Ezra 7 - Instruction and Renewal

Church, we are in Ezra.

We're back in Ezra again.

Ezra chapter 7.

Ezra 7 · chapter mention

So if you don't know, we've been kind of marching through Ezra since uh September.

Obviously, we took a break with Advent and I'm preaching through Ezra.

Ron is still in Ecclesiastes and Jimmy's still preaching through James.

We're in Ezra chapter 7 this morning.

Ezra 7 · chapter mention

And the unique thing about Ezra chapter 7 is this is where Ezra actually finally shows up.

Ezra 7 · chapter mention

So this book is titled Ezra, and he doesn't show up come upon the scene until chapter 7.

So we're going to get to know him a little bit.

I know today is New Year's Day.

I don't know how you guys are with New Year's resolutions.

Some people, every year, it's a new resolution, they're excited about that.

It kind of gets them going.

I'm not too much of a resolution person anymore.

I feel like I was, and I'm kind of maturing or burning out because I'm not fulfilling my resolutions, so it's easier if you just don't make them.

But I do enjoy the new year.

It's clean slate.

It's a time for us to kind of, there's a freshness to the year, there's an excitement to the year, and I like that.

I don't know how you guys feel about that, but I like that freshness.

New opportunity, it kind of feels like.

The bad part of it is that up here in the northern hemisphere, it's cold and it's gray and it's dreary.

So we're kind of fresh late new year, but the weather's kind of a dump.

So we feel that.

We I don't know if you feel that I feel that.

I'm just like, ah, I don't really feel like doing much.

I don't feel like changing much or really putting out a whole lot of effort.

Kind of just going to hibernate, kind of chill out, and make it through the next two months, and we'll be fine.

But this, thankfully, is not how God views things.

He's not like, well, you know, I feel like I'm just kind of worn out, and it's kind of gloomy out, so let's just relax.

Let's not take on any big challenges or any new things.

But rather that God's way of working with his people is the same.

Day after day, year after year, he uses his people and his word and his spirit to fulfill his plan.

So in chapter 7 of Ezra, we pick up the story of Ezra.

But we're gonna kind of go back and just recap the first six chapters so we can kind of catch up if you don't know.

Ezra, the book of Ezra, is a part of a snapshot of God's redemptive story for his people.

Right?

So the whole Old Testament, the old covenant, there's all these stories, there's all these books, there's all these people.

And Ezra and the book of Nehemiah capture one part of that.

In that part is when God's people who were in exile return back to Jerusalem, back to the promised land.

Well, what were they doing in exile?

Well, remember, if we go way back, God was setting apart his people.

He calls Abraham, right?

He gives him sons, Isaac and Jacob, and Jacob have 12 sons, and one is Joseph, he gets sold into slavery in Egypt, and then the other sons, they all end up in Egypt, and Joseph provides grain and food for them, and the people, the Hebrews, begin to flourish.

They grow in number.

Several hundred years later, they're enslaved by Pharaoh.

They're still God's people, but they're slaves in Egypt.

And then God raises up Moses.

Right?

You're familiar with that story, He raises up Moses, and Moses leads the people out of captivity, out of Egypt, over through the Red Sea, which is miraculous.

God parts the sea through there, and then he leads them through the desert for 40 years into the promised land.

This is what Moses does.

God gives these people the promised land.

This is a wonderful land.

Be fruitful, multiply, obey my commands.

Moses gives them the law.

He said, This is how, this is what God wants for you.

This is how he's instructing you to live.

This is how you're to conduct your affairs with one another.

He gives them priests, this is how you're to worship God.

And so Moses does all these things, and then Moses brings them to the promised land.

Moses doesn't go in the promised land, but the people go in.

If you're familiar with the story, it doesn't take long for everything just to disintegrate.

I mean, it just falls apart like instantly, it feels like.

So then ushers in, if you're familiar with the books, the story of Judges.

And the theme in Judges is there's no king in Israel, and everyone does what's right in their own eyes.

There's no king, there's no real ruler.

