God's Hand on Your Life - Ezra 7 (Aug 4) Myles Holmes

Hello and welcome to the Redemption Church Podcast.

We're a church in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada that exists to glorify God through the fulfillment of the Great Commission and the spirit of the Great Commandment.

Thanks for joining us today.

Last week, um, Joel and I accidentally wore the same matching outfits.

And then this week, Dennis called me Joel twice.

So we got some real problems we gotta fix around here, but that's okay.

You can open up your Bible to Ezra chapter 7.

Ezra 7 · chapter mention

And as you're turning there, I want to ask you this question: do you desire in your life God's favor?

Do you desire in your life God's hand upon you?

And of course, if you're a Christian, the answer is yes.

Of course we want God's favor in our life.

Of course we want God's hand on us in everything that we do.

And one of the ways that I know this to be true, not only from my own life, but I've witnessed countless child dedications over my years in ministry, and by far the most popular uh verse that parents have chosen for their kids as sort of a prayer for their kids is from Proverbs 3, where the Proverb is written, Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and he will make your paths straight.

And there's this real desire that parents have for their children, and I trust it's a desire we have for ourselves as well, that our lives would be guided by the Lord.

The hand of God would be upon us.

Now, finally, in chapter seven of Ezra, we are introduced to the man himself, Ezra, and I'm gonna read this in a moment, and you're gonna notice that in chapter seven, something is repeated time and time and time again, and you know this about repetition that whenever you hear it, someone's trying to really drill something into you.

And this phrase is repeated about Ezra, that the hand of the Lord was upon him.

Ezra was truly a man who had God's favor, who had the hand of the Lord upon him.

And what we're gonna find then in Ezra chapter seven is really a study given to us in the Old Testament of how to live with the hand of the Lord upon us, how to stand in the way of God's favor and blessing.

Let me read Ezra chapter seven for us then.

Now, after this, in the reign of Artaxerxes, king of Persia, Ezra, the son of Saraiah, son of Azariah, son of Hilkiah, the son of Shalom, son of Zaduk, son of Ahitub, son of Amariah, son of Azariah, son of Merioth, son of Zerahiah, son of Uzi, son of Bukhi, son of Abusha, and Aaron the chief priest.

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 was on him.

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

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

For on the first day of the first month he began to go up from Babylonia, and on the first day of the fifth month he came to Jerusalem, for the good hand of his God was on him.

For Ezra had set his heart to study the law of the Lord, and to do it, and to teach his statutes and rules in Israel.

This is a copy of the letter that the king Artaxerxes gave to Ezra the priest, the scribe, a man learned in matters of the commandments of the Lord and of his statutes for Israel.

Artiserxes, King of kings, to Ezra the priest, the scribe of the law of the God of heaven, peace.

And now I make a decree that any one of the people of Israel or their priests or Levites in my kingdom, who freely offers to go to Jerusalem, may go with you.

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, and also to carry the silver and gold that the king and his counselors have freely offered to the God of Israel, whose dwelling is in Jerusalem, with all the silver and gold that you shall find in the whole province of Babylonia, and with the free will offerings of the people and the priests vowed willingly for the house of their God that is in Jerusalem.

With this money, then you shall with all diligence buy bulls, rams, and lambs, with their grain offerings and their drink offerings, and you shall offer them on the altar of the house of your God that is in Jerusalem.

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

The vessels that have been given for given you for the service of the house of your God, you shall deliver before the God of Jerusalem.

And whatever else is required for the house of your God, which it falls to you to provide, you may provide it out of the king, king's treasury.

And I, Artaxerxes the king, make a decree to all the treasurers in the province beyond the river, whatever Ezra the priest, the scribe of the law of the God of Heaven, requires of you, let it be done with all diligence, up to a hundred talents of silver, a hundred cores of wheat, a hundred bathes of wine, a hundred baths of oil, and salt without prescribing how much.

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.

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

And you, Ezra, according to the wisdom of your God that is in your hand, appoint 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 do 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 for death or for banishment, or for confiscation of his goods, or for imprisonment.

Blessed be the Lord, the God of our fathers, who put such thing, put 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.

Well, three times in one short chapter, we're told that Ezra was a man who had the hand of the Lord upon him.

