On Mission - Ezra 5-6 (July 28) 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.

So good to be together.

I'm noticing every Sunday that I preach that our congregation is getting more and more tanned, and that's a great thing that we're obviously getting some much needed vacation.

If you're new with us this morning, I want to welcome you.

We've been praying for you.

So thankful that you're here.

And we'd love to meet you and answer any questions you have about our church.

So we've set up an area for you called Connections.

It's at the back of the church there, you'll see it.

And we'd love to meet you there after the service and put a small gift into your hands.

We're going to be digging into God's Word in Ezra chapter 5 shortly.

Ezra 5 · chapter mention

And if you don't have a copy of God's word, the ushers are going to make their way to the front, and you can just flag them down and they will put a copy of God's Word into your hands.

And you can keep this.

This is our gift to you.

And before we get into God's word, I just wanted to provide you with a quick update on something that's happening in the life of our church.

Many of you know Rich and Kim Oliver.

And on Friday, Rich Oliver went to the hospital.

He's got double pneumonia in his lungs.

And so I put that before you because I'd ask that you would continue to pray for him.

I was talking with Kim last night and texting with her this morning, and she let me know that he is recovering.

He's on the mend.

It's still not great, and he's in the hospital as of this morning.

But it does seem like he's getting some of his strength back and that the antibiotics are working.

So we praise the Lord for that.

But I put that before you to ask that you would just continue to lift them up in prayer, asking that the Lord would bring healing to them.

And in light of that, why don't we just turn to the Lord now and lift them up?

Father, we bow in your presence.

And God, thank you that you are the God who controls all things, and we're gonna see that so clearly here this morning.

And so, God, we lift up Rich Oliver to you and Kim.

And God, we ask that even in this moment, as you have cared for them in these last days and and even already brought healing, Lord, would you continue to bring healing to them?

Lord, would you even today would there be just great gains made in in terms of his health?

And I pray in all things, Lord, that you would use this for your glory and that their eyes would be on you.

And Lord, that you, like you always do, Lord, you use suffering for our good time and time again.

And I pray that, Lord, you would just bring such uh belief in your promise, God, that all things work together for good and such faith, Lord, that you are a good God.

And Lord, we thank you for them.

We pray that you would bless them even now, Lord, uh, as we miss them this morning, but trust we'll see them again soon.

We give you all the praise.

Lord, as we as we dig into your word, God, we we need your help here.

What we seek to do is impossible for us to do, Lord.

We want to be transformed.

And so we need to see your glory.

And so, Lord, this is our prayer, and each of us together praying it now, Lord, we say this, show us your glory.

May your word this morning be a window that we open to see the beauty of Jesus Christ, your son.

So, God, speak to us, we pray.

We pray this in the name of your son.

Amen.

Amen.

We're in Ezra 5 and chapter 6 this morning, and and uh I'm not gonna read the whole thing, we're gonna work through it together.

Uh, but before we do that, I want to ask you if your life has ever been affected by companies that have sort of experienced missional drift.

Have you ever had that?

In fact, my favorite burger, I will never have it again, because this company took their eyes off the prize, and I noticed that it happening, you know, month after month as I had it's called Brooklyn Burger.

It was starting to get you know worse and worse, and they took their eyes off the quality that they once had, and so people stopped going and they closed down, and my heart is broken.

And many of us have personal stories like that of companies that experienced sort of this missional drift that ended up being the end of them.

Some of us still have our blockbuster cards.

Some of us drive, we all of us drive past the old Sears building, these giant buildings they struggle to fill.

Something happened with many of these companies that caused them to fail to stay on mission.

They couldn't deliver the service that they once delivered.

And in many ways, as we get back to Ezra this week, we find that the Israelites were in great danger of this.

They had come from Babylon to Jerusalem with a clear mission to build God's temple.

And God had worked at a world level through kings and rulers.

He shifted world powers so that this would be possible for this tiny group of exiles to return to Jerusalem and build the temple.

But what we found is that by chapter four of Ezra, the enemies in the land were putting such pressure on them that they lost sight of the mission.

And so we've spent the last five weeks together going through Haggai and Zechariah because you'll notice in chapter 5, verse 1, we're told that Haggai and Zechariah prophesied to the Jews, and the Jews got back to the work of God.

They began again to rebuild the house of God.

So then what we find in this story then is a lesson for you and I of what it means to get our life back on track to get back to the mission of God.

God is showing us what it looks like to be on mission.

And so, in many ways, what this is for us is an opportunity for you and I to look at our lives and really ask this question: are we on mission?

Because the reality is that if you are a Christian, your life is filled with sort of the story of Ezra over and over and over again, where God calls you, and I'm sure you can even think about your life in this way.

God calls you to mission, and you respond, yes, Lord, here I am, and you start serving the Lord, but then something gets in the way that just maybe it distracts you from that mission or totally causes you not to care about Christ anymore, and then you're called to repentance and you come back again to the mission.

