're going to turn ahead in chapter 4 to verse 17. And actually, well, let me summarize. Before that, some of those people that didn't like the temple being built sent a message back to the emperor of the Persian Empire to let him know that they thought this was trouble. Kind of said, do you know what's going on in Jerusalem? She should know he was the emperor. But they were reminding him, this used to be a great city, and they're troublemakers. They would rise up in rebellion, and finally they had to be squelched. If you let this go on, they're not going to pay taxes, they're not going to obey you. Just check your records. So the message comes back to them. Now I want to start reading in verse 17. The king sent an answer to rehomb the commander and shimshay the scribe, the rest of their companions, who dwell in Samaria, to the remainder that dwell beyond the river, peace and so forth. I always love that. They write in writing, so forth. I've never put that in my email messages, but... It says, Now give command and make these men cease, that this city may not be built, till the command is given by me. Take heed now that you do not fail to do this. Why should damage increase to the herd of the kings? Now, when the copy of King Artaxerxes' letter was read before Rehomb, Shimshay, the scribe and their companions, they went up and hasted Jerusalem against the Jews, and by force of arms made them to cease. Thus the work of the house of God, which is at Jerusalem, ceased, and it was discontinued until the second reign of Darius, king of Persia. Now, we might smugly say, yeah, what a shame that these people would be intimidated and stopped by mere government. Maybe that's true, but when the force of arms comes and says, you've got to stop doing this work, or else, I don't want to be so quick to condemn them for that. It's easy for us, living in a country where freedom of religion is written into our constitution, and we've been accustomed to having free reign to be critical. I hope that we will be willing to defy power if necessary when the time comes, and we'll see that things would change for them.

Let's go to chapter 5 in verse 1, because it tells us, Now, if you will keep a finger here, I want to come back, but let's turn to Haggai chapter 1 and see some of the prophecy, what some of the message was.

Now, that's towards the back. You've got to get past Psalms and Proverbs, and you've got to get past all the major prophets near the very end of the Old Testament to find Haggai. I say that because it's a pretty short book, just before Zechariah. Haggai chapter 1, we'll begin in verse 3, and then I'm going to go back to Ezra and then come back to Haggai. So, if you're like me, you keep hands and flip back and forth, but in Haggai 1 in chapter 3, we can read, You eat, but you don't have enough. You drink, and you're not filled with drink. You clothe yourselves, but no one's warm. He who earns wages earns wages, put them in a bag with holes. Thus says the Lord of hosts, consider your ways. He's basically saying, think about your situation. Let's look at this. And then he tells them what to do about it.

And be glorified, says the Lord. This tells us that even though God is spirit, and if you want to think of a link, I don't want to turn to John chapter 4, but Jesus Christ later would tell a Samaritan woman by a well that the Father doesn't need to be worshiped in any place. He wants to be worshiped in spirit and in truth. But in this time and place, God wanted the temple to be built. If for no other reason is that there were prophecies of the Messiah coming to the temple, Jesus Christ's time would come. The temple needed to be there. So keeping a finger here in Haggai, let's go back to Ezra chapter 5. Ezra 5 and verse 2, if you'll remember in verse 1 it mentioned, Haggai and Zechariah came and prophesied. We went and read what they said in the reaction, and Ezra 5 verse 2 says, So Zerubbabel, the son of Shaltiel and Jeshua, the son of Jehazadak, rose up and began to build the house of God, which is in Jerusalem. And the prophets of God were with them, helping them. I imagine so were a lot of workmen who knew how to build temples to do stone and timber work. And there's where I say it was pretty clear. Remember we read earlier that when they shouted for joy because the foundation was laid, some were weeping. Back in Haggai chapter 2, we'll see why some of the weeping happened. Haggai chapter 2, beginning in verse 1, says, And he says, And he says, But God then says, And be strong, Joshua, the son of Jehazadak, the high priest, and be strong, all you people of the land, says the Lord, and work. For I am with you, says the Lord of hosts. It's funny, I think sometimes God sends some pretty elaborate messages. If you go through the major prophets, you can see the burden of the Lord that came to Isaiah, to Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and it goes on for chapter after chapter. But I'm not sure if there was ever a more powerful message than when God just said, I'm with you.