As we study Ezra chapter 7, then what we're getting is a sense of how we can live with the hand of the Lord upon us.

Ezra 7 · chapter mention

Now I want you to understand this isn't talking in terms of salvation.

This isn't a way to earn God's favor.

We know that there's nothing we can do by works to earn God's favor.

No matter how hard you try, you cannot live perfect enough of a life for God's hand to always be on you.

However, in Christ, there is a way that you can position yourself to receive God's blessing.

This is why Jesus' message in his Sermon on the Mount began with so many statements saying, Blessed are the meek, blessed are the humble, because there is a way that you can live that aligns yourself with God's kingdom, which if you do that, the hand of God will then rest upon your life.

And Ezra this morning is showing us this, and we need to hear this, and we especially need God's help.

So let's turn to Him now and pray and ask God to help us as we hear this.

Lord, we have spent time this morning in your throne room worshiping you because of your worthiness.

And so often, God, we do that in a spirit of repentance.

Lord, knowing that God, in so many ways, our life does not live up to the standard that you've set for us.

And so, God, we come before you in humility, recognizing, Lord, that in so many ways we so often choose to walk on paths that are ultimately paths of disobedience.

And we so often ignore the worship of your name, the glory of your name, living lives that praise your name.

And God, we come in this time and with this humble confession, Lord, that we want to live lives that you place your hand upon, that you bless, that you favor.

And God, we need your help because we are such wayward people, Lord.

We so constantly take our eyes off of the prize.

We so constantly allow ourselves to be led by a shepherd that is not you.

And so, God, we pray for your help.

Would you speak to us?

Lord, use your servant Ezra, whom your hand was upon, Lord.

Use him as a model for us to learn from of how you might place your hand on our lives, God.

We desire this, Lord, and we pray that you would speak powerfully to us and convict us.

We pray this in the name of your son.

Amen.

There's four things I want you to see in this passage then about God's hand being placed on your life.

And the first thing is this that if you want God's hand on your life, then you need to embrace your spiritual lineage.

Embrace your spiritual lineage.

Look at the first five verses here of Ezra chapter 7.

Ezra 7 · chapter mention

Some of you may have read ahead this week and you spent time praying for me as you saw all these names that I had to pronounce.

Time and time again, Ezra is bringing up this fact that he comes from a lineage of godly people.

Now, this would be incredibly important for Israel to place Ezra in his proper position.

As the temple was being built, Ezra would be a priest in it.

And so his lineage would be incredibly important.

You see that in that the genealogy of Ezra ends with Aaron, the chief priest there in chapter five.

Sorry, verse five.

And what this would do is it would sort of legitimatize Ezra's position as a priest.

He he comes from the line of Levites that leads itself all the way back to the very first high priest, the brother of Moses, Aaron himself.

That's not all.

If if you were to study this the history of Israel, you would find here a number of familiar names that the sense we are getting is that Ezra comes from this godly lineage of people.

And so there's this anticipation growing in our hearts as we hear of these names that Ezra is going to be a man that's used by the Lord.

And so we also read of Phineas.

Phineas is the grandson of Aaron.

We read in Numbers 25 how it was the zeal of Phinehas that kept the people pure in the Lord's sight.

We also read that one of Ezra's ancestors was Zadok.

And Zadok was the priest who, when everybody else during Absalom's rebellion, was disobedient to the Lord.

It was Zadok who remained faithful to the Lord's plan and who helped install Solomon as king.

Here we find Ezra comes from this godly lineage, and so we're not surprised then to find out three times in this chapter that the hand of God was on Ezra's life because what Ezra was doing then was embracing this godly lineage that had been handed down to him.

The application for us then is this that God is concerned with your spiritual legacy.

God is concerned with the legacy that you receive as well as the spiritual legacy that you pass on.

Now there are a number of ways that we could apply this to ourselves, but maybe one of the ways that we could apply this to ourselves is by talking first to those of who are Christian children of Christian parents.

Do you recognize that if you were born in a Christian family, you have been handed a spiritual legacy, and there is a great decision that must be made, and that is whether or not you will live on with this spiritual legacy.

This is a very important reality for Christian children.

Maybe you're here with your parents, maybe your parents are at another church, but a reality is that you need to ask yourself this question: Am I going to make this thing my own?