As you reflect on your life, isn't this in so many ways how it goes?

There are ups and downs.

Times where we remember serving the Lord with such passion and such zeal, where we wanted nothing more than just to do what God commanded us to do.

Maybe this morning you find yourself in that time where you just look at a time in your life and it seemed like you were doing so much better than you're doing now, like you were so much more in tune with what the Lord wanted you to do, so much more on mission.

And God has a word of grace for us this morning, and he wants to show us what life looks like when we are on mission.

This is the message.

Be on mission.

Now, as you look at your life and really compare it to the Israelites, I'm sure that in many ways, at a surface level, you say there's not really much to compare here.

What were the Israelites to do?

Well, they were to build the temple.

And you may look at your own life and you'll see you say, Listen, I've never built anything, let alone built a temple in the middle of Jerusalem.

And so when it comes to the Israelites' mission, it doesn't really seem that practical to me.

And I want you to let you know that if that's the way you're thinking about it, then it's not.

You see, as as Christians post-death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, our job is no longer to build the physical temple.

And in fact, what we're gonna find at the end of chapter six here is that that work had already been done.

And that temple has been built and it has been destroyed.

But what is interesting to note, and we've noted this time and time again, but I want to just be super clear right now, is that by the time we get to the New Testament, the founders of the New Testament church have this clear understanding that by listening to Jesus' words, by listening and following Jesus' commission to make disciples, they were building the temple of God.

This is what Paul says.

He looks at the church and he says, Do you not know that we are the temple?

And Paul says in Ephesians 4 that by speaking the truth into love, we are to build one another up.

And there's this sense that as we make disciples, we are building God's spiritual temple.

And so I want it to just be loud and clear right now that you have a mission given to you by Jesus Christ to build the temple of God, and that temple is the church.

You are to make disciples.

We talk about this time and time again as a church.

From the very, you know, step one, this is really the foundation of what we are getting after, that Jesus told us to do one thing.

He told the disciples one thing, he appeared to them after his resurrection, before his ascension, and he said, Do one thing.

Now listen, many of us are in parents, our parents here, and we understand the importance.

If I give you a list of five things and you miss one, that's okay.

But if I give you one thing and you miss it, danger.

As a father, my daughters know that.

And so listen, Jesus has looked at your life and he has given you one thing.

And that thing is to make disciples.

To make disciples.

Can I say it again?

Like, I don't know if I just want to be so clear about this.

That the mission, if you are a follower of Christ, do you know what you're following Christ in?

You are following Christ in the work of making disciples.

That is the thing.

At the end of the day, that is the thing that will matter.

That is the thing that will count the most.

When you get to the end of your life, the question will be how did you do at the one thing Jesus told you to do?

I think it's so interesting because there's so many good things you could we could do.

You know, this is good to gather together and worship, to read God's word is good, to pray is good.

These are all great things to evangelize as good, but Jesus does not say go and do these things.

He says, Go and make disciples.

It is the most important thing.

It is what it means to be on mission.

And so let me just say it loud and clear.

We share a similar, we see ourselves in the story of Ezra 5 and 6, because just as the Israelites were called to build the temple, it is our mission to build the temple by making disciples.

That is why the mission statement of this church, and I hope you understand that if you're a part of that this church, that means the mission statement for your life, then, is to see lost people saved, saved people matured, and mature people multiplied.

Because this in essence captures what it means to make disciples.

And so the question for us is this Am I on a mission?

Am I on a mission?

Is the mission of my life to make disciples?

Well, that's the question, and we're we're gonna see this in Ezra chapter 5 as we see the Israelites get back to the mission of God of building the temple.

Ezra 5 · chapter mention

The first thing I want you to see is this that I know I'm on mission when I cut off what hinders me.

I know I'm on mission when I cut off what hinders me.

Now, just to give you some context of where we're at in Ezra right now, the Israelites are in Jerusalem and they had begun the foundation of the temple.

They had come with great zeal, but as soon as they faced opposition, and Ezra had laid out that opposition in chapter four, the work stopped.

And you see that at the end of chapter four in verse 24, where he says, Then the work on the house of the gods that is in Jerusalem stopped, and it ceased until the second year of the reign of Darius, king of Persia.

Now, after Haggai and Zechariah come and preach a message of repentance to God's people, what we find then is that the work continues.

And this again is in the second year of the reign of Darius, the king of Persia.

We find that Zerubbabel and Jeshua get back to the work.

They lead God's people in verse 2 in rebuilding the house of the Lord that is in Jerusalem.

Now, notice then what happens in verse 3.

Read this with me, chapter 5, verse 3.

It says, At the same time Tatanai, the governor of the province beyond the river, and Shethar Bonzani and their associates came to them and spoke to them.

Now, pause there.

What's happening here?

Well, I want you to understand that in the first two years of the reign of Darius, things were very tumultuous in Persia.

There were all sorts of uprisings.