I'd like to think that He says that to us now, today, as we're striving to do His work. That was reassurance for them. He was letting them know He was pleased with their work. And I think it could be reassurance for us as we face our future. Continuing, if you'll read in chapter 2 of Haggai in verse 7, God says, Oh, yeah, I wanted to read verse 9.

This latter temple was going to be greater. And for no other reason than God in the flesh was going to come to that temple. And of course, we can just read in the Gospel account that that's exactly what happened. One thing I'll remind us, though, if we want to draw a parallel, I'm not going to turn to 1 Peter, but in 1 Peter chapter 2 and verse 5, we're reminded that the church is a temple. That the church of God is a spiritual temple filled with God's Holy Spirit. So we don't have to look for the Shekinah glory to fill this room so that we would have to run out because we couldn't stand the power of God. But the power of God is in this room, and it's in each and every one of us in a very powerful way. When God says, I am with you, He means that for us. But I want to go back to the person of Ezra, and I'm going to turn back to the book of Ezra in a bit.

Ezra the person hasn't been a part of this story, has he? Ezra the person doesn't appear in Ezra the book until the seventh chapter. Joshua was the high priest that oversaw the building in the temple. He was the one that got the messages from Haggai and Zechariah, where God said, and then God said, I could imagine Ezra, when he learned about all this, might have thought, Man, I missed that! Why couldn't I be there for that? What excitement! All that big stuff, working to rebuild the temple, getting messages from God.

Ezra could have looked and said, Isn't there anything left for me to do?

That's where it's worth considering. Before we turn and look at what Ezra actually did do, we could ask, is there a parallel for our time? And I think this might ring true, especially for younger members of the audience, but it doesn't have to, because no matter when you live, there's something big that happened beforehand.

I remember, well, I've served the summer camp program for years, many years, and I tried to make it a point to never miss. Enough so that I've been there, and I used to hear ministers use this phrase for young people. They talk about what happened in the mid-90s, and then they pause and say, Oh, you weren't around for that. And then I stuck around long enough to where now I'm one of them.

I might say, you remember what happened in 95, and they look at me and say, Dude, we were not born in 95, which they don't say that, thankfully.

And sometimes, many of us here are old enough, we do remember, am I right? You remember, and you think, wow, I would have liked to have missed that. And our younger members might say, Yeah, we missed the tragedy. We missed the crisis, but also missed the excitement, the excitement of rebuilding and starting over and facing new challenges. It occurred to me, as I was writing, it was in, I believe, 1995 that a conference occurred in Indianapolis where leading ministers and not so leading ministers came from all over the country. And I say, not so leading, some weren't so well known. We had ones who were known and respected regional pastors, and I believe some called evangelists and we decided we didn't want to have ranks, but we said, we want to stick with the truth, we want to do the work, we want to serve the people. They were a little bit like Zerubbabel and Joshua, saying, Let's rebuild. And like Joshua and Zerubbabel, they had no power on their own to do it. It took God's power. If God had not been with them, it would have come to nothing. I remember hearing about it. As I say, I was relatively young. I remember my pastor, at the time I was attending graduate school down at Texas A&M, I attended a congregation in Waco, and I remember our pastor's telling us, I hear there's something going on up in Indianapolis, I'm going to go check it out. And he came back later and he said, Well, this is what's happening, and as far as I'm concerned, we're now a congregation of the United Church of God. And I said, Okay, that was great for me. Actually, I've got an aside on this, because at ABC, as part of the Practical Christianity class, it's about this time of year that we talk about ways of serving in a congregation, and I always teach song leading. And I tell them, You never know when you might need this skill. And I tell them, at that point when we were organizing United, my pastor looked around and said, Anybody here know how to lead songs? I said, Well, I learned how in college. Haven't done it since then. I led songs every Sabbath for the next three years. And I tell our students, You're going to learn, because you don't know when that'll happen. But my point on this is, you know, our teens and young adults could hear the stories about that and say, Yeah, that was cool. I'm glad it got done. But we were born too late. Is there anything for us to do? And if you're older, if you remember that well, you could be looking back to, you know, the time when Mr. Armstrong was sending co-worker letters saying, We're going on a new radio station. Or in 1948, there was an announcement that we're starting a new college. But if you came in the church in the 70s, when all that had been done, you could say, Ah, we missed the excitement. What's left for us? You know, were we born too late? I hope that's not the attitude of any of us. I hope we're not saying, Well, nothing to do, but sit around and wait for Christ to come back. I hope we'll consider a number of things. And one of those things is the story of Ezra. Ezra, the priest, the scribe. I want to get to his story now.

