Ezra & Nehemiah

[00:00:00] Speaker A: So we want to read scripture. We're going to turn to the book of Romans so that we can understand why it is that we have baptism in the first place. And we see this in Romans, chapter six. Do you know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death. We were buried, therefore, with him by baptism into death. In order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like His. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now, if we've died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him. We know that Christ being raised from the dead, will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died. He died to sin once for all. For the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Now, baptism is not what it is that actually saves us. Baptism is a result of the salvation that has occurred beforehand. And as the individuals for this morning have shown the fact that they want to follow Christ, they love Jesus with all their heart. And in doing so, that they too want to have a profession of faith to all of you, like Christ, representing that they die to their old self. And that they are raised when they come out of the water to live for Christ. And it's an amazing time. So, are we ready? Yeah, we are. Mr. Harrison, why don't you come in? Hi. I know it's too slippy. What's up, buddy? [00:01:49] Speaker B: Oh, am I supposed to go? [00:01:51] Speaker A: Yep, you're all the way down here with me. [00:01:53] Speaker B: Okay. [00:01:53] Speaker C: I might be too deep for me. [00:01:55] Speaker A: No, I gotcha. You're good. Oh, that are gonna be baptized. Before we say anything. One more step. All right. Why don't you come up here? [00:02:04] Speaker B: Well, my shirts. [00:02:05] Speaker A: I got you. This is Mr. Harrison. Say hi, Mr. Harrison. [00:02:10] Speaker B: All right. [00:02:11] Speaker A: How you doing, buddy? [00:02:12] Speaker B: Good. [00:02:12] Speaker A: All right. I have a couple questions for you, if you don't mind. [00:02:15] Speaker B: Okay. [00:02:15] Speaker A: Harrison, do you believe that you are a sinner and that you are in need of a savior? [00:02:20] Speaker B: Yes. [00:02:22] Speaker A: You're already getting ready for mature. Do you believe that Jesus Christ died for your sins and rose again to forgive you of all of your sins? [00:02:33] Speaker B: Yes. [00:02:34] Speaker A: And with this, do you promise to live a life? Yes. Following Christ? Yes. Fantastic. You gonna turn this way for me? You ready now? [00:02:42] Speaker C: Yeah, [00:02:45] Speaker A: I think he's ready. Because of your profession, of your faith, I now baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. [00:03:02] Speaker C: You're welcome, bud. [00:03:12] Speaker A: Yay. Let's do another one. Oh, Ms. Lera, You actually might be too short for this. Oh, no, your head's still good. All right. Can you actually still see her? All right, Ms. L, we have some questions for you as well. Why don't you turn and look at people? They want to hear him, too. All right. Ms. Elara, do you admit the fact that you are a sinner in need of a savior? [00:03:42] Speaker B: Yes. [00:03:42] Speaker A: Yeah. And do you believe that Jesus died on the cross and rose again to forgive you of all of your sins? And do you promise that you're going to follow Jesus for the rest of your life? Yes. All right, Ms. Albera, because of your profession of your faith, I now baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. [00:04:20] Speaker B: We're on a roll. [00:04:21] Speaker A: We're going to keep going. Ms. Alexa, hello. Hello. I don't want the paper. I could ask Ms. Alexa questions, but she has her own writing of her testimonials. We're gonna let her speak instead, [00:04:45] Speaker B: All right? Okay. [00:04:47] Speaker A: It's a group mic. [00:04:48] Speaker B: You're good. It'll catch up. Yeah. Okay. [00:04:51] Speaker A: There you go. [00:04:52] Speaker B: This is my testimony. So I was born and raised in a Christian family, and I still am. I went to church and Sunday school on Sundays. I went to Awana. I learned Bible stories and memorized Bible verses. I knew that Jesus died on the cross, but I didn't understand what that really meant. And then I started going to youth group and different camps, and they still talked about some of the stories in the Bible, but instead of just saying the facts, they talked about what it actually meant for us. And they explained that no one, no matter how good they thought they were, could get to heaven through good works. Everyone sins, and that alone separates us from God, no matter how many good things you try to do to make it up. Jesus loved us so much that he humbled himself and came down as a mere human so that he could die on the cross and pay the penalty that we owed for our sins. And he rose again three days later to defeat death. He didn't have to do this, but he did it out of love. I wasn't saved just from knowing this. And I had to accept that. I was sinful, but that Jesus died so he could take my sin away and give me righteousness instead. I don't just know about him either. I have a personal relationship with Him. I can never repay him for the great gift he gave me. But I can at least try to praise him and shine my light so others can see what he did for me. Today I have something to live for. I can hope for the day that Jesus comes back and I can be in heaven with him forever. I'm getting baptized today because I want to profess the faith that I have. [00:06:24] Speaker A: This is super exciting. You have no idea, Alexa, because of your profession of faith, baptized in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. And with that, let's pray to our good God. Heavenly Father, we are so grateful of who you are. The fact that you did go to the cross for us, that you died for our sins, that you rose again, proving that you were God, that what you said is true. And we know that if we die to our sins, we live for you. It is a life worth living and that is because of you. We thank you, Father. And as these three individuals who were baptized in front of this congregation as a showing of their profession of faith, as an entire church around the world, we celebrate with them knowing that this is the start of a beautiful journey that we get to be alongside them with, to encourage, to uplift and to say Hallelujah. Thank you, Jesus. Bless our time of worship, bless our time with one another, and we thank you in the name of Jesus. Amen. [00:07:55] Speaker C: Welcome to Living Hope. Today we're going to be in God's word, obviously, and we have been going through a series in the Old Testament. And we start at the beginning of the year in the first book of the Old Testament, which is called Anybody Genesis. And then we're going to conclude at the end of November at the last book of the Old Testament, which is called Malachi. Malachi. So today we're going