60+ Luncheon - Pastor to 60+ Dave Skorupa - September 17, 2026

All right.

Ezra and Nehemiah, they come back to the town of Jerusalem, and Jerusalem's changed because over the last 70 years, while everyone was carried away to Babylon, the Babylonians moved foreign peoples into Jerusalem.

They also left behind in Jerusalem anybody that they thought was not worth taking to Babylon with them.

And so a lot of the poorest people, perhaps people that weren't connected politically, people that showed that they didn't have any signs of culture, people that the Babylonians thought, well, they can't add anything to our empire, so we'll just leave them there, and they'll have to deal with all the people that we bring in.

The Babylonians had a very smart way of conquering a land.

They would come into a land, they would conquer it, and they would always take away the majority of the population.

And then they would take other places they had conquered and move those populations into the land.

Why did they do this?

They did this because they wanted all of the places they conquered to be unstable.

They wanted those places to be unable to come together and oppose them in the future.

It's a pretty smart military strategy.

Keep everybody arguing with each other, no one will argue with you.

So when Ezra and Nehemiah and their groups come back to Jerusalem, they have three different people groups that they're dealing with.

First off, they're dealing with the Israelites that were left behind, those who were poor or uncultured or powerless.

The second group they were dealing with were all of the people that the Babylonians had moved into Jerusalem, mostly foreign people who worshipped foreign gods and had different languages and different cultures.

And then finally, the third group was the group that was created in that 70-year gap.

Because a lot of those Israelites intermarried with a lot of those foreign people that were moved in, and those people didn't know if they were Israelites or if they were foreigners.

They had just a little bit of a hybrid understanding of law and culture and religion going on.

So when Ezra and Nehemiah and their groups return, they're not coming back to the Jerusalem that they once knew.

They were coming to a Jerusalem unlike anything that had ever been seen before.

Now, as you continue to read through Ezra and our chronological Bible study, you're going to see that there are going to be attempts to rebuild the temple and complaints about rebuilding the temple.

The people that were there didn't like what Ezra and Nehemiah were doing.

They'd had 70 years without anybody telling them what to do.

Suddenly Nehemiah and Ezra come in and they're saying, you have to surrender what you think is correct because we're going to reinstitute the Israelite culture and the Israelite government here and the Israelite worship here.

And so they would fire off letters saying to the to the empire, saying these people are troublemakers.

And all of this occurs over the rule of five four different rulers.

And I've got them listed up here.

We talked about them a week ago.

But today we're going to be in Ezra chapter 3.

Ezra 3 · chapter mention

Now, Ezra chapter 3 is the beginnings of restoring proper worship in Jerusalem.

Ezra 3 · chapter mention

It's been 70 years since Jerusalem has had a proper worship service, if you will.

Can you imagine?

Can you imagine?

70 years and the capital city of David has not had proper worship going on.

People have forgotten what proper worship was all about.

They don't even know where to begin.

And so, Ryan, if you'll come up here, I'm going to have Ryan read the first six verses because those are the ones that have some complicated names in them.

And I wanted to.

No, I'm kidding.

I'm kidding.

Ryan's going to come up and read the first six verses.

Alright, we'll be starting at verse 1 today.

When the seventh month arrived, the Israelites were in their towns, the people gathered as one in Jerusalem.

Jeshua, son of Josedak and his brothers, the priests, along with Zerubel, son of Sheteel, and his brothers, began to build the altar of Israel's gods, of Israel's God, in order to offer burnt offerings on it.

And as it is written in the law of Moses, the man of God.

They set up the altar on its foundation and offered burnt offerings in the morning and evening honor to the Lord, even though they feared the surrounding peoples.

They celebrated the festival of shelters.

And the burnt offering and offered burnt offerings each day, based on the numbers specified by the ordinance for each festival day.

After that, they offered regular burnt offerings and the offerings for the beginning of each month.

And all for the Lord's appointed holy occasions, as well as the free will offerings brought to the Lord.

On the first day of the seventh month, they began to offer burnt offerings to the Lord, even though the foundation of the Lord's temple had not yet been laid.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Ryan.

So in these first six verses, we see that the Israelites are getting back to worshiping.

The temple hasn't been rebuilt.

Matter of fact, they haven't even put together the plan for rebuilding the temple yet.

But what they do is they start worshiping.

So in verse 1, Ryan read that when the seventh month had come, the seventh month is a pretty important month on the Jewish calendar.

It's during that month that they have their biggest feast day, the Day of Atonement, which points to Jesus almost better than any other feast day they celebrate.

It's also a month that they celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles.

It's a busy month on the Jewish calendar for worshiping the Lord.

And so Ezra picks this month, the seventh month, to get the people refocused on worshiping the Lord.

You know, if I was going to try to introduce somebody to Jesus Christ today, and I could have had the luxury of picking a month on the calendar, getting a little bit ahead of Easter would be a great idea.

You know, or getting right ahead of Christmas, if you will.

Picking those times when the culture is focused on Jesus.

Well, Ezra was getting his people focused on these different feasts and offering times.

So in verse 1, it's a seventh month.

The children of Israel are in their cities, and Ezra gathers people together as one man, the Bible says, to Jerusalem.

I mentioned two weeks ago that as you read the book of Ezra, you will see a heavy emphasis on Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Jerusalem.