And I don't know, I mean, I've never been a ruler, and I've never had anyone sort of, you know, try to plan a coup against me like that or have any sort of uprising.

Although sometimes I feel at staff meetings, the staff are planning something.

But I've never had any of that.

But you could imagine that if you were the ruler of the most powerful kingdom on earth, and in the first two years of you ruling, all these people were kind of jockeying for your position.

There was all these uprisings.

Wouldn't it make you kind of suspicious of everybody?

I mean, Darius had had a tough time, and so he walked away.

He didn't trust anybody.

And so part of the way that he dealt with this was he set up 20 provinces, and each of these provinces had a governor.

And what we find in verse 3 is the governor of the province that Jerusalem is, is this man Tatani.

And he comes and he speaks to Jerusalem as they get back to this work of rebuilding the house of the Lord.

Now, what is going on here?

Well, the best way that I can sort of imagine this is like imagine that you are at work and you're working on, you know, a project that the boss isn't interested in, the CEO isn't interested, and your boss comes into the office and says, This, what are you doing?

What are you doing?

What are you working on right now?

And Jerusalem, the Israelites are clearly not building the kingdom of Persia.

What they are doing is building their own temple in the very middle of Jerusalem, and so you could understand then the sense of fear that might fill the Israelites as they find the governor of their province standing before them, speaking to them.

Look what he says in verse 3.

Who gave you a decree to build this house and to finish this structure?

They also asked them this who what are the names of the men who are building this building?

See, there's great reason for fear that fills the hearts of the Israelites.

They're small.

They have no wall at this point.

I mean, when it comes to protecting yourself as a nation, a wall is the most important thing.

And they won't build the wall until Nehemiah.

They have no army.

And not only this, when they had begun this work, it was Cyrus.

It was the king Cyrus who allowed them to do it.

And now they find themselves under this new ruler who they don't know if he's going to be as favorable to them as Cyrus was.

And this was a very dangerous work.

And now they had been caught in the eye.

This wasn't happening as a secret.

It was happening in the open.

Now notice then what happens in verse 5 is surprising to us in light of those details.

Notice what happens in verse 5.

But the eye of their God was on the elders of the Jews, and they did not stop them until the report should reach Darius, and then an answer be returned by a letter concerning it.

You know what the Israelites do?

They look to Tatanai and they say, This we will not be stopped.

We are going to continue to build the house of the Lord.

They had this unshakable conviction that God had called them to do this work, and so nothing was gonna stop them.

So long as God's providence allowed, they would pursue the mission of God, which leads us then to apply this to our own lives and ask ourselves this question: what is it that's stopping us?

I mean, this is probably when it comes to the Christian walk, uh, you could almost say that half of it is asking what needs to be put off in your life?

What needs to be cut off in your life?

Because often the most destructive things to the pursuit of Christian mission in your own personal life is the fact that you're doing things that are getting in the way of you actually doing what God has called you to do.

It's a good thing for us then to look at our life and ask ourselves, what must be cut off?

What thing must I stop doing in order that I can get to the work of God?

Or to ask ourselves this question: what is stopping me from doing the work of God?

See, the Israelites found confess found success because they would not allow anything to stop them from doing the work of God.

And the reality for us is that so often our ineffectiveness as Christians, so often the reason that we aren't on mission is because we're so caught up doing other things.

Now, these things, they're not necessarily bad things.

So often they're good things.

In fact, you'll be comforted to know this that I've counseled many people in our church, and I have counseled far more, in fact, 100% more, people who really have struggles with things that could be good if they approach them rightly than I have murderers.

I've never counseled a murderer before in my life.

Instead, what I find is the thing that's most destructive to our life is something that if your heart was in the right position, it could be good, but it's not in the right position, and so it's bad.

Sometimes it's the good things that we shouldn't be doing that are the most destructive to us, that take us off mission.

This is why in Hebrews 12, chapter 1, the writer says, Let us then lay aside every hindrance, or I love what the KJV says, wait and run the race with endurance.

Because you get this sense that you can't run the race if anything is weighing you down.

And when Paul gets practical in Ephesians and he wants to talk about Christian holiness, you know what he says first?

He says, put off the sinful acts of the flesh.

Before you put on Christ, there are these things that you must put off.

And I'm convinced that the biggest reason that we are off mission in general as a church, but especially in our lives, is because of the good things that we're unwilling to put off.

We can call them maybe weapons of mass distraction.

Instead of making disciples, we're tempted, you and I, to do other things.

We're distracted.

Now, this is true at a church level that the church has a responsibility to keep its eyes on the prize, to not get distracted by anything other than making disciples.

This is the work.

And yet you find so many churches over time, and the temptation is for our church to be like this too, to get caught up with other things.

Maybe it's traditionalism, maybe it's the way that we worship, maybe it's it's whatever it is, our method of meeting together, our method of small groups, all these things are secondary to the primary ministry of what we are as disciple makers.