This faith that I have grown up in, that my parents have modeled to one degree or another before me.

Am I going to make this my own?

Am I going to carry it on?

There's a great weight and a great responsibility on your shoulders to make that decision for yourself, and it's absolutely necessary that you do.

As someone who served in youth ministry for 10 years, I saw many people who sort of just grew up in that environment and never really considered whether faith was really their own.

And so when they were tested, they were shipwrecked because they never really had their own faith.

They only really had their parents.

And so the question for you is this are you going to carry on the spiritual legacy that has been given to you from your parents?

Well, here's maybe another way that we can apply it, and that's for parents.

And the question is this as parents, what is the focus of your parenting?

It is right for us to do constant reevaluations, especially at a time like this, where you know, if you are a parent of young kids, you're thinking about the next school year, you're thinking about the next extracurriculars and about the next sports activities, and the question for you is this what is primary in your parenting?

Is it possible that something that should be secondary to the spiritual legacy that you are passing on to your kids?

Maybe it's education, maybe it's extracurricular activity, maybe it's socialization, whatever it is, is it possible that something that should be secondary to the primary role you've been given by God to be a parent who passes on this spiritual legacy?

Is it possible you've made primary things secondary?

It's important that we constantly re-evaluate this.

The most important desire in your heart as a father or a mother should be that you are showing your kids how to and really modeling for your kids how to live a life that the hand of the Lord is upon.

Your kids should know, and actually it would be a great test to ask them, especially if they're not here and they don't know what the answer you're looking for is, to ask them, hey, what's the what's the most joy that daddy has?

When is mom the happiest?

And you know, one of the things that we need to model for our kids is that the greatest joy we have is in Jesus Christ.

And it just will not work if you try to parent and you try to point your kids to Jesus Christ and you say, hey, listen, you gotta live for Jesus Christ.

You gotta give your life to Jesus Christ.

But they see every minute of their lives until they're adults and they move out that you haven't been doing the same yourself.

I mean to pass on a spiritual legacy to our uh children.

Well, there's more application we can draw out of this.

I want you to understand here that family lineage isn't the only thing that's important here.

Especially as we come to the New Testament, we have this understanding that what God is doing in the church is building up a spiritual family.

So that what Paul says in Galatians is that by faith we are all sons of Abraham.

Do you know what that means?

That means that your spiritual genealogy is tied to the believer that you're sitting beside who may or may not be in your family.

That's why it's right for us to identify each other as brothers and sisters in Christ.

Because what God is doing at this church through his redeeming salvation of Jesus Christ is he is building up a spiritual family.

You know what that means?

This should be incredibly encouraging because I know the great weight that many parents in this church bear of having children who have grown up and who are not following the Lord.

And if your understanding of leaving a spiritual legacy is tied to the blood relation, then that could be incredibly depressing because you think that you failed as a Christian.

You feel like you had one job.

And yet it should be incredibly encouraging to you that the commission that Jesus gave to us is not to make disciples of your family.

Yes, that is the primary field of our discipleship in many ways.

You know the commission of Jesus Christ is to make disciples of all nations.

And I want you to understand that when it comes to your spiritual legacy, it is not over yet.

In fact, I can just tell you, I would not be in this place right now unless there were some brothers and sisters in Christ who decided that the primary work of their discipleship would be outside of their family.

And I look to many fathers of the faith that have poured themselves into me who have no biological relation to me and yet decided that they would work to leave a spiritual legacy.

What an encouragement that should be for you.

That if you pour yourselves into the lives of other believers, you can leave a legacy that lasts for eternity.

That there's constant second chances.

And so we pour ourselves then into the church.

Well, this is the first way that Ezra experienced the hand of the Lord upon him, by it was by embracing his spiritual lineage.

But the second way I want you to see that he felt the hand of the Lord upon him was by devoting himself to God's word.

You want to experience God's favor, well, then devote yourself to God's word.

Notice there in verse six, we are told pretty immediately that Ezra would be used mightily.

Verse six, we read this: this Ezra went up from Babylonia.

He was a scribe skilled in the law of Moses.

We're told something incredibly important about God's word, specifically the first five books of God's word, but we can expand this to all of God's word.

We're told this that he was 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 was on him.

Israel was in great need.