It's funny, I hope you don't think that that was the longest introduction to a sermon you've ever heard. This is the next point in that sermon. We'll pick up in chapter 7. And this is where, as I said, in the book that Ezra wrote, he begins telling about himself. So all of that stuff, that excitement, the challenges, overcoming obstacles to build the temple, were done.

And done, and years went by. We don't know exactly how many. Some people say at least a couple of decades. Some people say more. It says in chapter 7, verse 1, After these things, in the reign of Artaxerxes, king of Persia, Ezra, the son of Saraiiah, the son of, and there's a whole lot of son ofs next. So he gives his genealogy to show that he is descended from Aaron, the high priest. So let's move to chapter, or to verse 6. After he gets to Aaron, the chief priest, says, This Ezra came up from Babylon, and he was a skilled scribe in the law of Moses, which the Lord God of Israel had given. And the king granted him all his request, according to the hand of the Lord his God upon him.

Now, Ezra calls himself the priest, the scribe. So being a priest means he's descended from Aaron, and he certainly had training in how to do the sacrifices, how to conduct the various rituals.

But not every priest was called a scribe. A scribe in its lowest sense was someone who could read and write. Okay, most of you probably can make that claim. But a highly trained scribe would be someone who could create legal documents. That was generally understood in what I understand from the scholars who study the period. He was more on the equivalent of what today we might call a lawyer or even a college professor. To be a scribe meant to study. And to be a scribe of God's Word, he might have participated in making new copies of God's Word.

We know from later generations that there was extreme diligence taken to preserve God's Word, to make sure that no mistakes crept in. And if a copy of the scroll got old and grungy and tattered, they would dispose of it in a special way. They might burn it sort of the way we do with old American flags where we want to retire them with dignity. They didn't want old, tattered copies of God's Word around. Which is funny because I've got old, tattered copies of mine. But I sort of revere them. At any rate, Ezra is known in Jewish tradition as a scribe's scribe. He was preeminent. He was very skilled. So as it says, this Ezra came up, according to the hand of the Lord is God upon him.

That gives us a hint that it wasn't just Ezra's idea to leave a comfortable life in Babylon and travel to a partly ruined city in Judah. God was inspiring him. God had a job for him to do. I'm confident of that. And again, I like to think of Ezra as being a young man here, but it doesn't really tell us his age.

Maybe he was a young man when he began his work to become a ready scribe. I use that phrase. The old King James says he was a ready scribe. Later he's called a skilled scribe. Ready sounds so much more cool. Maybe he was young when he did that. He might have been in his 40s or 50s when God finally called him to do his work. I mention that because this message isn't just for the young, especially since the younger ones went out to Sabbath school. They would have tuned me out by now, anyways, probably.

But let's look in verse 10 of how Ezra had prepared. For Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord and to do it, and to teach statutes and ordinances in Israel. Now, the word seek could also be translated to study. To me, I'm intrigued because if when Ezra was young, he studied all that history that I briefly described.

If he had thought, the big stuff is done, what is there left for me to do? Maybe he would not have prepared as he did. But he did prepare. He probably studied and worked hard for three things. Three things it specifies here to seek or to study God's law. I would take that to mean he learned it inside and out, backwards and forwards.

He wasn't flummoxed or lost or confused. He made sure he understood what it said. But that wasn't all. He said to seek the law of the Lord and to do it. So he didn't just have head knowledge. He put it into practice. It was his way of life, something that he must have pursued every day. It was part of him.

And he knew by experience that God's way of life works. God's way brings happiness. It brings blessings. So he prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord and to do it and to teach. To teach statutes and ordinances. I think being able to teach and committing to teach God's law is a pretty high calling in God's work. Now, actually, if you look ahead in verse 11 there, it does say, this is a copy of the letter that King Artesertes gave Ezra the priest to scribe, expert in the words of the commandments of the Lord. He was expert.