It's true on a church level, but it's also true on a personal level.

That the most important piece of being on mission for God is asking, what is stopping us from doing it?

And so here's my question for you this morning.

What's stopping you?

What is all of us have something.

What is it that's stopping you from getting to the work of making disciples and building God's kingdom?

Maybe as I asked as I asked that question, the Holy Spirit is bringing things to mind, but uh in case there's nothing you can think of, let me just share four things that might be stopping you from committing to the work of making disciples.

The first thing I would say is this maybe it's misunderstanding.

Maybe it's misunderstanding.

You know, one of the um greatest, a few callings of my life is to remind us as Christians that the that following Jesus is not only about your personal relationship with him.

Now, let me just pause that because some of you hear that and you say that's ridiculous that you would ever say that.

But I find that naturally, you know what we do?

We elevate the personal relationship that we have with Jesus, which is so important.

But by doing that, we sort of sweep under the rug the corporate relationship that we are to have with the church and the missional relationship that we are to have with the world.

Now, why is this?

I think that to some degree it's because of the way that many of us were evangelized.

Many of us, when we were evangelized, were asked this question do you Do you have a personal relationship with Jesus?

And that is a great question to ask.

That's so important.

Jesus is looking for those who know him and worship him in spirit and truth.

And so that is an essential question.

But what might happen then is if you emphasize in calling people to Christ, if you emphasize this personal relationship with Jesus, then what might happen is that becomes what it means to follow Jesus.

That your relationship as a Christian, or what it means to be a Christian, is really what you do in your personal time.

That to be a Christian is to read the Bible in the morning, it's to pray.

Again, all good things, all a part of a personal relationship with Jesus, but to the exclusion of these other things.

And one of the things I want you to understand is this: that the greatest mark of maturity as a Christian is not how many years you've been a Christian.

It's not how many times you've read through the Bible.

It's not what your spiritual disciplines look like.

Can I tell you what the greatest mark of Christian maturity is?

It is how you are doing at making disciples.

It's how you are doing at the one thing that Jesus told us to do to make disciples.

And so the very thing that might be stopping us is this misunderstanding, this thinking that the primary aspect of our Christian life is our personal relationship with the Lord, and that is so important.

But do not miss this.

That the important thing is that Jesus is your Lord, and that when He calls you to make disciples, you hear Him and you say, Here I am.

I mean, could you imagine would it be okay, the Israelites?

As God says, Go and build the temple, what if they said, Hey, listen, okay?

We heard you, we're gonna build the temple, but uh, how about we just stay in our homes and we just read our Bibles and pray?

Is that good?

I mean, you understand what's going on here.

There's something to do.

You gotta get your hands messy in the work.

And God is calling us this morning.

The same message.

We need to get to the work of making disciples.

Well, the first thing that might be stopping us is misunderstanding.

The second thing is maybe it's busyness and overcommitment.

Yeah, so true of our day and age that life really only gets busier.

And unless you have the courage to stand up and look at your calendar and say, I'm gonna cut off some really good things in order that I can do the most important things, then you will never be able to make disciples.

Making disciples, it takes time.

It actually involves spending time with other believers and speaking the truth and love into their life and being committed to meeting regularly with other believers.

Making disciples means that you're serving the church, and so that means at times showing up early and preparing Sunday school classes and being committed to the work.

Is it possible that busyness and overcommitment are what are stopping you from being on commission, uh on mission?

You're you're committed to good things, but they are not the great things, they are not the internally important things.

What about comfort and complacency?

Maybe you're just in a place in life where you're just kind of good with how life is, you know, I'm happy with what I'm doing.

And you've you've reached this complacency.

And and the message you need to hear this morning is that God is calling you deeper.

God is calling you to do something that scares you, God is calling you to do something that you say, you know, I I don't think I can do this.

And I want you to know personally that those those things that you do that you don't think you can do, that you don't think it's possible, those are always the things that God uses most to grow you.

I can testify in my own life.

Well, you may have other things to add to your list of what's stopping you.

But the second thing that I want you to understand is that if we're on mission, we need to consider what drives us.

Consider what drives us.

Now, notice then in verse 6, Tatanai, having heard and seen that the Israelites were working on the temple, would then write a letter to Darius the king.

Now pick up in verse 7, it says, They sent him a report in which was written as follows to Darius the king, all peace.

Be it known to the king that we went to the province of Judah, to the house of the great God.

It is being built with huge stones, and timber is laid in the walls.

This work goes on diligently and prospers in their hands.

Then we asked these elders and spoke to them thus: Who gave you a decree to build this house and to finish this structure?

We also asked them their names for your information, that we might write down the names of their leaders.

Now, this is the point where Tatanai becomes just a tattletale.

He's writing to Darius, and he he wants to sort of tattle on all the things that the Israelites are doing.

But we find some new information here that we didn't read in the first encounter with Tatanai, and you find it here in verse 11.