They were building the temple, and the temple would require many resources.

In fact, you remember as they if you read the building of the first temple, that a great amount of space is given to the resources that are used, and we often read it, and you know, we start to just maybe flip pages because it's a hundred kours of this and shekels of that.

And yet there are so many resources that are required to build this massive and extravagant temple that you can imagine this is an incredible problem for a group of people that are coming that really have no home in Jerusalem.

And we're told there in verse 6 that it would be Ezra, who would be the key person God would use to funnel in the needed resources to build the temple.

And our question then is why?

Why does God choose Ezra?

And and this really is what Ezra 7 is all about.

God wants us to understand why his hand is upon him, why he's chosen this one.

And it's in verse 9 that we're really told why the hand of the Lord was upon Ezra, uh Ezra.

Look what it says there in verse 9.

For on the first day of the first month, he began to go up from Babylonia.

And on the first day of the fifth month, he came to Jerusalem, for the good hand of the Lord was on him.

And we already know that, but notice this important word in verse 10.

For, for what Ezra here is telling us is how he positioned himself in the favor, in the stream of the favor of God, how that how the good hand of the Lord was upon him.

It says, For Ezra had set his heart to study the law of the Lord and to do it, and to teach his statutes and rules in Israel.

Well, this is instructive for us.

This is what God is speaking to us this morning.

He's saying to you loud, it could not be clearer in Ezra 7, could it?

That if you want to position yourself in the favor of God, if you want the hand of the Lord to be upon your life.

Again, we're not talking about salvation here, but we are talking about experiencing the blessings of relation with Jesus Christ, then you need to listen to God's word.

The hand of God goes to those who listen to the word of God.

Now, some of us hear this and we start to kind of think like mystically.

We kind of think like, okay, well, that means tomorrow, if I wake up and I read the the word of God, then the hand of God's gonna be over me and I'm gonna have this bubble of protection, it's gonna be amazing.

And I want you to understand that's that's not how this is working.

There's a really practical cause and relation here.

Ezra reads God's word, and in God's word, he finds the instructions that are necessary for him to do what God wills.

It's not mystical in any sense, it's very practical.

Ezra will not move a foot unless he looks at God's word and finds the direction that he should go.

He finds direction in God's word, and I want you to understand that this has always been the way that God has related to his people.

God has always poured out his blessing through his word.

You remember Adam and Eve in the garden?

It was God who, after speaking the world into existence, then spoke to Adam and Eve.

And what did he say?

He said, You can enjoy every one of the trees in this garden.

That was instructive.

That was liberating to Adam and Eve.

That was life to Adam and Eve.

You mean we can walk through this garden and we can take anything and it is placed here for our delight.

That's life.

And then they were told that there's one tree.

And if you eat of this tree, you will die.

And Adam and Eve say this: praise God.

Thank you for telling us about that poisonous tree in the middle of the garden.

This is life.

Adam and Eve, they find life by the word of God.

And so then, thousands of years later, we find Ezra here.

And how is Ezra finding life?

It's by the word of God.

So then, as you think about your life, ask yourself this question: how are you gonna find life?

And the answer is this by the words of God.

Whenever God has spoken, he speaks words of life to those who are willing to listen.

So, so then what's the application here?

I feel like you know, I I probably don't have to draw this out then.

If God's speaking words of life to those who listen, shouldn't we pick up the book and read it?

In fact, that's exactly what Ezra does.

You see here, go back to verse 6 with me.

You see what he says?

I love this.

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

I love that.

It's like, you know, if you think about the first five books of the Bible and your Bible reading plans, those are often the ones that are kind of hard to get through, aren't they?

And yet, here is a man who is skilled in them.

And, you know, it's almost like if you were to ask Ezra, hey, hey, Ezra, how you know how did you set your heart to study these difficult books of scripture?

He would have been like, Well, God, God gave it.

God gave it.

And the answer should be the same for us.

Why should we be students of God's word?

Because God wrote a book.

Because God spoke.

Why are you so obsessed with God's word?

Because the God of this universe has spoken and he has told us what he wills for us.

And so if he's done that, if God wrote a book, isn't the application, I'm gonna read it then.

I'm gonna read it.

Ezra understood the word of God to be a gift given by God, and so he he skilled himself in it.