to be looking at particularly the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. Ezra and Nehemiah. Can we say that together? Ezra and Nehemiah. I hope that you have a Bible with you today, or at least if you don't have some screen or something that can pull up a Bible, flip to the Book of Ezra or tap your way over to the Book of Ezra. Inside your bulletin, you'll see lots of things that are happening in the life of the church. Encourage you to look at that. On the back of your bulletin, you can. You will see an outline that we will Walk through today in God's word. All right. This series has been, I think, encouraging for, I know, for me, I hope, for many of you as well, as we've been surveying different books of the Bible today. Looking at both of these books, it's 23 chapters, as you can see at the little blurb at the top of your outline. And it's really one story, even though it's split up into two books. Now, I realize that not everyone here is here all the time. Maybe it's your first time here. You've been coming for the last couple months. And so it's important that we know where we are today, and that's going to be informed with where we've been in the past. So let me give you just a brief synopsis of where we've been already. And I put a couple screens on, slides on the screen for us to give us kind of a picture of where we are. So on this side of the screen over here, you can see where Genesis is. There's this little bubble, looks like a little volcano thing happening. That's when creation happens. And then on the timeline, we talked about the patriarchs. That's also in Genesis. And then Exodus is when they are in Egypt and they're freed from Egypt. And then the conquest is in Joshua. We covered these books already. And then after that, we see the little gavel there, which usually stands for what when you see that little hammer there. Judges. Look at that. And that's the book of Judges that we covered. But also Ruth in the beginning of Samuel talks about that part of the timeline. And this is the timeline of the Old Testament. And then after that, you have what's after the little gavel? A crown, which stands for kings. And so that's the kingdom. That's 1st and 2nd Samuel. That's 1 and 2 kings. And then 1 and 2 Chronicles. That's those books kind of fitting in that timeline there. And then there's a little suitcase which represents where we were last couple weeks. Where after the kings have reigned. There was a couple hundred years that they were reigning. And what did we learn last year? Were they a lot of them were good kings or bad kings? Lots of them were bad kings. We saw last time that there was the northern kingdom and there was the southern kingdom and the northern kingdom called Israel. There was 20 kings. How many of those kings were good? Zero. So out of those 20 kings, none of them were good. In the southern part called Judah, there was also 20 kings. How many of those 20 kings were good? Eight of them. So based on what we found out, the. Through the reign of the kings, God said, and through many of the prophets, he said this. If you continue to rebel against me, there's going to be problems. Particularly other nations are going to come in and remove you from Israel in the north and remove you from Judah in the south and take you to a place, will take you to Assyria and to Babylon. And we call that the exile. Can we say the exile? The exile. So that's that time frame. And there was a big. There was hundreds of years that happened before that. The kings had opportunity over and over to turn back to God, and many of them didn't. And so then the exile happened. Many of them went to Assyria or to Babylon. And that was obviously a very sad time for many of the people. You can read about that in 2nd Kings 17, chapters 24 and 25 of 2 Kings, Daniel, Daniel and the lion's den. Where does that take place? In exile in Babylon. So that's why he's in Babylon, because the exile had happened and he was there. And Esther also happens during the exile, which we'll talk about a little later on. And then after, particularly in Babylon. They are in Babylon, in exile for 70 years. Today, what we're talking about go to the next slide. Today, what we're talking about, actually go to the next one after that. There's the two nations that we talked about there. Today, what we're talking about is them going back. Can someone say going back? Going back. They've been in exile. They're going back to particularly Jerusalem because the 70 years is done and God has worked in the hearts of those kings to say, you know what? The time is done, the time of really judgment and consequence, discipline is done. And go to the next slide. And you can see here that red line kind of points from Jerusalem all the way to Babylon. And you can follow that red line back. That journey that they would have made back to Jerusalem. So it would have been quite some trip for them to get from one place to the other. But also, you can see they're pretty far from home. How many of you like being far from home? Especially when you didn't plan to be gone in the first place? Most of us get me back home. And so that was the reality for many of them. They wanted to get back home. And so that is where we land today, if you will start today in the Book of Ezra is they are. There's three big phases that we're gonna see. Where they're going from Babylon Back to what city? Jerusalem. And they're honestly very excited about that. So the book of Ezra and Nehemiah in our Bibles, it's split into two different books. In the original writing was actually most likely one book because it really tells one story of three big waves of people going from exile back to, or particularly Babylonian exile back to Jerusalem. So before we dive in, let's pray together. Ask God just to give us guidance and direction and work in our hearts as we look at his Word, because it is such an honor and privilege every time that we can open God's Word together. If you would join me in prayer. Father in heaven, thank you for this time, that this morning to be able to celebrate the public announcements that those three individuals made of their faith and trust in you, the new life that they have in you. Thank you for the new life that we can have in you because of what you have done on our behalf. As we spend time in your word, ask that you would open our eyes, open our hearts to what you want to do, and say that we would be sensitive to your Word, that we would be receptive to whatever you want to do. In Jesus name, amen. How many of you have been to the beach before and made a sandcastle? Maybe you've gone with family or with friends, you've gone to the beach and you have maybe your buckets that you have, or you found some stuff that you could make your sandcastle. And maybe you've made a sandcastle before and it's been too close to the water. And what happens when the sandcastle is too close to