This is so fascinating and is teaching us so much about what it means to be on mission for Christ.

It says this was their reply to us.

Notice what they say: we are the servants of the God of heaven and earth.

What is it that causes the Israelites to be on mission for Christ, even when their lives are busy, even when doing that is scary and fearful?

What is it?

It is this that they understand they are servants of the God of heaven and earth.

It's worship.

The Israelites are unstoppable because they have in their hearts this unbreakable commitment to worship.

They will not stop.

Now I want you to understand in your own life that worship is inextricably tied to missions.

Where worship exists in your heart, a hunger for missions will.

Because we believe that if this worship is fueled in your heart for Jesus Christ, the overflow of that is missional.

You desire to share the goodness of what Jesus is doing in your life.

I love what John Piper says, and we share this so often because it's really at the heart of our theology of missions as a church.

It's this missions exist because worship doesn't.

Missions exists because worship doesn't.

And the reason that the Israelites were so eager to build the temple was because the temple was where the that was the center of Israelite worship.

And we'll see this in chapter six.

As soon as the temple is completed, worship begins.

But if there is no temple, there is no worship.

And so when asked, why are you doing this?

the people of God have a straight answer.

It is because we serve God, it is because we worship the Lord.

And so they were eager to see God praised in Jerusalem.

And so they were eager to get to the work of building the temple.

Now here's the application for us, then the more that we love the Lord, the more that our heart is filled with praise for the Lord, the more passionate our worship is for the Lord, the more eager we will be to see Him praised.

That's just the heart of human nature.

That when we really love things, we cannot help but to want other people to experience this.

I had this illustrated in my own life recently.

I was recently on an outback camping trip.

I do this yearly.

I go alone up to Algonquin, and it's a time just to get away from everything and think about ministry and sort of use this time to vision plan.

And it was a great time, and I was telling people that it was a great time, but more often than not, the reaction that I get is you're crazy.

How could you ever do that?

And campers here know that that's often the reaction.

Why would you ever want to do that?

Why would you want to go out in the middle of nowhere?

Some of you guys are listening this and it's like heaven for you, but others it's like, this is so terrifying.

There's bears out there.

You want to pick up a canoe and put it on the top of your head and hike through the forest, and there's just no appeal to many people.

And I can't understand it because even when I'm out there, like, you know, I'm I'm I try to get as deep as I can to get away from as many people as I can.

And I'm just the thought I have is like, I think like 0.0001% of people in the universe will see what I'm seeing right now.

It's so beautiful, and there's something about just, you know, you find a site and you're on a lake and you look at there's no boats, there's no cottages, it just feels like there's nobody there.

It's honestly heavenly, it's amazing.

And I I have trouble comprehending, and so I constantly get in these conversations where what I'm trying to do is like win the person over.

Listen, if you just if you just did it, if you just did it once, you would see how beautiful it is.

And I just can't help it.

I'm sure you have that thing as well.

We we often make fun of, you know, the CrossFitters and the vegans because they just cannot help you but tell but tell you about their thing.

You gotta be vegan, you gotta try it out, you gotta try out this CrossFit thing, you know?

Why?

Because it's affected them and they love it, and an expression of the love for that thing and a love for you is a desire for you to see the goodness of that thing.

And so it is with the worship of Jesus Christ.

When Jesus is elevated in the place of your heart, do you know what the natural overflow of that is?

It is a desire to share Him.

It's this intense desire that the people you know who don't worship Christ would worship Him.

And so we ask ourselves this are we driven?

Are we driven by an intense desire for God to be worshipped?

This gets to the heart of what we have been talking about.

God at the center of our lives.

When God is at the center of our lives, when we are living for God, you know what our desire becomes?

It becomes helping others see and worship the glory of God.

You're driven by an intense desire for God to be worshipped.

If not, and you are a Christian, let me suggest it's because you've stopped what the psalmist says you've stopped tasting and seeing that the Lord is good.

This is what happens.

When your faith grows dull, when your affections are no longer for the Lord, it becomes impossible to be on mission.

You cannot force yourself to make disciples.

But do you know what happens when you have a regular pattern and rhythm of seeking the Lord in your life?

You know what happens is the natural overflow of that is a desire to be missional.

I just cannot help but think that like we should just throw out the manual on every practical detail that comes to that comes with being a Christian and just focus on this one thing, seeking the Lord.

I would love to run a parents' conference, you know, and we have four sessions, and all the parents show up, and session one is this, seek the Lord, and session two is this, seek the Lord, and session three is this, seek the Lord.

And you guess what section four is?

Seek the Lord.

And then the next year we'd have a marriage conference, and again, there'd be four sessions, and and session one, it's gonna be a shocker, it would be seek the Lord.

And we could do this in every avenue of life.

You want to talk about being an employee, uh a worker that brings praise to God, seek the Lord, have your heart in Jesus Christ, and everything else will follow.

Isn't that what Jesus said?

Seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things will be added to you.

So, why do you and I complicate it so much?

Why do you and I complicate it so much?

Like the main thing is get your head in the book and see Jesus Christ until your heart is overflowing with this praise for him, and then you'll want to be a good parent, and the practical details will flow from that.

Then you'll want to be a good husband or a good wife, then you'll want to be a good worker, then you'll serve the Lord, then you'll speak the truth and love into other people's lives.

But listen, if you're not seeking the Lord and you're not flaming this love for Jesus Christ, this passionate worship for Jesus Christ in your heart, it will never come.

It all begins here, seeking the Lord.

This is why the psalmist says in Psalm 96, verse 3 to 4, declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all peoples.

Psalms 96:3–4

Why?

For great is the Lord and greatly to be praised.

And if there's this love in your heart for Jesus Christ and a passionate worship of him, then the driving influence of your life becomes I want other people to see that.

So, church, see it yourself.

See it yourself.

Verse 12.

Katana continues to write to the governor.

Or sorry, to um Darius.

And he really here is illustr or illustrating for Darius the history of the people of Israel.

Remember, Darius's mind is everywhere.

And so he might not remember what the small group of exiles is doing.

And we find to the end of chapter 5 that it's really a summary of where the people of Israel have been.

And Tatanai is really sort of like, he's got some bias in here.

He's really saying you should be worried about these people.

You you've already heard in it what we read.

Remember, he says they're building a great house, and they're using big beams of timber.

Like this, it seems, Darius, like there's sort of this uprising, and you get the sense that maybe Tatanai would be, you know, promoted or something if he can find an uprising.

And so in chapter 6, what we find then is Darius hears the message, and of course, after two years of tumultuous uprisings against his kingdom, it says, search was made in Babylonia in the house of archives where the documents were stored.

And here's what Darius is then doing.

He's looking through the records to ask this question: Should these people be doing this?

Did we ever allow them to do this?

Now in verse 3, we find that they find a record.

And read this with me.

It says, In the first year of Cyrus the king, Cyrus the king issued a decree concerning the house of God at Jerusalem.

Let the house be rebuilt, the place where sacrifices were offered, and let its foundations be retained.

Its height shall be sixty cubits, its breadth sixty cubits, with three layers of great stones and one layer of timber.

Let the cost also be paid from the royal treasury.

And also let the gold and the silver vessels of the house of God, which Nebuchadnezzar took out of the temple that is in Jerusalem, and brought to Babylon be restored, and brought back to the temple that is in Jerusalem, each to its place.

You shall put them in the house of God.

Well, notice here that God is working.

God is doing everything to make the mission for Israel possible.

And this leads me to the third thing I want you to understand about being on mission, that you need to consider what empowers you.

Comprehend what empowers you.

Understand that God is working at a national level to make it possible for this small group of Israelites to do the work that they were called to do.

To build the temple.

And you need to understand that when God calls you to a mission, do you know what he'll do?

He will not only open every door on the path on which he has called you, he will blow every door off the hinges.

It does not matter how strong you perceive that door to be, if God has called you to a mission, he will empower it so that it is possible.

This is why Jesus in Matthew 16, he could look at this ragtag group of teenage disciples and say to Peter, who you know how much Peter messed up, he would say to Peter, You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell will not stop it.

How could you say that to Peter?

Listen, if anyone could mess up the church, don't you feel like it's Peter?

Like he could do something, he often got it wrong, and yet Jesus would look at this man and he would say, Not even the gates of hell will be able to stop what I am going to build on you, Peter.

Why?

Because it would not be by Peter's power, it would be by the power of Jesus Christ.

Church, do you hear the application for your own life here?

You are called to make disciples.

And as we even hear that word, so many objections come up into our mind, and very likely those objections are true.

Some of you, you hear the call to make disciples, and you think, I don't know enough.

And can I listen to that objection and say, yeah, it's probably true.

You probably don't know enough.

In fact, people are constantly asking me questions where I'm like, I just don't know.

And yet it does not stop you because you know what happens when you commit to the work.

What God does is through the process, he actually grows your knowledge and understanding.

So that some of the things I know best are because I've been asked this question, and I said, Oh, I don't know, so I'm gonna have to study that.

It is God who's empowering you, it's God who makes a way.

Well, well, how does he do it then?

First, I want you to see that he does it through his sovereign providence.

Notice in verse 14 Darius has made every possible way for the Israelites to finish.

And it says in verse 14, and the elders of the Jews built and prospered through the prophesying of Haggai the prophet and Zechariah the son of Edu, and they finished their building.

How?

You see those words there?

By the decree of the God of Israel, and by the decree of Cyrus and Darius and Artaxerxes, king of Persia.

This is fascinating.

When Ezra looks at the temple and he says, How did this small group of Israelites free themselves from Babylon, get to Jerusalem, and build a temple like this?

You know what he says?

He says, It was God and it was man.