We have judges, and these are these aren't like magistrate judges, these are like military leader judges.

So they have these and they're just wicked.

And they're wicked, and they just kind of continue this cycle of depravity, and it gets worse and worse.

And so here Moses brings the people out.

God's delivering his people out of captivity, gives them the promised land, they just make a mess of it.

Complete disaster, to the point that they've forgotten God.

And then God says, Okay, I'm not done, I'm not wringing my hands and casting you off and gonna go find a new people.

But rather, he says, I will love you and I will punish you, I will discipline you.

As a father disciplines his son lovingly to correct them, to help them see.

And so this is what God does.

He says, You're gonna go into captivity.

You're gonna be carried off into Babylon, you're gonna be taken away, you'll be taken from your home, you'll be carried off for 70 years into captivity, which feels like an extremely long time.

Most people who go into captivity are never gonna come back.

And those who are all born in captivity, they don't remember Jerusalem or the city that God had given them.

But this is what God is doing with his people, lovingly, graciously saying, I'm not giving up on you.

I'm going to keep working on you.

I'm going to keep working.

And this is his promise, his lovingly, gracious promise.

This is what Jeremiah 29, 10 through 13 says.

For thus says the Lord, when 70 years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you.

I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place.

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord.

Plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future, a hope.

Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you.

You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all of your heart.

So God graciously says, Listen, you will be carried off to this land.

This is going to happen, but I will not leave you, I will not forsake you.

This is my plan for you.

This isn't just happening, this is my plan for you.

So then the people are in captivity for 70 years, and for the kind of even the nation they're being held captive by kind of changes hands as far as control.

Nebuchadnezzar dies, the Persians come in, conquer the Babylonians, God's still preserving his people.

And he says, My people, I'm going to send you back.

This is where Ezra picks up.

Remember, chapter 1 and chapter 2.

They're beginning to be sent back.

King Cyrus says, Hey, listen, you guys can head out, you can take what you need.

Here's all the stuff that we pelvaged when we came 70 years ago.

Everything from the temple, you can take that.

So Zerebel and Jeshua, this kind of the priest and this governor, they they take 50,000 people, thousands of miles back to Jerusalem.

Months and months it takes them to get there.

And they get back.

And the first thing they do is they build the altar.

They build the altar so they can sacrifice, they can begin to obey the law again.

And then they start to build a temple.

Right?

It's chapter three.

They lay the cornerstone of the temple.

Then what happens?

They're excited.

Some people are weeping because they don't remember the old people, the old temple.

Some people are rejoicing for the new temple.

And then the work stops.

And all this is happening.

It's been all this journey, all this money, all this effort, all these things going on.

And then it just stops because there's some opposition.

Some people come around and say, hey, what are you doing?

Who gave you permission to do that?

You shouldn't be doing that.

They're like, well, you know, we don't want to cause any issues, so we'll just stop.

And chapter four is all these kind of letters written back and forth and all these things about the opposition God's people faced.

And then in chapter five and six, the prophets Haggai and Zechariah rebuke them.

They say, What are you guys doing?

Like God has commanded you, He's provided for you.

The king of Persia's on your side.

Like, what are you doing?

You're just, you're, you're, you're forgetting what God has called you to.

You're giving up.

Rebuild the temple.

Because you see, they were sort of kind of working on their houses.

They had like nice houses, and they kind of take care of themselves and getting things done.

And the prophets just rebuke them, say, you guys are living in nice houses while the temple isn't even rebuilt.

You came back to the promised land to obey God, but you're not even obeying him.

You're building a house for yourself.

This rebuke works.

God's word works.

They repent.

They repent of this sin and they say, okay, let's rebuild the temple.

And so boom, they start rebuilding the temple.

And it's rebuilt within months.

Within months.

So it takes 16 years from when they when they first came back to Jerusalem until the temple was rebuilt.

It's a long time of kind of getting some things situated, then a long time of pause.

Then the Lord uses his word to correct his people.

And then from that time the temple is rebuilt, they celebrate, they celebrate Passover.