Expert in the commands and in the statutes. So this shows us, we could say that whether or not the temple is built or it's in the process of being built, there is always a need for people to carry on and to pass on the knowledge and understanding of God's laws and statutes. To understand it inside and out, to live by it, and to show that to others. There is a need for people to seek God's law, to do God's law, and to teach it.

Now, I might come across as being a little self-congratulatory because that is partly my job. And I'm thrilled. I get to teach at Ambassador Bible College. I couldn't be happier to have the assignment that I have. But ABC is not the only place where we seek and live and teach God's law. Any of you that have children know that. It's something that we all have a responsibility and an opportunity to do.

We do it in a specialized way at ABC, and that has its place. It's terrific. But it's for all of us. And I sometimes wonder, are we at an in-between stage in the history of God's work? I don't know. Or maybe I'd say, have we been? The world has changed so much in the last couple years. It's hard to say much of anything. But Ezra could have thought that. He could have said, yeah, there were big times when they built the first temple.

It was really exciting a few decades ago when they built the new temple. But now that's done. What is there for me? Well, I'm not sure. And I'm speculating. I'm not sure what he was thinking. But I am sure he wasn't just sitting around watching the world go by.

He wasn't just waiting for Messiah to come. The last chapters of the Book of Ezra describe him working with leaders of the nation of Judah to eventually correct a dangerous practice that it crept in long after the temple had been rebuilt. He did what he'd prepared to do to make sure that he could teach what was the right thing according to God's law.

It seemed that not long after the temple had been rebuilt, after facing tremendous challenges, the people got a little bit lax. That's what we do when we get comfortable, don't we? Things are going well when God blesses us with a good income and comfortable situation. Sometimes we can get a little lax and soft. And notice I'm saying we. I'm not saying you. It's in all of us. Ezra was a spiritual leader who plainly showed people it's not okay to get too lax. Not okay to accept what religious leaders call syncretism, mixing a bit of the truth with falsehoods. I want to go ahead to chapter 9.

I'm skipping what to me is kind of an exciting story, but not everyone sees it as much so because we introduce Ezra in chapter 7, and then we have this journey where he gathers priests and Levites to travel to serve at the temple. And as I said, I'll just summarize. He doesn't want to ask for a military escort because he's been telling the emperor how great his God is, but he says, let's fast because we don't have any soldiers to protect us.

And they make this long journey that takes months with probably millions and millions of dollars worth of gold and silver. And nothing happens. He just passes by it, you know, because God does hear their prayers. But then they get to Jerusalem and they think the hard part is over and he's got to face difficulties. Matter of fact, speaking of skipping over things, I might have skipped over something in my notes.

No, I didn't. Okay, I'm picking up in Ezra chapter 9 and verse 3. Well, maybe I think I should have written this in my notes because let's start in verse 1.