And that is such an unsatisfying answer for some of us.

We want to look at our lives and we want to make sense of them.

We want to say, who did this?

And the answer is, it was God and it was man.

God is sovereign and he is using men to accomplish his mission so that at the end of the day, people can look at this temple and say, who did it?

And the ultimate answer is God, but God made a way.

So we need to understand this that when we commit to the temple building work of making disciples, God will make a way.

You commit to it, you don't know how to do it, and yet he uses your efforts.

He clears the path in front of you.

See, this is so interesting because remember when the Israelites were committed to their own mission in chapter 4, Haggai came and what did he say?

He said, God would not let you prosper in your own way.

Every time you tried to get money, you put it into a pocket with holes in it.

Every time you tried to find satisfaction in food, you ate, but you were never full.

Every time you were thirsty, you drank, but you were your thirst was never quenched.

That's what the prophet Haggai says.

When you go in your own way, you never find satisfaction.

It's so hard, the path is so difficult.

But when you pursue making disciples, God makes a way.

Now that's not saying it's gonna be easy, but it's saying that God will use the work that you do.

You know what that means?

That means that when you and I serve, like take this as an example.

When we serve the church, you and I need to have a lot more faith in what the Lord is doing through our service.

Let me speak to the greeters for a moment.

You know which way uh you know how God might use your greeting?

You think it's such a small thing, but the amount of times I've talked to people who Maybe they're new to the church or they've never been to church before.

And the thing, you know what they say to me?

It's it's rarely, hey, that was a great sermon.

It's often, which maybe this is speaking to the preaching, it's often your people are so nice.

The Lord uses that.

And so you come with this faith of, like, man, it's a small thing, you know, smiling and shaking someone's hand.

It's a small thing handing someone a coffee.

It's a small thing standing at the connections table.

And yet the Lord uses that.

You sow the seed, God gives the growth.

Kids workers.

I speak to you for a moment.

Like it seems some Sundays that you are not getting through to anyone.

And you've done all the work preparing this message for the kids, and you got all his fun illustrations, but there's 23-year-olds in there, and it's just not working.

Let me tell you, God is using it.

It is not your responsibility to grow the seed, it is only your responsibility to sow it.

So you know what that does?

You know what does?

It fills us with this eagerness of like, God, I just use my small acts of service.

God, use them.

I know you can use it for your glory.

No, you can use it.

Think about that in small group.

Think about the way that God might use you in small group.

This is one of the things that pains me the most as a pastor, is what I constantly hear about small group is what people aren't getting from it.

And I praise God that that's so rare to hear.

But if there's one criticism, it's what I'm not getting from it.

And you need to understand that the most exciting thing about being a small group is what you get to give to it.

The fact that you can show up on a Wednesday or third or whatever night and you can speak a word of encouragement or exhorting, and that can be used in someone's life to change their life.

I cannot tell you how many times people have spoken in my life, and my life is changed because of it.

And you can be used, all you do is you share what God has been doing in you.

It's nothing crazy, and yet God, because he delights in that so much, will use it.

And so you speak truth.

It's this amazing truth.

God wants to use you.

And so he will make a way.

No matter how weak you feel your offering is, he will make a way.

I'm reminded of this every Sunday.

Like, God has commanded preaching.

And every Sunday, you know, I prepare this pitally little message and I say, you know, God, you gotta use this.

And I think, man, God could do this so many better ways.

Like, what if He just he could just write it in the clouds from God?

He could just speak.

Couldn't He just speak to us in this moment, the audible voice of God speaking to us?

He's powerful enough to do all these things, and yet He has commanded to preach, and He has said He will use that to build His church, and so we do it.

We place ourselves as an instrument in the hands of God.

We're empowered by His providence.

We're notice also that we're empowered by His presence.

The Israelites finished the temple, and we're told in verse 16 they celebrated the dedication of this house of God with joy.

So much joy because what did the temple mean?

It meant that God was with them.

And you and I have such a greater reason for joy because the true temple is with us.

And when God said, when Jesus said, make disciples, he gave us this promise, and behold, I am with you.

That is an astounding promise that should give us all sorts of courage and confidence.

It was illustrated really powerfully for me.

We have a um hockey tournament that we participate in annually.

You might not know this.

We often don't share it because often we're absolutely obliterated, and it's very shameful, so we try to just forget about it.

However, this past year, we had a full roster of 16 people, and in the last few weeks, half those people dropped out.

And so we were showing up, I mean, it's a GCC tournament, and so you think it's you know a Christian tournament, and yet I think that some of these people think it's like tryouts for NA, like the NHL or something.

It's crazy, it's a really high-level tournament.

And so we're showing up with seven people, and we were already locked in, and I'm thinking, like, this is gonna be an absolute disaster.

I'm telling you, I haven't been stressed about a ton of things in my life, and I was very stressed about showing up to this tournament with seven people.