It's about 60 years from chapter 6 to chapter 7.

60 years from where chapter ends and the temple's rebuilt until Ezra kind of comes on the scene in chapter 7.

So this is where we pick it up in chapter 7.

And I'm not going to read all of chapter 7.

What we're going to see is a similar theme.

And that is that God is using his people, and he's using wicked rulers.

So we're just reading a couple verses here, if you will.

Verse 1.

There's a lot of names here.

I'm going to kind of skip some of those.

But it says, now after this, in the reign of Artaxerxes, the king of Persia, it talks about Ezra and his descendants or his lineage.

Right?

And then in verse 6.

This Ezra went up from Babylonia.

He was a scribe skilled in the law of Moses that the Lord the God of Israel had given.

And the king granted him all that he asked.

For the hand of the Lord his God was on him.

And there went up to Jerusalem in the seventh year of Artaxes the king, some of the people of Israel, and some of the priests and Levites and singers and gatekeepers and the temple servants.

And Ezra came into and came to Jerusalem in the fifth month, which was in the seventh year of the king.

Sorry, seventh year of the king.

So we begin the story.

We don't really know much about Ezra other than he's a descendant of Aaron, right?

Direct lineage of Aaron, Moses' brother, the priestly order.

So this isn't just kind of anyone.

The Lord has brought up and raised up a man who is passionate about the things of the Lord and who is prepared well to serve the Lord.

So he's of a priestly lineage, a descendant of Aaron.

This was a very serious matter.

As we remember back in chapter 2, no one could just become a priest because they wanted to become a priest.

You had to be a bloodline, right?

And so that's why there's some people who were like, hey, we're of the priestly lineage.

And they're like, you know what?

Our records don't quite say that.

We need to hold off and figure that out.

So you can't just like sign up and become a priest.

You have to be of the lineage of those whom God had said can be priests.

And even if you're in the lineage, the way that the law was written, you're not just to kind of like show up at a certain time, like, hey, I think I'm here for my shift as a priest.

The requirements, the training was immensely vigorous for these men.

But Ezra wasn't someone who just kind of did the family business.

He wasn't like, well, my dad was a priest, and my dad's dad was a priest, and my great-granddad was a priest, and so you know I'm a priest.

It's kind of what we do.

And my family, it's our thing.

Rather, he loved, he was well skilled, and he was passionate about the word of the Lord.

He was passionate about teaching the word of the Lord.

It says that he was skilled in the law or a teacher.

He says that four times in chapter 7.

Verse 6, verse 11, through 12, verse 21, and verse 25.

He's a skilled teacher.

Someone who's worked at this.

He's developed, he's been passionate to work and develop a skill, not so that he could be praised, or so he could just grow a really big following or you know, get some major influence.

He was skilled so that he could rightly divide God's word and teach the people what they needed to know to follow the Lord.

One commentary said something really interesting.

They said, you know, before captivity, most of the law was just given by the priests.

They were just declaring things.

But in captivity, the priests were limited, everything is reduced down.

So the scribes were the ones who did some of the teaching because they kept on kind of copying the law, copying the law.

And in this captivity time, that there was a transition culturally from kind of just oratory teaching to now like we have many manuscripts of the law so that they became more people of just like the book.

It wasn't just the priest who heard it and is passing it on, but now there's this kind of lineage starting of being people of the written word in the book.

So Ezra was a skilled teacher.

In Nehemiah it says six times about how his skill of being a scribe and recording the words of the Lord.

So Ezra just shows up.

We don't know much about him, like how he ended up talking to the king, like how'd that work out?

How do you get an audience with him?

But we know in verse 6 it says, the second part of verse 6 is skilled, and it said, He had given and the king granted him all that he asked.

For the hand of the Lord his God was on him.

So here is Ezra.

The people have been, they've been, at this point, they've been in Jerusalem for 75, 80 years.

And he has this passion to go to Jerusalem and to teach the people.

And he approaches the king, right?

The most powerful person in this time in history in the world and says, Hey, I want to go back, I want to teach the people, and I need a lot of stuff.

