Ezra 5:1-2

A very warm thank you again for having me.

It's a real privilege to be here.

And if you want to have Ezra 5 open in front of you,

that'd be a help.

Just before I pray for us, let me...

I preach this as part of a sermon series in Ezra,

but I believe you've not been having a sermon series in Ezra.

So if you're slightly rusty on your Ezra,

let me just give you a little recap.

Ezra is one of the post-exilic books,

which means it's about sort of 600 years,

500 years before...

No, more like 500 years before Christ.

And it's just after the people have suffered this great exile.

They've been taken into Babylon for their sins.

They were there for 70 years.

The Lord has brought them back.

And Ezra's the story of the first returnees

and the way that they come back.

They're a little sort of suffering people,

but they're getting on, building the temple,

that sort of thing.

And largely after the sort of horrors

of the pre-exile people of God

and all their unfaithfulness,

Ezra's a very positive book.

Right at the end, chapters 9 and 10,

you see a sort of fairly big sin.

Some people have been sinning,

but even there, they do really well

in dealing with it.

And we're going to see some of that sort of positivity

in these two verses.

Let me pray for us now.

Blessed are you, O Lord.

Teach us your statutes.

You are good.

You are good.

And you do good.

Teach us your statutes.

Open our eyes that we might see wonderful things

in your word.

In the name of Christ we pray.

Amen.

So having given an overall introduction to Ezra,

let's just zoom in on these two verses.

What's been going on here is that in chapter 4,

opposition has arisen to the rebuilding of the temple.

The whole first half of Ezra is about the rebuilding

of the temple.

Oppositions are arisen.

At the end of chapter 4,

people have come with messages from the emperor

saying you have to stop doing this work.

And so they have to down tool.

They're compelled by force to do that.

And in that context,

you get chapter 5,

verses 1 and 2.

Now the prophets Haggai and Zechariah,

the son of Iddo,

prophesied to the Jews who are in Judah and Jerusalem

in the name of the God of Israel who are over them.

Then Zerubbabel,

the son of Shealtiel and Jeshua,

the son of Jezodak,

the sort of descendant of David and the priest,

arose and began to rebuild the house of God

that is in Jerusalem.

And the prophets of God were with them,

supporting them.

So here we are again.

I've been saying they're doing pretty well.

Here they are doing pretty well.

They face serious opposition.

People have come to them and stopped them building.

But the prophets spur them on

and they respond well to that spurring on

and they rebuild.

And God is with them.

Their hands are strengthened.

But there is a very strange silence

going on in these verses.

There's something that God is not saying here

that he doesn't mention.

And I want to take you to the prophet Haggai.

The prophets Haggai and Zechariah,

the ones who are prophesying.

And this is one of those places

where we know what they said.

We know exactly what they said to people

because they wrote it down in their books.

You don't actually have to turn there in your Bibles

because all the passages I'm going to look at

are in your service sheets,

although you're very welcome to turn there in the Bibles

and check that I'm not making things up

on your service sheets.

It's very striking having read Ezra,

where they do so well,

and it's so positive,

to go and read what Haggai actually said to them.

Here's how Haggai starts.

In the second year of Darius the king,

in the sixth month,

on the first day of the month,

the word of the Lord came

by the hand of Haggai the prophet

to Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel,

governor of Judah,

and to Joshua, the son of Jehozadak,

the high priest.

Thus says the Lord of hosts,

these people say the time has not yet come

to rebuild the house of the Lord.

Then the word of the Lord came

by the hand of Haggai the prophet.

Is it a time for yourselves

to dwell in your panelled houses

while this house lies in ruins?

That's a rebuke, isn't it?

God says to them through Haggai,

you guys are busy with your own houses,

your own projects.

You've given up building my house.

You've got your excuses.

And if you read Ezra,

the excuses are pretty strong.

They were compelled by force

to stop building.

But God says to them through the prophet Haggai,

you've got your excuses.

It's not the right time,

but the basic fact is

that you've abandoned me.

You're turning away to your own comfort.

And it's so serious

that God says

he's started disciplining the people.

They've had bad harvests

because of their disobedience.