the water? The waves, they keep coming and just knocking over your sand castle. And maybe you've made it too far away from the water. And it's also really hard to build, right, because the sand isn't wet enough. And then you're lugging buckets of water back and forth to your sandcastle. If you've built a sandcastle before and it's been too close to the water, you know what I'm talking about. When you, when you've built it there and the waves keep coming and you build it and it looks really cool and then a big wave comes and then what happens? Knocks it over and it looked really cool at first. And then there's this wave of disappointment that hits you, right? And then you have to rebuild it again, and then a big wave comes and you realize, should I be doing this in the first place? And then maybe after an hour or two goes by, you say, you know what? I'm Going to go home. I am done. It can be really frustrating. Well, what's interesting in these two books that are often only considered even Nehemiah particularly only thought about in one picture. What we experience as we read through this book is this feeling of I'm building something and then something disappointing happens. I'm building something and then something disappointing happens. And there's this back and forth that happens in this story. And as we go through it together, I want you to have that picture of us trying to build, or particularly these characters that we're looking at trying to build something really special. But then what happens? A big wave comes and knocks it over and then they work really hard again and build it and they go look and do something else and they come back and what happens to their nice sandcastle? It's gotten damaged again. As we walk through these two books, these 23 chapters together have that picture going on in your mind. So Ezra chapter one is where we're going to be starting off. Also looking at Nehemiah, the snapshot here in your outline, it's not there, but you can see it on the screen. Here's what we're looking at in context for both of these books. The book, and I say the book, even though in our Bibles it's two books. This book, this story focuses on three characters or three leaders who led a rebuilding effort. We talked about that sand castle, right? Trying to build this sandcastle. We have one guy named Zerubbabel. Any of you name Zerubbabel here this morning? No. That would have been something. His mission, he's the first of the three characters. His mission is to rebuild the temple. Can someone say the temple? The temple. The second character, he has the name, the title of the first book we're looking at. His name is Ezra. His mission is to rebuild this healthy culture in Jerusalem and the surrounding area. Because many of those people have been in exile for 70 years. They've just come back. And his heart is, we want to build healthy culture here, an obedient culture, even more particularly to God's law. And then Nehemiah, the third character, and he's the title of the second book that we're going to look at today. And his mission is to rebuild the what? The walls around Jerusalem. Well, why does this rebuilding have to happen? Well, prior to the exile, all these people are living in Judah, right? That's southern nation, and particularly in Jerusalem. Well, Babylon comes over and they do something called laying siege. They surround the city and they ended up waiting out for a While. And then after a bit, Babylonians destroyed the walls around Jerusalem. And then after that they entered into the city and they destroyed the temple as well. And then they took those people from Jerusalem, the city of Jerusalem, and they took them off to. Well, it's been 70 years. They're coming back and they're looking at just a destruction of their temple that hasn't been rebuilt and the walls that have not been rebuilt. Remember that feeling that you might have after you built your sandcastle and it looked really beautiful. Solomon originally built the temple and then all of these people, maybe the sand castle. You come back and you look at it and it's fallen apart. How do you feel? Really disappointed. Here they're coming back and they're seeing this. We're going to see this kind of story unfold. [00:19:30] Speaker B: And. [00:19:30] Speaker C: And there's this feeling of we need to do something about this. There's three major waves of these leaders. They come back. Go to the next slide. First wave, Ezra is in Ezra, chapters one through six. Zerubbabel, he's the first leader. You just saw that on the snapshot. The second leader in the second wave. We see this in the second part of the Book of Ezra. Obviously his name is Ezra. We can see the Persian ruler or the Babylonian ruler from over here because Babylon had been taken over by Persia. And then the third wave is the Book of Nehemiah. He leads the third group of people back to Jerusalem and his job is to rebuild the wall. So those are the three main characters, three big sections. And then on your outline, we're going to walk right through with those characters and what they're doing. So in your outline, this is when you can start writing things down. When does this happen? Who's the author? Where is this taking place? The basics, you can write this in on your outline. The author is Ezra, most likely of both books here. He existed both in the time here in the latter half of the Book of Ezra and all of Nehemiah. He and Nehemiah worked together. We're going to see that a little later on the timeline. You can see happening over a period of about 90 years, about 538 years before Christ to about 450 years before Jesus. And the location, remember, they left Babylon or they're going to leave Babylon, they're going to go to the city of Jerusalem. And that's in the southern part of Israel called Judah. So let's get into your outline here. The first guy that we're talking about here in the first part of the Book of Ezra. The name that nobody here has, his name is what? Zerubbabel. Say that three times fast. No, I'm kidding. Don't. Never mind. Just say it three times fast. Later today or something. I don't know. All right, chapter one. Let's look at this together. I have my Bible open to chapter one of Ezra. Here's how it starts. It says, in the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia. Now Cyrus is the guy who took over Babylon. We talked about the story of Daniel in the lion's den that was Babylon. The king of Persia came in, took over that place. It says this, the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia. The word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled. That is Jeremiah the prophet prophesied about this. 