He became a student of it.

And I want you to understand this that the primary driver of Bible reading in your life will be this: the awe that God has written a book.

That will be the only thing that can drive you back and back and back to scripture again and again and again.

And you see, the problem for so many of us when it comes to scripture reading is that we want to do it, but we have an issue of the heart.

We have an issue of the heart that because we don't have this awe of God in our heart, we cannot force ourselves to read God's word.

And I want you to notice then in verse 9 that when Ezra turns to the word, notice that the hand of God is upon him because first he had set his heart to study God's word.

He had set his heart to study God's word.

Do you notice that that Bible reading is not an issue of a lack of habits in your life?

So often, that is that's what I hear.

And so often I'll even give that excuse myself.

Oh man, I just, you know, I didn't read, I didn't read the Bible this week because I was just so busy and you know, I just broke the habit.

I didn't read the Bible this week because I just got into the habit of, you know, hitting the snooze alarm.

I didn't read the Bible this week because this, because of that.

It's always a habit problem.

And and we look to habits almost as our savior.

If I could just, you know, get the habit down, if I could just, you know, kind of do it, then I'll I'll be able to read the Bible.

I want you to understand that a lack of Bible reading in your life is not a habit issue, it is a heart issue.

This is probably the single most important thing to becoming a regular reader of God's word is that you understand why you don't read God's word.

The reason every time you, I'm speaking to you with myself here, every time you and I have failed to turn to God's word, do you know why we've done it?

Because we don't believe that we need it.

I mean, Jesus never failed to turn to God's word.

And when he was in the desert, he set an example for us when Satan himself was tempting him.

You know what Jesus did time and time again against Satan's temptation?

He turned to God's word and he said, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

What was this heart belief of Jesus?

It was not that there is real power in habits.

I mean, I love habits, but it Jesus understood that it was more important for him to have God's word than to eat food itself.

This was a heart-level belief that Jesus had.

And one of the things that we need to come to understand is that when we regularly fail to read God's word, the issue is not with our habits, the issue is with our heart.

That there is a great need for repentance.

And the beauty of repentance is that when we turn to the Lord, you know what he does?

He forgives and he changes us and he changes our heart so that now this habit, we long for it because no longer is it this thing that we just think we gotta institute in our life.

It's this thing that we cannot live without.

We need it.

We believe we can't live without it.

I've shared this illustration before, but it's so helpful for me, and I think about it often.

That when it comes to Bible reading, one of the ways that you know it's an issue is uh issue of the heart is that when you know, maybe you miss it or people around you miss it, we can be often so forgiving.

Ah, you know, it's hard.

Could you imagine if I came to you this week and I said, Man, I am feeling lightheaded.

You know, I can't, I feel like I can't preach because I just haven't eaten all week.

And you said to me, Well, why haven't you eaten all week?

And I just said, Man, I just slept in too much.

I couldn't get breakfast.

I said, I just forgot.

Like, I just, you know, I wish I had an app on my phone or something to make it easier to eat.

Well, you would look at me and you'd say, You're crazy.

Like, that doesn't even make any sense.

You don't forget to eat.

My pastor at the church thinks about it all day.

2470 thinks about eating.

You can figure out how to eat for a day.

We understand that, don't we?

And the same thing comes to our Bible reading.

See, the reason why we miss it is because it's a heart issue.

We don't long for it enough.

And Ezra stood in awe of the word of God and became skilled in it because he understood this, that God had given it.

Well, that's the first thing you need to do if you want to devote yourself to God's word.

Set your heart on it.

Notice the second thing Ezra does.

This is so practical for us, straight from verse 10 here.

Notice that Ezra studies the law of the Lord.

He sets his heart up to read it, but he also studies it.

And the question we need to ask ourselves right now is this are we students of Scripture?

In your Bible reading, is it possible that you have fallen into the trap of a surface level reading?

Let me ask you this.

Are there any things that you are wrestling with in Scripture right now?

The answer should be yes.

Yeah, I've sat in the classrooms of some of the smartest professors, I believe, in the world.

Like one of these professors, he knew 13 dead languages.

And that's a smart man there.

And as I heard this man speak, he had questions he was wrestling with about scripture.

And that should be the case for you as well.

And so one really practical thing that you can do to become a student of God's word is always have something you are chewing on.