Egyptians, that's not an ite. Well, they got the Amor. Sorry, it's... You know, if you read the Old Testament, you get these passages with all these ites, but they haven't separated. They've taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves and their sons so that the Holy See is mixed with the people of those lands. And indeed, the hand of the leaders and the rulers has been foremost in this. Now, I want to comment that, you know, if we do a thorough study of the Old Testament, we see that God wasn't being racist about who they could marry. It was about marrying people of other religions. And they were doing that. And God warned them back in the time of Moses, they'll lead you astray to worship their gods. And when Ezra heard this, let's read verse 3. He said, so when I heard these things, I tore my garment and my robe and plucked out some of the hair of my head and beard and sat down astonished. He was just amazed that, I can't believe they're doing this. This is going to bring us the same trouble that had us conquered by the Assyrians and by the Babylonians. He was just amazed and he didn't hide it. He let them know. Everybody saw him being dismayed. And if you drop down to verse 5, So Ezra confessed sin on behalf of his people, prayed to God, and that was needed. And what's interesting is, I think because Ezra had sought the word of God and did it and taught it, he was well-respected. And people noticed this. So let's go to chapter 10 and pick up with the first verse. While Ezra was praying and while he was confessing, weeping, and bowing down before the house of God, a very large assembly of men, women, and children gathered to him from Israel for the people wept very bitterly. Now it goes on to describe their efforts to correct this situation. And I don't want to go into the details today. I just want to describe that, you know, Ezra saw a problem that needed dealt with, and it might seem like a minor problem compared to invading armies and building a new temple, you know, overcoming the obstacles of the other nations. But what needed to be done was to understand God's law and to do it and to teach it to succeeding generations. That had not been done properly. And Ezra led them in a revival so that they would do it. Now, his next big accomplishment that he did might be even more impressive. It is to me because we see Ezra wasn't just sitting around thinking of things to be done. He jumped in and dealt with the situation that he had. I want to turn ahead to Nehemiah. As I said, many scholars think that Ezra and Nehemiah might have once been one single book. And to me, that makes sense. So I'm turning... Did I tell you chapter 8 or just say Nehemiah? Nehemiah chapter 8. There is a pretty exciting event here that I think in many ways demonstrates that serving God and teaching people his ways is an ongoing job. It kind of reminds me that we're never going to be done. We're never going to have a time where we just stop and say, oh, don't have to worry about it. People before me did it, or I've done my part and I can stop. Until Christ comes, we've got work to do. And if you read the prophecies of the millennium, we could say, when Christ comes, we'll have even more work to do. We're not going to stop. You know, every now and then you can stop and put up your feet, you know, watch a TV show, but then get back to work. Let's read in Nehemiah chapter 8, verse 1.

So Ezra the priest brought the law before the assembly of men and women, and to all who could hear with understanding, on the first day of the seventh month. Hmm, first day of the seventh month. That rings a bell. Ah, we know that was the Feast of Trumpets. And the seventh month would have other holy days.

So he brought out the book, and they read from it in the open square that was in front of the Watergate, from morning till midday, before the men and women and those who could understand. And the ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the law. And let's drop down to verse 8. So they read distinctly from the book of the law of God, and they gave the sense and helped them to understand the reading. I've sometimes thought, that sounds like a description of an effective sermon. Reading God's word and trying to give the sense and help the understanding.

And Nehemiah, who was the governor, Ezra the priest, the scribe, and the Levites, who taught the people, said to the people, This day is holy to the Lord your God. I've always wondered, were they there doing this because they knew it was a holy day? Or was it a coincidence?

That's so God would have been laughing. He may be orchestrated to make sure. But at this point, they're saying, this is a holy day. It's not any old day. This is a holy day. So they said, don't mourn or weep, because the people did weep when they heard the words of the law. They were cut to the heart. They were convicted, we would say.

They knew that they needed to do better. And so they had that wave of emotion, but they were then told, wait, don't weep. This is a holy day. It's a special day of celebration. In verse 10 it says, they told them, go your way and eat the fat. Drink the sweet. That means eat the choice portions. Send portions to those for whom nothing is prepared. For this day is holy to our Lord. Do not sorrow, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.

This began a reawakening, I believe, of religious zeal, of devotion to obeying and worshipping God. And Ezra was right in the middle of it. The big jobs hadn't all been done. This was a big job that he'd been preparing for. Let's drop down to verse 13.

On the second day, the heads of the fathers' houses and all the people with the priests and the Levites were gathered to Ezra the scribe in order to understand the words of the law. So they really had lost sight of so much of God's way. They found written in the law, which the Lord had commanded by Moses, that the children of Israel should dwell in booths during the feast of the seventh month. Booths, that's the English translation, the Hebrew sukkoth. A temporary dwelling. Sorry, I'm looking over at Mr. Booth. So we all go with the booths for the feast of... No. Temporary dwellings. Hey, we're supposed to do this. And that they should, it says, verse 15, announce and proclaim in all their cities in Jerusalem, saying, Go out to the mountains and bring olive branches, branches of oil trees, myrtle trees, palm branches, to make booths that as it is written.

And the people went and did it. They brought booths. Each one on the roof of this house or in their courtyards in the open gate. And verse 17, The whole assembly of those who had returned from the captivity made booths. They sat under the booths, for since the days of Joshua, the son of Nun, until that day the children of Israel had not done so.