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 this. Look in your Bibles, verse 2. Thus says Cyrus, king of Persia, the Lord. This is a pagan king. The Lord, the God of heaven has given me all the kingdoms of the earth. He's a very powerful king and he has charged me to build him a house. Where? In Jerusalem. Which is in what location? In Judah. We see here that God stirred up the heart of this pagan king who had taken over Babylon, who had taken the people from Jerusalem. And now he's saying, God has stirred up my heart because something needs to happen in Jerusalem. Whoever is among you, here's what he says in verse three. Whoever is among you and all his people, may his God be with him and let him go back to what's the city, Jerusalem, and rebuild the house of the Lord, the God of Israel. So here's what's happening. This pagan king has a word from the Lord. God stirred his heart and says, send back people to Jerusalem because the temple of God is destroyed. Remember we talked about that? The Babylonians did that. He says, I'm sending them back so that they can rebuild the temple. This is quite something. And this is a reminder for us friends, that it doesn't matter how much somebody rejects God, God can still work in their hearts. It doesn't matter how much somebody may be worshiping other gods or be rebelling against the throne and the kingdom of God. God can still say, when I want to use you for my will, I'm going to do just that. And we can trust that God is sovereign over all things. That's what that means. He's sovereign over the people and over the situations, even though they may not be bowing a Knee to him. So what happens? Chapter two lists off. That tells us that Ezra is going, I'm sorry, Zerubbabel is going to take these people, he's going to lead this first wave back to Jerusalem. If you look in your Bibles, we see here in chapter one, the king says, you can take a bunch of treasure, you can take a bunch of resources back to Jerusalem. Isn't that nice of him? He's like, here, I'm going to fund this project. It's not going to benefit me, but I'm going to fund it because God has stirred my heart to do so. And so he sends plenty of wealth and resources back to Jerusalem with the hand of Zerubbabel. And we can see that in chapter three. Flip in your Bibles or tap over to chapter three. We can see there, at least in my Bible, it says this. Rebuilding the altar. And the beginning process of rebuilding the temple begins. Now, with things going very well, we can often expect things to start going not very well. And that's exactly what happens in chapter four. If you look in your Bibles, we can see that opposition shows up. Opposition shows up in chapter four. You can read that. It starts off, first line of chapter four. It says this. Now, when the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the exiles had returned, they approached Zerubbabel, who was leading this, and they tried to get in the way. They tried to distract him, they tried to deter him from building the temple. They started gossip. Any of you know what gossip is? They started all for those of you who don't, that's fantastic. They started to try to distract him from doing God's work. And then after a while, a new king shows up in Persia. And then the opposition to Zerubbabel sends a letter to this new king saying, hey, by the way, there's this guy building a temple in Jerusalem and he's not for you, he's trying to stand against you. And this new king says, oh, well, you better just stop building. Tells Zerubbabel, you're not allowed to build anymore. Well, Zerubbabel has been called by God to do that. And he starts wondering, should I keep building this temple? I have this opposition over here. And the other king that told me I could do it, he's died. And now there's a new king that says, I can't do it. So what should I do? Have any of you been in a situation where you didn't know what to do? So he wonders, what should I do? And he begins to pray and Seek God and seek God's people. He particularly listens to the prophet Haggai and Zechariah, who were two prophets at the same time that he was building the temple. And here's what the two prophets said. Keep building, keep building. I know that's what the king of Persia said, but keep building. And so he continued to do so, and more opposition came his way until the king, the new king, he actually goes back in his scrolls and he checks back in his records. He's like, oh, wait a minute. This guy was given permission by the other king. I guess it's okay. Never mind, Zerubbabel. You can go back and continue to build. And then chapter six. Flip over in your Bible a little bit more. Chapter 6. Finally, this temple building that has taken quite some time is finally, in chapter 6, verse 13, the temple is then finished. After lots of work and lots of opposition, the temple is finished. And people then dedicate this to the. And they offer lots of sacrifices, and they start reading the law and say, we need to start obeying God. He's given us the opportunity to come out of bondage and build this temple again, even in the midst of much opposition. We have the opportunity now to worship Him. Now, right there, we kind of pause. Can someone say pause? [00:27:09] Speaker A: Pause. [00:27:10] Speaker C: So we pause here because there's a split in the book that occurs that's important for us to pay attention to. As we look at the end of chapter six, he's now rebuilt the temple, and 60 years later, somebody else is gonna come onto the scene. His name is Ezra. But before that happens, we see something. If you look in your Bible, you can see the people realize it is so important to treat God's temple with honor, it is so important for us to pay attention that God has given us the ability to build this temple again. And what does that tell every one of us? I think it calls us to do this. Do you remember what 1 Corinthians 6 says? It says this, that you and I are temples of the Lord. We are a place where the Spirit of God is housed in us. And what does that tell us then, even from these first six chapters? If God cares this much about the care of what houses his, in that case, his presence is a place for worship. How much more is it a reminder to us that we should treat our bodies with respect as well treat our bodies with honor as temples of God? God cares about your body and my body. Yes, in one day it's gonna burn up. It's gonna be gone. But while we have Them we are to steward them well. So that's that pause that happens. We finally built the first thing. What's the first thing that we just built? The what? The temple. So Zerubbabel, he has built the temple. Things are going very well. We have a pause. 60 years goes by and another guy shows up on the scene. Look in your Bibles, chapter seven, there's a new character. His name is what? Ezra. So go to the next slide and then the next item on your outline is this. Number two. Ezra is going to help realign people's hearts to God's law. So how many years has gone by between really chapter six and chapter seven? 