When you're with other Christians, there should always be sort of a question you have as you're reading God's word and you're becoming a student of it that like stumps them.

That's good.

You keep asking those kind of questions, and you are gonna become a student of God's word.

That's what we need.

We need to dig so deep into God's word that we are in areas that we struggle to understand, and in wrestling with the hard-to-grasp concepts, we are becoming like Ezra, we are becoming students skilled in the Word of God.

And so we read hard books, we ask hard questions, but it doesn't stop there.

Ezra sets his heart to read God's word, he sets his heart to study God's word, but notice this important reality that he also says in verse 10, does it.

He also does it.

This is the most important step of devoting yourself to God's word, that you are devoting yourself to doing God's word.

And so, can I give you one uh just one again, really practical application here?

That you in your daily Bible study, do not be content to leave that place where you have God's word open in front of you until you have a single piece of uh scripture that you can apply.

Maybe it's something you need to believe for the day.

Maybe it's something you need to do or change for the day.

Don't be content to leave until there is something that you can actually do.

This is the aim and goal of Bible reading, that it actually transforms you, that it actually changes your life.

And that's not gonna happen just by reading it and and hoping that you'll be encouraged by it that morning.

That's gonna happen by taking it and breaking it into some sort of application that you can apply to your life that day.

At the end of every day, you should be able to look back and see that thing that you said you were gonna do out of God's word and ask yourself the question, did I do it or not?

And if you didn't do it, it's a time to ask God for forgiveness and pray for help for tomorrow.

And there's constantly something that you are taking and applying to God's to your own life.

I want you to recognize one of one of the ways that we try to help you here, and I especially do this in preaching, is most of the time, we're getting a little bit into like, you know, behind the curtains of preaching here, but most of the time you will notice that the points that we have are applications.

You see that here?

This is an action.

Devote yourself to God's word.

So it was the first point.

Embrace your spiritual lineage.

These are things that you do.

Why is that?

Because if all we do is preach God's word and tell you what's in there, we've stopped short of what Ezra is doing that's causing the favor of God to be funneled into his life.

We've stopped short of action.

And so one of the things we do, and maybe this can be, you know, you feel like you're struggling to get into God's word and pull it application, just take one of the points and focus on that for a week.

Make this your goal to apply God's word.

Well, many of us at that point feel like we're done.

And yet Ezra is showing us one more thing that if we're devoting ourselves to God's word, notice what else we have to do.

He says, to teach, to teach his statutes and rules in Israel.

And this needs to become one of the constant realities of your scripture reading is that you're unwilling to allow God's blessings to be contained for your own life, that when you read God's word and you receive uh knowledge from it, and then you receive application from it, then you are then sharing it.

Now, this doesn't have to come down in a teaching way, and so you don't have to come up from your morning, you know, personal worship and tell your wife to sit down because you've got a Bible lesson for her.

But it is incredibly helpful for you to share as a testimony the things that God is teaching you in his word, and it's incredibly helpful for you to place yourself around people who are doing that for you.

This is why a small group is so powerful.

You get into a small group and you start to realize God is speaking to each one of these people, and if I can just hear their testimonies of what God is teaching them, then I'm multiplying the effect of what God is teaching me.

Reread God's word to share it.

Again, always being practical.

Let this bless your marriage.

Make it a constant practice in your marriage.

I am going to share with you today something from my scripture reading.

This doesn't need to be big.

This can be, you know, you're both making your coffee on the way to work or school.

And hey, you know, I was reading, I was so encouraged this morning that that God is this, and that's it.

It doesn't need to be this big sit-down, but I'm I'm just I'm sharing what God is doing.

I'm not allowing it to be contained.

And this is what Ezra is doing.

He's setting his heart on God's word, he's studying God's word, he's doing God's word, and he is teaching God's word.

Now I want you to notice here that Ezra has prepared himself to understand what God then wants, especially as it concerns the temple.

So that when it comes to building the temple, as Artaxerxes, the king of Persia, is looking for someone to set up as a leader in this, he finds that Ezra has prepared himself.

So much of our scripture reading is doing this.

It's it's preparing ourselves to face the challenges that we will face in life.

And you may find yourself in a place where you're not suffering right now, you know, where life is pretty easy.