Here's verse 9.

You looked for much

and behold it came to little

and when you brought it home

I blew it away.

Why, declares the Lord of hosts,

because of my house

that lies in ruins

while each of you

busies himself with his own house.

You've been disobeying me.

You've been neglecting my glory.

And I have already been disciplining you.

That is the message

that Haggai brings to the people.

So when the people listen to Haggai

and seek the Lord

and do the work,

it's not simply

that they've been doing really well

and then here they continue to do well

or maybe shift up a gear.

No, this is repentance.

This is turning around.

They were sinning.

And they leave their sin

and they seek God

and they serve him.

Well, we have all the dates for this

because Haggai and Zechariah

date their prophecies very carefully.

Haggai preaches in the 6th month.

They start building in the 7th month.

How about Zechariah?

We've got two prophets

in Ezra, chapter 5.

Ezra 5 · chapter mention

Haggai and Zechariah both come.

Zechariah starts preaching

a little bit later

in the 8th month.

They've already restarted work.

They've been going for a month now.

So you might expect

just pretty solid encouragement

from Zechariah.

Well done.

You've repented.

Now keep going in that repentance.

But no, this is the way

Zechariah starts.

In the 8th month,

in the 2nd year of Darius,

the word of the Lord

came to the prophet Zechariah,

the son of Berechiah,

the son of Iddo,

saying,

The Lord was very angry

with your fathers.

Therefore say to them,

thus declares the Lord of hosts,

return to me,

says the Lord of hosts,

and I will return to you,

says the Lord of hosts.

In the 8th month,

they've been building for a month,

Zechariah comes to them

with another message

of repentance.

You are away from me,

as your fathers were.

You must still return to me.

They've already started again

on the temple,

but clearly there's

some repentance to go.

They've sort of done

some of that external work

to turn around,

but their hearts

aren't quite right yet.

Zechariah doesn't beat

around the bush.

Repent.

Return.

And he says it pretty strongly.

Very angry.

In the life of that,

doesn't Ezra 5

seem rather remarkable?

All Ezra says

is that Haggai and Zechariah

prophesied,

and the people rose up to build,

and the prophets are there

supporting them.

There's no mention of rebuke.

There's no mention of repentance.

It's just really positive.

You're reading right through

the book of Ezra.

You've been feeling

really positive so far.

Ezra wants you to carry on

feeling positive about

everything the people are doing.

What do we do with that?

Arguments from silence

can be dangerous,

can't they?

I'm about to give you

an argument from silence

that I sort of want to warn you

against most of them.

Anytime you say anything,

there's a sort of

billion and one things

you haven't said.

If I tell you that

God loves you,

and you go,

well, he didn't say anything

about the price of tea in China,

and so that proves that

theology doesn't say anything

about Chinese home economics.

So if you want to be

a theologian,

you have to leave

those things behind.

No tea for you.

Well, that's nonsense,

isn't it?

I just wasn't talking

about that thing.

But sometimes,

silence is significant.

And what I want to do,

really,

in the rest of our time,

I sort of want to use

this thing in Ezra 5

as a springboard.

Because the silence

that happens here

is the silence that happens

over and over again

in Scripture.

A kind of quietness

from the Lord

that I want to draw

your attention to.

I want to give,

in detail,

a couple more examples.

First of all,

King David.

King David,

probably one of the most

famous Old Testament figures.

He's famous for

all sorts of things.

He killed a giant

once with a stone.

You might have heard about that.

He wrote a whole bunch

of psalms.

Probably sung some of them.

He's also famous,

isn't he,

for the time he committed adultery

and lied about it

and committed murder

to cover it up.

Nine months,

that was,

of hard-hearted rebellion

against God.

The worst abuse

of kingly power.

It was the absolute pits.

Perhaps you know the story.

The prophet Nathan

comes to him

and confronts him

and David finally

recognises his sin

and goes,

I've sinned.

And wonderfully,

immediately,

the prophet Nathan says,

the Lord's taken away

the guilt of your sins.

You're forgiven.

Just like that.

What happens next

in David's life?

Well, two very important things.

On the one hand,

Nathan says,

you're forgiven,

but there's still

going to be consequences.