And what's the king say?

Have at it.

The king grants this.

There is this sovereign provision we see in verses 11 through 24.

I mean, it's it's like repeat of Nehemiah, which is ahead, but of Ezra chapter 1.

Ezra 1 · chapter mention

The king's just like, yeah, like take whatever you need.

Like have at it, whatever you need.

We see in verses 11 through 24.

How God provided.

Is this not a theme in this story of Ezra and Nehemiah?

God providing for his people again and again and again.

He provides for them financially.

He provides for the things they need, the stuff they need.

So you see in verses 21.

Sorry, in verse 13, first the king says, Well, anyone can go.

He doesn't put limits like, well, you know, there's only these, only only the women and children can go, or only men older than 50 can go.

Or he says, anyone who wants to go, go.

It's just like this complete open-handedness.

And then he says to Ezra, like, pretty much whatever you think you want to do is best, you do that.

Look in verse 14.

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, which is in your hand.

So he gives him that.

Then look in verse 18.

Whatever seems good to you and your brothers to do with the rest of the silver and gold, you may do it according to the will of your God.

Then in verse 20, he's talking about the work in the temple, and whatever else is required for the house of your God, which falls to you, provide.

You may provide it out of the king's treasury.

I mean, this is like the biggest giveaway in the history of humans.

It's like, man, you can take all your stuff, you can take as many people as you want, you can take as much money as you want, just whatever you need, just have at it.

No restrictions, no holding back.

This is a pagan king.

He doesn't know God, he doesn't love God, he doesn't care about God.

He just wants to make sure that he's taken care of.

People aren't mad at him, and his kingdom's going well.

But yet God works.

So remember back when I was saying God delivers people out of Egypt?

Remember Pharaoh's heartedness?

Stingy, didn't want to do anything?

Like there's just consequence after consequence with the plagues, and then his first son is killed, and he relents, and then he still chases after and tries to kill God's people.

What's the scripture say about that?

God hardened Pharaoh's heart.

He hardened Pharaoh's heart.

Now, why God does all those things we don't know, but it's clear that God is also working in King Artaxerxes' heart here in Ezra chapter 7.

Ezra 7 · chapter mention

This isn't a heart of someone who's just kind of, yeah, I'm a worldly man and I just love to give away everything I have.

I don't really need anything.

This is our sovereign God providing for his people, even through wicked rulers.

And the resources seem endless.

15 through 22.

I mean, just all the stuff they give away.

Silver and the wheat and the wine and the oil.

It's just like more and more and more in abundance.

But then at the end, we reveal where it's revealed his selfish motives.

In verse 23, it says, Whatever is decreed by the God of heaven, let it be done in full for the house of the God of heaven.

Lest his wrath be against the realm of the king and his sons.

We also notify, also notify you that it shall not be lawful to impose tribute, custom, or toil on any one of the priests, the Levites, and singers, and the doorkeepers, and the temples, and the servants, or the other servants of the house, of this house of God.

So he's, I mean, think about this.

This is a wicked king, is another wicked king, they're pretty much providing to build this house.

They're supplying the people, the manpower, the resources, the material, but they don't love God, they don't want God.

They're saying here, like, whatever you need to do to make sure that God is appeased, you do that so he's not angry with me.

So let me just give him more stuff.

Then verse 24, he's saying, now make sure that we won't tax any of the priests, the Levites.

Now, I don't think King Artaxerxes knew the law to know, like, well, this is this is God's decree not to tax these people or to tax them or to not.

He's just saying, Man, I think these are going to be people of influence and power.

Don't tax them lest they give a bad report.

So we see Ezra's passion and his preparation.

We see God's sovereign provision for his people, and then we see him bringing reformation and renewal, or the beginning of that.

Now, this is remarkable.

Listen, this is from King Artaxerxes to Ezra, pagan king, to God's person, God's man who is raised up.

And you, Ezra, verse 25 according to the wisdom of your God that is in your hand, appoint magistrates, magistrates, and judges who may judge all the people in the province beyond the river, all such as know the laws of your God, and those who Not know them, you shall teach.