You know what you need to be doing?

In times of peace, like you need to be firming up the wall, your spiritual walls, building up the armory, uh, strengthening your faith.

Because you know that trial's coming, you know that temptation's coming, you know that life is going to be difficult.

And so you're studying God's word, preparing your heart to be strong.

This is what Ezra does, so that when the time comes where Artaxerxes calls upon him, you notice as we read through this how many times Artaxerxes understood that Ezra was a man who understood the words of God.

He says in verse 11, a man learned in matters of commandments of the Lord and the statutes of Israel.

He says 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.

Verse 18, he says, Whatever seems good to you and to your brothers to do with the rest of the silver of gold, you may do according to the will of your God.

Here's what I want you to understand: that reading God's word doesn't mystically sort of apply God's blessing to your life.

It very practically guides you so that you read God's word and you understand what you are then to do.

Well, this leads to our next point then, the third way that we seek God's hand in life.

Well, we trust in God's guidance.

We trust in God's guidance.

The very heart of this is this question how do you make decisions?

In your life, how do you make decisions?

This is what Ezra had to do.

Ezra had to build a temple, and the question for him is this, how are you gonna know how to do that?

Well, Ezra was uh deemed wise in verse 25, and I love what Artaxerxes is able to point out here.

You see this in verse 25.

And you, Ezra, according to the wisdom of your God that is in your where is wisdom?

Isn't wisdom in the head?

You think of someone who's wise, don't you think of someone who knows who knows a lot?

And yet look look at what Artaxerxes says to Ezra.

The wisdom of God that is in your hand.

It's in your hand.

Listen, this is so important for us.

Where do we find guidance?

You know what a you know what I'm I'm realizing more in a 21st century where where we swim in a culture that is driven by feelings, I want you to understand that even though we can point that out, we still swim in those waters.

And a danger to the church, you know, we we point at secular culture and say, ah, they're just driven by feelings, there's no truth anymore, it's all that I feel this, I feel that.

And yet you need to understand you and I swim in those waters, and you and I are it's possible for us to be led this very same way and to sort of spiritualize it.

You understand what I'm saying?

You and I can be driven by feelings.

Where it's possible that you don't even feel like God is speaking to you unless you feel it first.

And here, Ezra, you know, Ezra understood that God had given a written a book and given it to him, and what Ezra was doing is he's holding it in his hand and he's saying, I'm only gonna do the things that I see in this book, I'm gonna use this as instruction for my life.

And Artis Xerxes looking at him and saying, Listen, you got because you're holding that book, you got wisdom in your hands.

Well, where's your wisdom?

Is it possible that you're looking for wisdom in your heart?

And God wants to speak to you this morning and let you know you're not gonna find it there.

He's given you wisdom, and it is a wisdom that you can hold in your hands.

The wise one is the one who looks to God's word and does what it says.

So here's what you and I need to do then.

We need to stop looking to feeling as the primary way that God speaks to us, as the primary way that God directs us.

Now, listen, I'm not saying that God doesn't use desires and feelings and thoughts to lead us.

But I am saying this that is that will always be secondary to applying the word of God to your life.

And I hear this time and time again in Christians' testimonies.

We've kind of elevated the being led by your feelings so that you know we love a testimony when someone says, I was in the parking lot and I just felt led to share the gospel with that person, with this person that was standing there.

You know what's an even better testimony than that?

Like if you're in the parking lot and you you were led to share the gospel because God's word said to do it.

And he said, Jesus, you know, Jesus said, make disciples.

So I was in this parking lot and said, I'm gonna do what God said.

Those are the testimonies we need to elevate.

The testimonies that read God's word and then say this.

How am I gonna do this in my life?

How am I gonna do this today?

Listen, you don't need to wait for a feeling to evangelize your neighbor.

You don't need to wait till you desire to do it, till it feels right.

You can do it right now because God has already said loud and clear that you are to make disciples of all nations.

Trust God's guidance.

We read God's word.

We're led by God's word.

God says to do it, and so I do it.

This means I even do it sometimes apart from feeling.

Do you understand that?

So much of what we do as Christians will often be done without the feeling there.

Isn't that true of Bible reading?

Like, you cannot study scripture for very long if you're only gonna do it when you feel like it.