You've brought sexual sin

and murder into your house.

Those things are not

going to leave your house.

Those things don't go away

quickly.

And the rest of the book

of Samuel covers

the horrible fruit of that.

David's baby son dies.

His other son

does something awful

that I won't mention

in a sort of

all-age group like this.

And that leads to murder

and eventually to civil war.

The consequences

of David's sin

spiral on and on.

I think it's fair to say

if you put the books

of Samuel and Kings together,

that's the sort of

400, 500 years

of Israel's history.

That end in the division

of north and south

and then exile

of both of them.

And you can say

all of that disaster

right down to the exile

has its roots

in David's sin.

It's big stuff.

The consequences

are really painful.

That's one thing.

And the other thing

is that even as

all those consequences

to David's sin

are playing out,

we stop

talking about

David's sin.

It stops being mentioned.

You can read about it

in the Psalms

where he confesses to God,

but the narratives

don't talk about it anymore.

They don't say

and this bad thing

happened because

of David's sin.

That one too,

that's also David's fault.

See this bad thing?

Remember David?

Listen,

don't commit adultery.

If you've read

One Kings recently,

you might have noticed

that over and over again

they do pick up

Jeroboam's sin.

Jeroboam,

the unrepentant

king of Israel

committed a great sin,

led people into idolatry

and they bang

on and on about that.

There's hardly a king

goes by

who's a bad king

where they don't go

and he's sinned

the sin of Jeroboam

and they're constantly

bringing you back to it.

They really could go,

oh,

he followed in the footsteps

of David.

But instead of that,

there's silence

and actually there's

more than silence.

I've put in

your sheets

another verse

from One Kings.

God says to Solomon,

David your father

walked

with integrity

of heart

and uprightness

doing according

to all that I've

commanded you

keeping my statutes

and my rules.

And I think we read that.

I think I've been in groups

where we've read

that passage

and people have gone,

hang on a second.

I can think of two

quite big statutes

that David didn't keep.

What's this talking about?

But there it is.

God says,

David did all I commanded.

Or a couple of chapters later

when Solomon,

David's son,

screws up

and turns away

instead of saying,

oh, just like his dad.

We get 1 Kings 11

1 Kings 11:4

verse 4.

For when Solomon was old,

his wives turned away

his heart after other gods

and his heart was not

wholly true

to the Lord his God

as was the heart

of David his father.

And again,

we want to go,

well, David's heart

was wholly true

to the Lord his God.

Where does nine months

of rebellion

and adultery murder

fit into that?

When you read

the book of 1 Chronicles,

by the way,

it's even worse.

1 Chronicles goes back

over David's life again,

sort of retells the story

and just leaves out

the sin

and its consequences

entirely.

It just presents David

as this righteous

glowing figure.

Go and read 1 Chronicles.

You're not going to find

anything bad said about him.

Well, actually,

you'll find a different story

about a census.

You're like,

why does it care about that?

Anyway,

that's not the topic

of this evening.

So you get these

two things.

On the one hand,

real,

ongoing consequences

for sin.

On the other hand,

this strange silence.

almost as if

God couldn't see

David's sin anymore.

As if it had been covered.

Another example,

before I kind of

try and draw

these threads together.

Lot,

Abraham's nephew,

Lot.

If you read

the book of Genesis,

you come across

Lot several times

and

I'm not sure

if I should really say this

about a righteous man

in Scripture,

but most times

you meet him

in the book of Genesis,

you kind of want to

shake him

a little bit

and go,

you are such a chump.

Stop being

such a chump.

He's the guy

who picks where he lives

by what looks good,

not by God's promise.

Genesis 13,

he goes and lives near Sodom,

famous for his wickedness.

Then he ends up living

in Sodom.

And in Genesis 14,

he's captured

by another king.

His uncle Abraham

saves him.

He has this golden opportunity

to go out.

That was kind of a stupid

thing to do.

But instead,

he goes back

and lives in Sodom

again.

He becomes,

in fact,

a significant figure there.

He's sort of sitting

in the town gate

as one of their elders,

I guess.