60 years. You might know this if you've read through parts of the Bible before. And even if you don't, because you know yourself, we are forgetful people, aren't we? Very forgetful people. And after 60 years, might you forget something. That's exactly what we see here. So let's dive right into this. Ezra, he wants to realign people's hearts before we get into what he does. Particularly looking at, if you want to look ahead, looking at chapter seven, verses 12 through 16. We want to know, who is this guy named Ezra? He was a priest and he was someone called a scribe. And that means he is gonna have understanding of God's law. He's from the line of Aaron. Who is Aaron, by the way? Trivia here. He's the brother of Moses. He also is told us this, that he's skilled in the law of Moses. He also had favor with the king. Interestingly, New Testament writers don't ever reference Ezra. And his name means. And I'll conclude with what we know about Ezra after this. His name means help. Most likely. The Lord is our helper. The Lord is my helper. So the king, he has favor with this king in Persia, in the area of Babylon, where they were before. And the king says to Ezra, you can go back to Israel. You want to go back and remember the first king, what did he do? He gave Zerubbabel lots of money, lots of resources. This king as well, stirred up in the same way. And he says, you know what, Ezra? You can go back, do what you need to do, and I'm going to give you bunch of money I'm going to give and even call the people to do that as well. Look in your bibles in chapter seven, verse 12. Look with me, I'll read part of it. It's not on the screen. Artaxerxes, the king at the time, king of Kings, to Ezra, the priest, the scribe of the law of God of heaven, he says this. Peace. Now, I make a decree that any one of the people of Israel or their priests or their Levites in my kingdom who freely offers to go to Jerusalem may go with you. In other words, what he's saying is, Ezra, you can go. And anybody who wants to go with him, for you are sent by the king and his seven counselors to make inquiries about Judah and Jerusalem according to the law of your God. And also look at verse 15 with me. And also to carry the silver and gold that the king and his counselors have freely offered to the God of Israel. You see that there? Pagan nation, idolatrous nation. Who said, we're listening to the heart of God, we're listening to the word of God, and we're going to obey. Well, obviously, Ezra's pretty excited about this. If you look at verse 28 of chapter 7, here's what he says in the last part of verse 28. I took courage, for the hand of the Lord was on me. He's recognizing God is working in supernatural ways. Have any of you experienced that before? When you look back at something in your life and you're like, God is doing something there. God is working in the midst of this, because that was impossible. But somehow God made it possible. Because, you know, as we know, God is the God who does impossible things. Chapter 8 goes on Ezra then. And a large group of people join with him, and they travel back to Jerusalem. God keeps them safe. You saw. Remember that map? Remember how long that journey was from Babylon back to Jerusalem? God keeps them safe all the way there. And then they get to the temple, and they're rejoicing. Now, pause for a second. Remember that castle we talked about earlier? So far we've built a castle. Zerubbabel, he built. What did he build? The temple. It looked really great. Things were really, really good. Now Ezra comes onto the scene. He says, I want to go back as well. And the king says, sure, go back. And now we have that castle. We're building it a little bit more. [00:32:41] Speaker A: And. [00:32:41] Speaker C: And then chapter nine and ten happen. And this is when things start to go south a little bit. And this is when maybe that image of us on the beach, this big wave, comes and does what to our nice sandcastle? Knocks it over. Look, with me in chapters nine and ten. And this really is the conclusion of the Book of Ezra. It's a strange conclusion, or perhaps for us readers, we might even say a frustrating conclusion. Just like if we were there building this castle and this big wave came and knocked it down. So pay close attention in these last two chapters because it's significant. In chapter nine, we learn something. Ezra comes back. He starts asking around about how things are going. If you're looking in your Bible, my Bible, the headline there says this. Ezra prays about intermarriage. Now, here's what he learns. He comes back and he starts talking with people. And he finds out that the people who had come back with the first guy. What was the first guy's name? Zerubbabel, comes back with him. They've been there for the last at least 60 years or so, plus the people who never originally left Jerusalem. And they have started to intermarry with other nations from around the city of Jerusalem and around Judah. And so here's what Ezra does. Remember, he's realigning people's hearts back to God's law. He says, I know what God's law says, and I'm going to read it to you. And so what does he do? Remember I said he was a scribe, he was a priest. So what does he do? He opens up God's word and he starts to read it to the people. And here's what God's law says. Do not intermarry. With who? Other tribes. And here's how the people respond by weeping. They realize God allowed us to come back out of bondage to this nation. And we are forgetful people. Are any of you forgetful people not forgetting of your keys because you got here this morning? But, like, we are forgetful people. And they realize we have not obeyed God's law, and so they start to weep. Even Ezra himself is heartbroken when he finds out about this. And one of the men there. This is a fascinating situation. One of the men there who had not intermarried with other tribes, seeing, here's what we should do. We should tell these people, particularly. Actually, you can read this in chapters nine and ten, particularly, the priests and Levites had married into other nations. Those are the people, the tribe of Judah, I'm sorry, the tribe in Judea that were supposed to be pointing themselves towards leading people towards honoring God. And so here's what the guy says. You should tell them to leave their families, to leave their wives or their children, their. That are part of another nation. Hmm, Right. Cause most of us are thinking, wait, did he just tell them they should all get a divorce? In reality, that's exactly what he recommended. This other guy, we don't know much about him. And here's what we find out that God seems to, through Ezra and through praying says, you know what? This is very, very important. The people of Israel need to remain pure. And when they bring in other nations, remember the kings, what happened with the kings from a couple weeks ago when they brought in other nations, what did they bring with them? All of their idols. And so we see something fascinating here and not