However, we showed up, and I didn't know, but somehow I had drafted to the seven people team two junior A players, which if you don't know hockey, that just means like they're really, really good.

They put me to absolute shame.

And after our first game, I was shocked because we actually did decent, and the ref came over to us and he said, Hey, listen, my son's a defenseman, and he just got off of junior A.

And so we would love to, you know, if you want, he can come play with you.

And you know, I'm smart enough to say, Yeah, 100%.

Let's do this.

And all of a sudden, we had a team of eight people, and all of us were losing our minds.

We couldn't believe it.

We had eight people on this team, but three of them were junior players, and you don't know the kind of confidence that gives someone who, even like me, can't really play hockey very well, gives them such confidence.

We got these amazing players on our team right now, and we played with this new, like, sort of invigorated power of like we could win this thing.

And we got to the semi-finals.

Praise God, give a clap, you know, redemption church.

We did it, we'll probably never do it again when we bring 15 people next year.

But we got there.

Why?

Because of the power of the people that were on our team.

And do you know who goes with you?

It is not a junior and hockey player, it is the God of this of the heavens and the earth.

He goes with you.

And so listen, you think about evangelism and you think, man, I'd love to share the gospel with that person, but like, there's no way they'll ever listen to me.

And the response that we have to have is like, how small is your faith?

It's not your word that's gonna be used, it's the fact that God is present with you.

And the takeaway here needs to be that some of you need to have more faith and you need to do something bold and courageous.

And so, can we make this an application this week?

Can you do something where your response right now is like, there's no way that would ever work?

Invite that person to church who would never come.

Share the gospel with that person who is so hardened.

Have that conversation that requires forgiveness that you feel like you can't offer.

Encourage that person who you feel like the conversation might just be awkward.

Why?

Because God is present with you.

Last thing I want you to see here is that we're empowered by a provision.

And it's so significant that what the Israelites do at the very end is they celebrate the Passover.

And the Passover was this reminder of when they were in Exodus, and instead of the oldest son of each family being slaughtered, they were provided a lamp.

And the ones who painted the blood on the doorpost, they were provided life.

And the Israelites had been empowered so that the very first thing they do when they build the temple is celebrate the Passover.

Why?

Because the basis of the mission that they had been given, the very foundation of it was that they had been given life.

They had been given life.

And they celebrated that Passover, and it's very likely that none of them had ever done it before because they had been in exile for 40 years and then spent a number of years in Jerusalem, and they had not yet had the temple to celebrate Passover.

And so this is the first time they would have celebrated it.

And here they are, they finished the temple and they have the Passover meal and they're looking at each other and they're saying this, God has given us life.

We don't deserve it.

And my question for you this morning is this Have you found life in Jesus?

He is the Passover lamb.

See, none of this matters.

None of this matters at all.

Mission does not matter if you do not have Jesus Christ.

So have you placed your faith in Jesus Christ?

You need to know that before you understand the good news of what Jesus has done, you need to understand the bad news.

That the angel of death is coming, that there is a day of judgment that is coming.

And yet God has made a way.

And the Passover pointed to Jesus, who would be the way.

He took death so that you and I wouldn't have to.

You know what happens once you celebrate that truth, and every day of your life becomes a celebration of the fact that you have been given life in Jesus Christ?

Mission is possible.

Why?

Because mission is the overflow of the excitement of what Jesus Christ has done for you.

Right Ezra's trying to point her attention to something here.

Time and time again, look at verse 16.

He says they celebrated the dedication of this house of God with joy.

Again in verse 22, and they kept at the fast, at the feast of unleavened bread, seven days with joy.

For the Lord had made them joyful and had turned the heart of the king of Syria, of Assyria, to them.

You know what the ultimate reason to be on mission is for?

It's because it's the only way to joy.

Every other path will lead you in frustration.

But you commit to the work of making disciples, and you will get to the end of your life, and there will be nothing that will be as joyful.

You know, you could buy as many boats or cottages or houses or have whatever job you want, or imagine whatever perfect family you could have.

Nothing will be as joyful on that moment, standing before the Lord and looking to your left and looking to your right and seeing all these people who are there because God called you to make disciples and he told you that he would be with you when you did it, so that you can say, These people are influenced by me.

They're not here because of me, but God has used me for their eternal joy.

There's nothing more joyful than that.

And so we commit ourselves to the mission of making disciples.

Let's pray.

Father, we praise you.

And God, we ask you for your help in this.

Lord, it's so easy to be distracted and so difficult to do what you've called us to do at times, and yet you've promised so much, Lord, that you will make a way.

That you will be with us, that you will provide life to us, and that this will be the path of joy.

And so I pray, even in this moment, Lord, there would be such practical application for us as we search for ways to serve you, Lord.

We say with the Israelites, We are the servants of the most high God, and there is no better place to be than to be serving you and committed to your mission.

So, God, we give you all the praise and we thank you.

And we pray this in the name of your son.

Amen.