And when God

sends angels

to destroy the town

of Sodom

for its wickedness,

Lot hosts those angels

in his house.

That's a good thing to do.

And when townsfolk

come and attack the angels,

Lot offers his own

daughters to them.

It's horrible,

horrible stuff.

When the angels

tell him to flee,

he can't even make up

his mind to do that.

He hesitates.

The angels have to

drag him out of the city.

His wife dies

under God's judgment.

His daughters,

again,

awful wickedness.

I'm not going to go

into it in an all-age service.

And that is the end

of Lot's story

in the Old Testament.

He loses everything he has.

His wife and his whole family

end up under God's judgment.

All he saves

is his own skin.

The consequences,

again,

we have consequences

to Lot's foolishness.

They are very severe.

And yet,

when we get to

the New Testament,

we find a very strange

passage.

2 Peter,

2 Peter 2:7

chapter 2,

verses 7 and 8,

which says that he,

which is God,

rescued righteous Lot,

greatly distressed

by the sensual conduct

of the wicked.

For as that righteous man

lived among them

day after day,

he was tormenting

his righteous soul

over the lawless deeds

that he saw

and heard.

And that is all

that the New Testament

says about Lot.

Doesn't mention

his folly

and his sin.

It's one point

where Jesus mentions

his wife,

but doesn't ascribe

that to him.

Peter here

zeroes in on pretty much

the one good thing

you could say

about Lot,

which is that when

he saw the evil

around him,

he didn't like it.

That's honestly

not a very high bar,

you'd think.

The evil around him

distressed him.

But Peter

takes that one thing

and holds it up

to us

that we might honour it,

ignoring all the

sin and folly

around it,

and calls him

righteous Lot.

Righteous Lot.

Something remarkable

there,

isn't there?

That is not a one-off.

You will search

very high and wide

to find the New Testament

criticising any

faithful Old Testament

figure.

Wicked people,

like Cain and Esau,

they get criticised,

they're held up as

negative examples,

don't be like them.

Unfaithful Israel

as a nation is criticised,

that's held up as an

example,

don't be like the

unfaithful generation

that came out of Egypt,

for example.

But the faithful

individuals,

not so much.

I think there's

maybe one time

where it mentions

that Aaron

did the golden calf thing.

That's about it.

It would be so easy,

wouldn't it,

for the New Testament

to hold up David

and go,

don't commit adultery

like David did,

the consequences

were really bad.

That seems like a

really obvious example

to hold up,

but it never happens.

Lot is not criticised,

Moses is not criticised,

but the closest we get

is in Jesus'

genealogy.

where it just mentions

who Solomon's mum was,

the wife of Uriah.

You can kind of

put that one together.

You can marvel from that

that Jesus came from

a family full of sin,

but it's not held up,

is it?

As a David did this bad thing,

look at that bad thing,

don't do it.

You read the Old Testament,

you've got all these

messy characters,

and you get to the New Testament

and it looks back at them

over and over and over again

as heroes.

What's going on?

And the answer,

brothers and sisters,

is very simple.

The answer is atonement.

In the Bible,

the word for atonement

comes from the word

for covering.

When God forgives a sin,

he covers it.

He covers it

with the blood of Christ.

And the point of covering it

is that you can't see it anymore.

We say so often,

don't we,

words along the lines of

he remembers our sins no more.

He removes them from us

as far as east is

from the west.

They're covered.

We often say those words,

we often read them

in our Bibles,

and yet,

I found it so striking

to see the application

of that covering

is that God stops

talking about our sins.

He really does

remember them no more.

It's not just poetry.

Sin has consequences, yes,

but constant reminders,

no, it's gone.

David's heart was wholly true

to the Lord his God,

says God,

without winking.

Righteous lot,

says Peter,

without blushing.

In Ezra,

Ezra says,

the people rose and worked

and the prophets

supported them,

and that is all I need

to say about that.

Well done them.

Have you seen

those three examples?

There's so many more

that we could see.

The Lord recorded

those sins in Scripture

for us to learn from.

You can go and read

about David's sin,

you can go and read

about Lot's sin,

but he also recorded

his silence in Scripture

for us to learn from.