Whoever will not obey the law of your God and the law of the king, let judgment be strictly executed on him, whether it for death or for banishment or for confiscation of his goods or imprisonment.

So here the king is declaring in the mouth of a wicked king what God has ordained for Ezra to do: to come to God's people and to teach them the law, to give them the law, to set up judges and priests and magistrates, so that the people of God can follow God faithfully.

So that the people of God can follow God faithfully to bring this renewal, this reformation of the heart through his teaching of God's word.

Just make them do this because we said to do this.

And they need to obey me.

He says, listen, you are go to God's people.

Teach them God's law.

And then however you deal with God's law and people who disobey that, you do that with them.

He's given them permission to teach and to discipline.

This is why many people refer to Ezra as the second Moses.

Because he's doing what Moses did.

Bringing people out of captivity, establishing the law, giving them clarity on how they're to live, what they're to do, teaching them.

For it is through God's word that this renewal begins.

This desire to obey God.

And this is how Ezra responds: Blessed be the Lord, the God of our fathers, who put such a thing as this into the heart of the king, to beautify the house of the Lord that is in Jerusalem, and who extended to me his steadfast love before the king and his counselors, and before all the king's mighty officers.

I took courage, for the hand of the Lord my God was on me, and I gathered leading men from Israel to go up with me.

This is how Ezra finishes chapter 7.

He doesn't say, hey, like we have a great plan, we figured a lot of things out.

He's saying, Blessed be the Lord, the God of our fathers.

Blessed be the Lord.

He is the one who's doing these things.

If there's anything good in us, if there's any desire for the things of the God, if there's these things happening, it's because the Lord is working in us.

And we're so quick to kind of take or share some credit.

It's not that we want to take all the credit from God, but we just kind of want to share a little bit of it.

Like, yeah, I'm fine if God did 99% and I did one, but I did 1%.

Or God did 70%, I did 30, but I did, I had a, I did my part.

Like I get a little bit of credit in this thing.

Ezra didn't say, well, it's a good thing I was born in the house of Aaron, the lineage of Aaron, good thing that I was skilled and I worked really hard to know the law, or a good thing that I'm just really persuasive with my talk, and I convinced the king and his officers and his counselors, blessed be the Lord, the God of our fathers.

For he has put such a thing into the heart, for he has put such a thing into the heart of this wicked king to see God's people renewed, a desire to be restored.

I don't know where you're at.

When we started the story of Ezra, I just was saying a lot how like we are all in a space in our life where we what we see is this.

Like when does it end?

I'm weary of this.

We don't get to step back and see the whole narrative.

The people in captivity, they don't see how God's gonna do everything he's gonna do.

They know the promises of God, but this is what they see, and they just have to trust him.

In the midst of the mundane and that they're in captivity and which is gonna end, they trust that God is going to renew and restore them.

So many times for me, I think for us, we just we're in life.

And we're doing the right thing, we're we're trying to genuinely love the Lord, but we're weary.

And we're just kind of like, Lord, what are you doing?

Like the world is a mess.

What, like, what's going on?

These these things around me are breaking my heart.

What's going on?

This is what we see.

The Lord is outside of that, and his promise to his people is that he will complete, he will finish what he began.

He will bring us to holiness, he will bring us to glory, he who called us will sanctify us.

He who predestined us will justify us and glorify us with the Father.

And we rest in that.

Ezra's message to the people isn't new.

He's not rolling into Jerusalem with, I got some new information for you.

I got some some cool new stuff.

He's saying, Listen, God is still faithful, his word is still true, and he has not failed you.

He has not, he cannot, he will not fail you.

So trust in him and rest in him.

That's what we're to do, church.

Trust in his word.

Be people of the word.

Trust in him.

No, but grand new plan.

It's obedience, it's faithfulness.

Just as Ezra studied the word and taught the word.

So we're to be students of the word, teaching ourselves, teaching one another, so that we may be faithful to God.

That's right.