something that I'm saying if you're married to a person who's an unbeliever, you should get a divorce. That's not what this is teaching here. But Ezra says this. We're gonna pray about this. We're gonna gather God's people, we're gonna seek counsel and the prophets, and here's what we're gonna do. We are actually, and this took them, I think, about three months or so to navigate every single situation and say, what should we do? How should we go about separating God's people from the people that are not God's people, from the nation of Israel, from other nations? And that's exactly what they ended up doing. If you look in your Bibles, you see this here. The people in chapter 10 confess their sin. And then we have a list of people at the end of Chapter 10 listing off the names of people who were guilty of interview. The book concludes, naming 113 priests and leaders who had married foreign women and some of these people who had had children with them. Now, I do want to point one interesting fact out. We don't see God showing up and saying, tell them all to get a divorce. We don't see that. We see these people saying, we're trying to figure out how to keep the nation of Israel pure from idolatry. Now, want to be very clear here. The purpose was not divorce because there was a problem in the marriage, but rather this seemed to be an incredibly unique situation which God wanted to happen, at least from what we can see to ensure the rebuilding. We're talking about rebuilding, the rebuilding of a pure priestly tribe. Isn't that a strange ending to a book? We kind of scratch your head going, what is going on here? But in reality, it's not the ending, is it? It's a transition to the next book. Before we look at the book of Nehemiah. And we'll look at it relatively quickly here because we know what's happening already there. We learn this. Maybe write this down somewhere. Holiness that is separateness from sin matters to God and should matter to God's people. Compromising on God's clear commands may seem insignificant in the moment, but God has strong feelings about it. Compromise is not something that we should just take lightly. Oh, it's just a little bit. Because I'm sure that's how that started right at the beginning. These people, they respect God. I mean, they have other gods, but they respect God. And then I'll marry them, and this person's really pretty and necessarily respect God, but this person was okay. And then over time, what happens? A little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more. Until there was one family that was both of the nation of Israel and of foreign nations. God cares about holiness for his people. And this is true for you and I, isn't it? Look at the world around us and say, what are the things that God has called me to stay away from? Am I stepping into it, or am I staying pure of those things? [00:38:59] Speaker B: Things. [00:38:59] Speaker C: Let's look at Nehemiah. Conclusion of Ezra is strange, but it leads us really into something that we need to pay attention to. This third, rebuilding. So if you're with me with the sandcastle picture, we've built the temple. Ezra went in, he's like, I'm gonna rebuild the culture. And then this big old wave hit and we realized now it's like falling apart. And now we go forward sometime to Nehemiah and not too much time goes by. But Nehemiah also says. We see here in Nehemiah that he has a heart to rebuild the. What, the walls of this city. So who is this guy? He's an Israelite living in Persia. He's a. What was his job? Pop, More trivia here for you. He was a cupbearer to the king of Persia at this time. And his name, Nehemiah means Jehovah, or God comforts. He's mentioned here in this book and some. And then we look at chapter one. Look with me there, the words of Nehemiah son of Hilkiah. And we see here the timing that this occurs. And we step in a little bit further. Look with me here. We see that he hears that the walls of Jerusalem. Well, he knows the walls of Jerusalem are down. He's like, I want to do something about this. Look what it says here, verse four of chapter one. Look in your Bibles. He says, as soon as I heard this, verse three says this. And he said, the remnant there in the province who had survived the exile is in great trouble and shame. The walls of Jerusalem are broken down and its gates are destroyed by fire. As soon as I heard this, it says in verse four, these words, I sat down and I. What does your Bible say? Wept. And I mourned for days. And I continued fasting and praying before the Lord, the God of heaven. And I said, lord God of heaven, great and awesome God, who keeps covenants and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments. Let your ear be attentive and your eye be open to hear the prayer of your servant. And then what he does is this. He goes and he's crying, he's weeping over this. He's grieving deeply. And what does he do? The king finds out. And the king asked this question, Go over, look at chapter two, verse two. Nehemiah, why is your face sad? You're not sick. This is nothing but sadness of the heart. And he was afraid. It says, and the king says, let the. And he says, let the king live forever. And he says this. The walls of Jerusalem have been what, broken down now this is a pagan king again, isn't it? Remember what happened with the other three pagan. The other two pagan kings, what did they do? They said, here's resources, go and take care of it. That's what you're passionate about, Go and do that. And that's exactly what this king does as well. He sends him, and it's actually a secret mission. He sends him. He's like, we won't tell a bunch of people. And so Nehemiah goes back to Jerusalem, he looks at the walls and he says, we gotta start what? Building. We need to start building. This is not good. And so what happens? He tells some people about that in chapters two and three, they start building and building. And remember what happened with the temple. Zerubbabel goes back, he's like, we're going to start building. What happened after they started building? There was opposition, right? Enemies came. What happens here with Nehemiah? They start building and then who comes? Enemies come. That's exactly what you see. Very similar here. This guy's name who kind of leads the rebellion, if you will, against Nehemiah. His name is Sanballat. Can you say that? Sanballat. Any of you name. I don't recommend it. If you want to stand against God, that's on you. I guess. This guy shows up and he says, I'm going to start making fun of you, I'm going to start causing problems. And he starts doing that over and over and over again. Look in chapter four, verse seven, if you go on a little bit further and it says this. But when Sanballat and Tobiah, the Arabs and the Ammonites and The Ashdodites heard that the repairing of the walls of Jerusalem were going forward and its breaches were beginning to be closed. They