You go past Genesis,

you never hear another

bad word about Lot.

The book of Haggai

mentions the sin,

in order to write down

his prophecy,

but the book of Ezra

covers it over.

He remembers those sins

no more.

And I want in the time

we have left

just to reflect on this

in two ways.

First,

for our encouragement,

I'd just like to

sort of press in

for you this evening

that that is the way

the Lord treats you.

And then second,

for our instruction,

I'd like to spend

just a little bit of time

pressing in that this is

the way we're called

to treat one another.

First then,

the way the Lord

treats you.

We often find it hard

to believe

that the Lord

really forgives us.

We sin.

Maybe it's a smaller sin,

it's a bit of laziness,

it's a crossword.

Maybe it's a bigger sin.

An abortion,

maybe many years ago.

Perhaps years where

you walked away

from the Lord

and big or small,

we come to the Lord,

don't we,

and we confess that sin,

we repent,

we seek his forgiveness.

If there's restitution

to make,

we try and make it.

And yet,

I wonder if you know

this experience

that in that sort of

process of repenting,

there's a weight

in your stomach,

there's an ache

in your heart,

and they're lifted

wonderfully.

And then sometimes

they reappear.

You feel that.

Ache once again.

You pray,

and yet you still feel

like you might be

unclean.

Perhaps you're still

living day by day

with the consequences

of your sin,

daily reminders of it.

So many sins leave us

with consequences

for the rest of our lives,

don't they?

Perhaps every time

you're reminded of

that sin,

whatever it was,

that pit comes back again.

And I want to say

to you this evening,

brothers and sisters,

take heart.

There may well be

consequences,

but when the Lord

covers a sin,

he really covers it.

If I can put it this way,

when God speaks of you

to his angels,

he doesn't refer to you

by your sin.

He's not thinking about it.

He's not talking about it.

He's not planning to bring it up.

When Paul describes love

in 1 Corinthians 13,

he says

that love does not

count up wrongdoing.

It keeps no record

of wrongs.

And your God

who is love

keeps no record

of your wrongs.

If you are his,

seeking his mercy,

seeking his grace,

he's not written down

your sins.

When his books are opened,

they won't be found there.

More than that,

can I say,

from Ezra,

from Lot,

from David,

it's not just

that various moments,

days, years of your life

get kind of blotted out.

And so we just don't think

about 2014

or whatever it was.

It's more that they get

looked at

through the lens of love

and the lens of grace.

Put it this way,

if you were to remember

one episode

in Lot's life,

probably the one

he wouldn't want you

to remember

of all,

rank them all.

Probably the one

he wouldn't want you

to remember

is that one awful night

when he offers

his daughters to the mob

and he nearly misses out

on God's grace

by dithering.

And yet that is where

the apostle Peter goes,

not to blame him,

but in the middle

of all that foolishness

and sin,

to pull out

the one little seed

of righteousness,

that Lot at least

hated the evil around him,

and he pulls that out

and focuses your attention

on it.

It doesn't matter

that that diamond

was found in a dunghill.

Look how good

that diamond is.

Why on earth

would we talk about

the muck,

the sin?

That's covered.

But that little righteousness,

so small,

so easily overlooked,

God prizes that

and he calls us around

to look at it

and to marvel.

And the Lord

treats you that way too.

On judgment day,

the Lord Jesus

tells us it will be

exactly the same.

As he tells the parable

of the sheep

and the goats,

remarkable in many ways.

He speaks to the goats,

I never knew you,

they're amazed.

Terrifying words.

But he speaks

to his sheep

and he praises them.

He welcomes them

into his glory

and their response

is to go,

hang on a second,

when did we do all that?

When were we half

as righteous

as you're making out?

And he draws

their attention

to their little

righteousnesses,

their little kindnesses

to the poor,

that they had forgotten

all about.

But the Lord Jesus

had not forgotten.

He had treasured

those things up.

He wanted to reward them

eternally for them.

If you are in Christ

seeking the Lord

in humility,

not only does he keep

no record of your wrongs,

he treasures up

your righteous deeds

that you rightly look at

and go,

how insignificant,

how mixed up with sin.

he treasures them up

and rejoices over them.