There are gonna be days where you wake up and you say, Man, I just don't feel like it.

I mean, I love what John Piper says.

He says, Every morning I wake up and Satan's sitting on my face.

I love that idea because doesn't it feel like that sometimes?

But if you don't push through feelings and get to the well of God's word because you know where that life is, you'll never find blessing.

And so it is with all of God's commands.

With all of God's commands.

Have to do it without feeling.

And yet, if God says it, our response is this, I will do it.

That brings a certain glory to God, doesn't it?

I mean, parents, don't you find that's the way that you want a parent?

Don't you find you you want to speak to your kids and you want them to obey you even when they don't understand why?

One of the things that drives me the most crazy is when I say to do something, and the parents are all tuned in right now because we could start a whole, you know, support group on this.

And the the first response is not obedience, it's why.

Why do I need to do that?

And I say, listen, five-year-old, you're not gonna outsmart me on this.

I know this is something you need to do.

And yet we do that all the time with God.

God, I'm gonna wait till I feel like it.

I don't know if this is the right thing to do.

I'm gonna wait till I feel like it.

Ezra listens to God.

He does it apart from feeling.

He applies God's word to his life and he trusts in God's guidance.

I want you to see the last thing here that what Ezra is doing here is cultivating a heart of gratitude.

See that in verse 27?

It Artiserxes stops speaking there.

And what is the first thing that Ezra says?

Blessed be the Lord.

Blessed be the Lord, the God of our fathers, who put such a thing 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.

What is the thing that uh tunes Ezra into this reality that God's hand is upon him?

It is gratitude.

And you want to know what probably one of the primary reasons that we do not feel like God is with us is because we do not live lives of gratitude.

We live lives of grumbling and pride, and God is constantly doing 10,000 things around us, and you and I are not seeing them because our eyes are down, and we're we have this heart of discontentment.

We're not happy because God has not done this one thing that he set our eyes on when he's doing 10,000 other things around us.

And one of the things that you need to do is lift your eyes up constantly and do what Ezra does here.

Be thankful for the things that the Lord has done.

Listen, Ezra has a lot of things that he could complain about.

There's a lot of work to be done.

There's a lot of materials coming in to build this temple.

There, there is uh just a few chapters, Israel's gonna fail miserably under Ezra's leadership.

There's a lot that he can be discontent about, and yet what does he do?

He lifts his eyes up to God and understands what God has done.

He cultivates this heart of gratitude, understanding this in verse 28, that the hand of the Lord my God was on me.

And because of that, you notice something interesting here?

That Ezra is not the only one who's blessed here.

You catch this in the end of verse 5.

And I gathered leading men from Israel to go up with me.

Because the hand of the Lord was on Ezra, all of these men were then now blessed through Ezra's leadership.

And the main reason why you and I need to cultivate a heart of gratitude is because you you understand something?

You and I are not Ezra in this story.

Do you know that?

You and I are not Ezra.

You and I are the men who are with Ezra.

And Ezra is Jesus Christ.

You see, as Jesus is the one who truly has the hand of God upon him.

Was there anyone whose favor rested, whose God's God's favor rested with more than Jesus?

It was Jesus who God looked to and he said, This is my beloved son.

And you know how you and I truly get blessing?

It's by doing what these men did.

It's by seeing that the hand of God was upon Jesus Christ.

And you and I, you know the ultimate way that we get God's hand upon us?

We run to the new Ezra.

We run to Jesus.

We run to Jesus and we sit, we find shelter in him, just like Israel did.

Just like you and I did.

Need to do.

Let's turn to him into prayer.

Father, we bow before you.

God, we thank you that you have sent a new and a better Ezra.

And I pray, even, Lord, as we worship you now, that our hearts would cultivate a sense of gratitude.

Knowing, Lord, that we failed so miserably in so many ways.

Constantly live in ways that take us out of your favor.

And yet, Lord, you have called us to Christ, the one whom your favor rested on in the most infinite way.

And you have, by faith, helped us to find shelter in him.

And so, Lord, we know that we have your favor.

We're told that every spiritual blessing has been given to us in him.

And we have been lavished mercy in him.

And so we give you all the praise and we exalt your name.

I thank you for Jesus.

I pray this in the name of your son.

Amen.