were very angry. And so they began to work against Nehemiah and the people building. And then they stood against them. And maybe, you know, this part, they end up having to arm themselves to protect themselves as they're building the wall, praying to God protects them. And as that's going on, Nehemiah has to get distracted a little bit in chapter five because he finds out a bunch of the people don't. Now you might be asking, why don't they have food? Well, Nehemiah finds out that in that period of exile, a bunch of the nobles who had remained behind even in the last 60 years had started saying, you know what? We're going to start buying land and we're going to own it for ourselves and the people are going to have to pay us lots of money for food. And Nehemiah says, wait a minute, you're a Jew and you're a Jew and you're starving your other Jewish brothers. How does that sound? Problematic, right? And he literally rips into them. Have any of you been ripped into before? Rips into them and says, what are you doing? You are both God's people. God has blessed you by coming back to this place. Why are you doing this? Then he goes back to building the wall. Sanballat continues to get in the way. And after 52 days, the end of chapter six, look in your Bibles. The end of chapter six, the wall is finally what? Remember that sandcastle that we talked about? He has finally rebuilt it. And he's like, all right, finally it's there. And then we go on a little bit further. In chapter seven, you can note this on your outline. The wall is finally built. But then something else needs to occur. There needs to be a reviving or recovering of what was lost. There's all these people that have now built the wall and they're all there and they're like, what do we do now? What is this supposed to look like? If you need some light reading material, look at chapter seven and you will see lots of numbers and lots of names that you can't pronounce. And now for some of us, we look at that and we just kind of skip over it. Here's why that's there, because it's an accurate record of all of these people who have come back to Jerusalem because God cares about his people. These people are known of their families. They know what tribe they are from. God cares about that. And then in chapters eight and chapter nine and chapter ten, Ezra. Remember Ezra? We talked about him a little bit ago. Ezra shows up with Nehemiah. They're both together and they open God's word. And here's what Ezra does. He calls all the people together and he says, hey, everyone, we're gonna read the Bible. And starting very early in the morning. You wish you could be here for this. By the way, starting very early in the morning, they open the Bible and they start reading. Everybody's listening. Stand up. You don't have to stand up and listen for hours. Someone say hours. You thought you were here for a long time. Hours of Ezra reading the Bible, reading the Scriptures. I should say to them, and it says there are also other priests and Levites who were there explaining what that says. All day long, they take part in this. And then here's what the people start doing when they hear God's word. Any guesses? They start weeping. They start weeping. [00:46:21] Speaker A: Why? [00:46:22] Speaker C: Because they realize we are walking far away from God. We have strayed a long, long way. And then here's the famous verse and even a song that's from it. In chapter 12, it says this that Ezra said that they should rejoice because the joy of the Lord is their strength. And so chapter 12, they rejoiced, for God had made them rejoice with great joy. There was wonderful stuff going on. We have finally. Remember the sandcastle? We finally rebuilt it. All things are going well. And then we have chapter. What's the last chapter of Nehemiah? What is it? 13. Remember the big wave that we talked about when you thought you built your sandcastle? Chapter 13 comes along. It's probably about 10 years later after chapter 12. We're going to conclude with this and go into the last part of your outline afterwards. This is. Reform is needed. A lot of R's going on here. Rebuilding, realigning, rebuilding again of the walls, reviving what was lost. Reform is needed. So 10 years has gone by and we said this already. We are forgetful people. Well, 10 years has gone by and they have forgotten some things. There are five problems. Can we say five problems, five problems that we see in chapter 13. This is the big wave. This is the big wave that's coming. Here it is. Firstly, the first problem is they have married back into Ammonites and the Moabites, that is pagan nations. Isn't that a problem? Second problem. The priests whose job is to take care of the temple, they're not doing their job. In chapter 13. The third problem, the Levites are not being cared for by the people. Clearly, in God's law, this is a big wave. The fourth problem is this. The people are actively disobeying the Sabbath. They're not resting, they're doing market stuff. They're doing all sorts of stuff on the Sabbath, not resting like they should have. And the fifth and final is this. We have the priests, not just other people, but we have the priests marrying into what? Other nations. Does this sound familiar? Does this sound like that big old wave just came back and crashed into your sandcastle again? Like, we are building. It's going to be great. We're going to build, it's going to be great. And then it comes crashing down. And this is the part of the story when you're at the beach and you're like, I'm done building a sandcastle, right? This is not going well for me. Literally, that's how Nehemiah ends. Nehemiah calling out to God, saying, God, I tried. Have any of you tried something before and just hasn't worked out? Literally, look at the end of Nehemiah, he's like, God, remember me. I tried to help them obey your commands. I tried to tell the Levites to guide the people, right? I tried to build the walls. I tried to show them how to do the right thing. I. I tried and I tried and I tried and I tried and I. What? Tried. And these people keep disobeying. What does this teach us? Laws can't fix people. This is why Jeremiah 31 and Ezekiel 36 tell us God is going to show up and change people's hearts. People need a heart change. They don't need more rules. And so then we're left with this question. Before we look at the Savior on your outline, we're left with this question. What is God going to do to solve man's continual problem of disobedience? What is God going to do? We are like 450 years or so bc pre Jesus. They don't know that it's that kind of time frame. But we're left with that question. And this, as you saw in the time frame, is literally like the end of the story of the Old Testament. And now we are all waiting for the answer to that question. What is God going to do about my sin problem? Now you know the end of the story, don't you? Who does God