That always amazes me in all those hundreds of years, even during the time of King David and King Solomon, during Josiah's revival. They didn't keep the Feast of Tabernacles, at least not entirely the way they should have. Verse 18, it says, Also, day by day, from the first day to the last day, he, I believe that's Ezra, read from the book of the law of God, and they kept the Feast seven days. And on the eighth day there was a sacred assembly, according to the prescribed manner.

I remember one of the times I read this, I thought, Well, what do you know? Ezra was a Feast-site coordinator. And that's not a small job. There's a fair bit to it. I wonder, what else did Ezra do that's not recorded in Scripture?

I don't know, but I think we could all safely say, he wasn't born too late. He didn't miss big things that God had for him to do. But whatever, you know, the things that we read that he had to do, and whatever else maybe that he did that's not recorded, he might not have been able to do, he might not have been ready, but he had gotten prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord, to do it, and to teach it.

And there's other things thought about Ezra. You know, despite this great religious revival, that might not have been as important as the role that he's thought to have played in doing what's called canonizing the Scripture. You know, many of the Jews, their tradition says that Ezra was the one who had various scrolls and sacred writings and put together what we know of as the Old Testament. Now, I would say if that's true, it was certainly with the inspiration of God.

I don't think Ezra would take it upon himself. But he'd prepared to teach God's law and to do it. And he played a huge role at preserving it so that it would be passed on. We believe. That lets us know that what was to come after Ezra's time. You know, Ezra lived during the period that was, I sometimes refer to as the time of the Gentiles to borrow a phrase from Scripture.

You know, if we think of the book of Daniel where it shows Daniel interpreting the dream of Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar was the head of gold, you know, the Babylonian Empire, to be followed by the Persian Empire, typified by the chest and arms of silver. That's when Ezra lived. And there were two more parts of the statue to go. The belly and thigh of bronze, the Greek Empire, then the legs of iron, the Roman Empire, with its many regenerations coming all the way down to the end time.

There's a lot of events yet to happen. That probably included what we call the Maccabean period. After Antiochus Epiphanes desecrated that temple that the Jews had worked so hard to build. Matter of fact, I do want to turn to Daniel, if you don't mind. Daniel 11 and verse 32 let's me bring in a Scripture that I just love to read. Daniel 11. Because there's a prophecy that we think describes the revolt of the Maccabees.

After Antiochus desecrated the temple, later it would be recaptured and rededicated. Daniel 11 and verse 32. Now those who do wickedly against the covenant will corrupt with flattery. This seems to be referring to Antiochus. But the people who know their God shall be strong and carry out great exploits. And those of the people who understand shall instruct many, yet for many days they shall fall by the sword and flame and captivity and plundering. I didn't want to emphasize the flame, captivity and plundering. But rather, those who know their God will be strong and carry out great exploits.

Those who understand will instruct many. The fight to preserve God's word and live by it, it seems, will always go on. The people during the period of the Maccabees could not have done their work if Ezra hadn't done his work. Ezra had to be ready to step up at a time when he might have said, What's left for me to do?

Well, there was something God had for him to do. Ezra was not born too late for good things, for big things. And I think neither are we. Sure, many of us who are younger, we missed the building of the modern era of the church. I wasn't there in the 40s when Ambassador College started. I've got the Vegas memory of the radio program being on every night.

But there's no point in looking back. It's a time to look forward. I think God has a vision for each one of us. He has a vision for the Church of God to do big things. Let me just reference a scripture that Paul wrote in Philippians. Philippians 3, verses 13 and 14, Paul said, One thing I do, forgetting those things that are behind, and reaching forward to those things that are ahead, I press towards the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Jesus Christ.

That's something for us to do. To press forward, forgetting what's behind, and knowing what we have to do. Whether or not we're involved in great exploits, I've always wanted to be involved in exploits, although I'm not sure what classifies as an exploit. It's fun to say, though. One of the most important things that I can do and that all of us must do is preserve the knowledge and the truth of God's way and pass it on to other generations. So, we want to consider that story of Ezra the priest described. Again, he knew the situation, he knew what had gone on before, he knew it was not his job.

He didn't know for sure what would be his job coming up. But it said he prepared his heart. He prepared in his heart to seek and to study the Word of God, to do it, and to teach statutes and laws in Israel. That's something I hope and pray that all of us can likewise prepare to do.