How rich his grace

to us is,

don't you think?

How remarkable he is.

And then I want to say,

if this is the way

the Lord treats us,

then this is also

how we should treat

each other.

You know this,

I hope,

from your Bibles.

Forgive as the Lord

forgave you.

And the very simple

point I want to make here

is that forgiving someone

means covering over

their sin.

Now just like with God,

that does not mean

no consequences.

If someone's been

stealing money

from the church,

you forgive them

if they're repentant.

You don't make them

treasure it, right?

There are consequences.

But there's also covering.

When we forgive one another,

except for the very rare

occasions when it might

be necessary or helpful,

that means we just

don't even talk about

that anymore.

We don't have to

bring it up.

It's gone.

I want to say that

should be true of big

things, but also of

little things.

And let's just discuss

the little things for a

moment.

Might let it slip under

our radar with little

things.

I wonder whether,

perhaps this is just

a couple of things I've

seen and I'm extrapolating

out too widely,

but I wonder whether

in our culture,

it's fairly common in

families,

in friendship groups,

to keep talking about

someone's sin or folly

as a kind of joke,

as banter.

Particularly when we

think it's such a small

sin that, you know,

who cares?

Do you remember that

stupid thing you did?

What a chump you were.

Ho, ho.

Do you remember how

you were like that for

five years?

Oh, man, what an idiot.

And the poor,

unforgiven sinner

laughs along

unconvincingly.

As I was saying,

if you were given to

that kind of humour,

it's just time to cut

that out.

It's an old English

proverb, many are

truths spoken in jest.

A good rule of thumb

is, was there anything

to forgive in the thing

I'm making a joke

about?

Was there sin in it?

If so, that's not

really a fit subject

for a joke.

Far better just to

leave it.

The Lord has covered

over your much

bigger sins.

Find something better

to laugh about.

It's true for big

things as well.

If you're holding a

grudge, if there's

someone that you feel

bitter towards,

perhaps they well

deserved it.

We sin against each

other in such huge

ways, don't we,

sometimes?

And yet the Lord

calls you to

cover it.

Highly recommend

here a little article

called How to be

free from bitterness.

American evangelist

called Jim Wilson

who died a few years

ago.

It's only eight pages.

I would say personally

some of the most

fruitful eight pages

that I've read.

Well worth reading

the whole thing.

Here's a little quote.

He says,

How can we tell

if we're bitter?

One good rule of

thumb is this,

bitterness

remembers

details.

You've had

thousands of

conversations in

your life,

most of which

you've forgotten,

but this one took

place five years

ago and you

remember every

single word

and his intonation

and the inflection

of every part of

his voice.

You know exactly

what happened

and that means

you're bitter.

He's right,

isn't he?

Unforgiveness,

bitterness

remembers,

forgiveness

forgets.

So let me say

that there may

well be in a room

this size,

I imagine there

is,

I don't know

this congregation,

but I imagine

there is bitterness

in some hearts

here,

unforgiveness.

The Lord is

calling you right

now to deal

with him,

to forgive,

to cover that

sin over,

to leave it.

Don't let it

roll around in

your mind.

When you're

tempted to chew

over it,

go to God

in prayer instead.

Don't keep

prodding that

sore spot.

Cover it.

The Lord

covered your

sin.

The Lord

will judge

that sin

in his

wisdom.

You cover

it.

And I

want to say

to you,

there is

on offer,

it tastes

bitter to

swallow your

bitterness.

Obviously it

does.

It's hard.

But there

is such

sweetness in

the aftertaste

once it's

gone down

and it's

not there

anymore.

You know

that because

you know

that it is

a sweet

thing,

that the

Lord has

forgiven you

and it

is a

wonderful

thing to

take his

grace and

use it to

forgive others.

God

loves

mercy.

He loves

to show

it to

you.

He shows

it to you

more richly

than you

believe he

does.

And he

loves

when you

show mercy

to others.

It

pleases

him.

So seek

him while

he may

be found

and rejoice

in his

grace and

forgive your

brother.

Let me

pray for us

now.