send to solve the sin problem? Jesus Christ. And that's the Savior. Look at the Savior portion of your outline. Jesus. We see in Ezra is This, he's a rebuilder. The high priest who was in charge of rebuilding the temple. And his name literally was Jeshua. Does that sound familiar? What does that sound like? Jesus, Joshua, same name. The guy in charge of building the temple that was destroyed. Points us to foreshadows Jesus. He is someone coming, if you will, a symbol of the future Messiah. Zechariah actually talks about seeing this vision of someone coming to rebuild the temple. And Jesus says this. I'm speaking to the Pharisees. Years later, he says this. If you tear down the temple, I will rebuild it. In how many days? Three days. He's speaking of, I have the power. I am the one who's going to rebuild the temple. Jeshua did in Ezra and Jesus does as well. He's the one who rebuilt you. He's the one who rebuilt me, the temple of the Holy Spirit. Jesus is not just the rebuilder, he's also a burdened reaction. You can write that in. This is thinking about Jesus, not just in Ezra, but in Nehemiah. Jesus a burdened redeemer. If you look at the beginning of Nehemiah, we see this. Nehemiah finds out the walls of Jerusalem are broken. And what does he do? He weeps. He weeps and he weeps and then he leaves his place of comfort. What was his job? Cupbearer to the Nehemiah leaves his comfortable job because he realizes the walls are broken down. And he weeps and he goes to rebuild for God. John 3:16. For God. So stop right there for God. It doesn't say just God loved the world. Do you notice that? So loved. There's a burden there. If you look at Luke chapter 19, it says this, that when he came to Jerusalem and he wept over it, Jesus did. Jesus is the burdened redeemer. He cares deeply for his people and their hearts. Let's look at the application and then we'll stop. God, humanity and me. Some brief application points here on the screen as well. What does this teach us about God? It teaches us this. At least this many other things as well. God has a heart to rebuild broken establishments or people that he loves. Friends, you know, that's you and I. That also includes his church, includes his servants in ministry, pastors, ministries, people. He sees them. He says, I want you to honor and serve me. He has a heart to do just that. He doesn't abandon his people when they've strayed from him and say, that's it. I'm done with you. I'm gonna figure it out. With somebody else. And he says, I want to rebuild what is broken inside of you. Friends, maybe that's your family or your marriage or your parenting situation or your workplace. God sees the brokenness there and says, I want to rebuild that for my glory. I want to rebuild what is broken inside of you. Secondly, we also realize this about humanity, humans. When God is wanting to work, the enemy, who can work through humans, and the enemy wants to stand in the way of what God is doing. You know that he wants to stand in the way of what God is doing. And so you and I should expect it. We should discern it. It doesn't mean that any hardship is the enemy. Discern it. Is this God saying, don't do this, or is this the enemy trying to slow me down? Remember Ezra, Zerubbabel, Nehemiah, they all had that question. Is this God trying to tell me not to do this? Or is this the enemy? Discern it. And if it is the enemy, endure. Press on. And this might look like relationships. This might look like work stuff. This might look like family things. And it doesn't mean that just because there's hard things happening means that God's saying, give up. What he is reminding us is of this. The enemy wants to stand in the way of what God is doing. We should expect that as his people. And thirdly, and lastly, in the first person, what part of me does God want to rebuild or renew? What part of me? What part of you does God want to rebuild or renew? Maybe that's character traits. Maybe that's the way you think about something, the way you feel about something. Relationships. I don't know what it is. Ask him, what part of you, what part of me does God want to rebuild or renew? And then through prayer, God's word and God's people, you can, I can discover that and pursue his desire for your life and for my life. Ask yourself that question. Consider that because God wants to rebuild what is broken, he has the heart to do that. And God is sovereign. In other words, he has the power to do just that. Let's close in prayer today. Father in heaven, we are grateful this morning that you are sovereign over all things. And you have the power, even in the midst of opposition, you have the power to do what you want. You know where every person here in this room is and watching. You know what parts of us need to be rebuilt and need to be renewed, what parts of us are straying from you or resisting the promptings of your spirit. And you are calling us back to you right now you're calling us to look at the brokenness that might even exist inside of us and let you be the one to rebuild us. It's going to be uncomfortable. It's going to be hard. Maybe. There's people here today, right now, who have never let you in. They've never trusted in you as their Lord and Savior. Lord, I pray that you would show them that they are quite literally broken. Like a sandcastle on the beach. Nothing to them, a wave crashing down. Their sin crushes them. Nothing without you. You are the only one who can rebuild us. And I pray that we would deeply believe that and allow you to do the work that only you can in us. In Jesus name, Amen. [00:56:32] Speaker A: We get to celebrate this morning with three individuals who made a very loud declaration of the fact that they want Jesus. So before our prayer, do me a favor. I'm gonna ask them to come up and we're gonna celebrate one more time with them. Can I see? Mr. Harrison Kuykendall. We also have one for Ms. Alyra day. And finally, we have one for Ms. Alexa Greif. [00:57:23] Speaker C: Awesome. Let's pray together. Father in heaven, we are so grateful for the work that you are doing in our life, in the life of the church, in our lives, of our family, as we listen to you, as we are sensitive to the work of your spirit in our lives, where we can trust that your sovereign hand will grow us and will change us to be more and more like you. Live holy lives that reflect your character as we go out right now into the world, into a place that desperately needs you. Lord, help us too. Remember, we are your temple. We are a place where your spirit dwells. Lord, that we would show people your glory. Show people your love and your grace and your mercy through us. Or you are sending us out right now into a world that is broken and needs to be rebuilt and can only be rebuilt by you. Give us courage to be those people. Light in darkness, truth in the midst of confusion and chaos. For your glory above all else. In Jesus name, amen.