And what's happening is they've spent 70 years in Babylon, and these people as a group need to get refocused on the idea that their capital is Jerusalem.

So we see here, even in verse 1, they come to Jerusalem.

Verse 2, Jeshua son of Josedak and his brethren, the priests, and Zerubbabel the son of Sheltiel and his brethren, arose and built the altar of the God of Israel to offer burnt offerings on it, as it's written in the law of Moses, the man of God.

Now, I'm going to argue that this verse, verse 2, might be one of the most important verses of the whole chapter.

We have talked in here previously about the tabernacle of Moses.

We've talked in here previously about the Temple of Solomon.

Before they built the tabernacle, guess what they did?

They put up an altar in the site where the tabernacle was first constructed.

Before they built the temple, you know what they did?

They built an altar.

David bought that threshing floor and had the altar built on there, and that's where they built the temple.

What Ezra is doing is he is following that by setting up an altar in the place where the new temple is going to be built.

What do we do?

What do we think about altars?

You know, in Baptist life we don't really have altars per se.

Sometimes we have we have what's called the altar call, and sometimes we will talk about the platform that the preacher is at as being the altar.

But we really, it's not the same as an Old Testament altar.

An Old Testament altar was kind of like a table with a combination of a giant table and a barbecue pit.

It's pretty much what an altar was in Old Testament times.

The idea was that you came and the altar was a symbol of the worship and sacrifices of the people.

So before the new temple is built, Ezra calls the people together to worship and to offer sacrifices to Almighty God.

And he's following the same program that Solomon did in building the first temple.

He's following the same program that Moses did when they were building the tabernacle.

You know, in a couple of weeks we're going out to the Chaffee property, and uh I'm not saying that we're gonna build an altar there, but we are going to be engaged in worshiping.

We're gonna be singing and praising God, and so we're sort of following this same thing in that we're gonna fill that site with worship before any kind of building goes on at that site.

You want to be involved in that if you can, I hope.

Uh here we have Ezra bringing the people together.

Verse 3.

Though fear had come upon them because of the people of those countries around them, they set the altar on its bases, and they offered burnt offerings on it to the Lord, both the morning and the evening burnt offerings.

Look at the first words of verse 3.

Though fear had come upon them because of the people around them.

All these people that were around Jerusalem that had been moved over there by the Babylonians, all those people around Jerusalem that didn't understand the worship of the one true God.

They were doing this, but they weren't doing it in triumph.

They were actually doing it, while they were scared.

They didn't know what was going to happen.

But they went ahead and did it anyway, didn't they?

They went ahead and worshiped God anyway, even though they were scared.

Verse 4 says they kept the Feast of Tabernacles as it's written and offered the daily burnt offerings and the number required by ordinance for each day.

Feast of Tabernacles, if you've had any Jewish friends through the years, if you've had a Jewish neighbor, you'll notice that once a year they set up what looks like a ramshackle shed in their backyard.

And they will go as a family and live in that shed for the most part for several days on end, and they're celebrating the Feast of Tabernacles.

It's a reminder of the time that they spent in the wilderness while they were under Moses and Moses' brother Aaron.

So they start celebrating the feast days that they used to celebrate before they were all carried off to Babylon.

Verse 4 says that, I'm sorry, verse 3, jumping back, morning and evening burnt offerings.

In this passage, you just see all these different offerings, all these different feast days.

Verse 5, after they offered the regular burnt offering, and those for new moons and the appointed feasts of the Lord, and those of everyone who willingly offered a free will offering to the Lord.

Verse 6, from the first day of the seventh month they began to offer burnt offerings to the Lord, although the foundation of the temple of the Lord had not yet been laid.

What's happening?

They haven't even started building the temple yet, but they're already engaged in worshiping the Lord and obeying the Lord with all the different offerings and feast days.

It would have been real convenient for them to say, well, you know, we'll get around to that after the new temple's been built.

Well, we'll get around to that, but first we've got to build the temple.

No, no, in God's economy, you don't wait to worship.

You don't wait to be obedient.

You don't let great get in the way of good.

You do the things that you know you're supposed to do, even though the finished work is yet to be completed.

Let's keep reading.

Let's go to verse 7, which Ryan did not read.

Let's move on to verse 7.

They also gave money to the masons and the carpenters, and food, drink, and oil to the people of Sidon and Tyre, to bring cedar logs from Lebanon to the sea, to Joppa, according to the permission which they had from Cyrus, king of Persia.

Just a reminder: the whole reason that this is happening is because God had told Cyrus, king of Persia, that he was the one who had allowed Cyrus to become the king.

Cyrus heard that word, and Cyrus said, All right, I'm going to send all the Jews back to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple, because I want that same God who promoted me to be worshipped on a regular basis by his chosen people.

So what we see here is that even though the temple hasn't been built yet, they're already gathering the material that they're going to need to build the new temple.

They're making arrangements to get the big cedar beams from Lebanon delivered over there.

Everything's starting to happen, but it just hasn't all come together yet.

Verse 8.

In the second month of the second year of their coming up from the house of God at Jerusalem, Zerubbabel the son of Sheltiel, Jeshua the son of Josedak, and the rest of their brethren, the priests and the Levites, and all those who had come out of the captivity Jerusalem, began work and appointed the Levites from twenty years old and above to oversee the work of the house of the Lord.

Ryan's still in here, or did he bail?

He bailed, okay.

Ryan's about 20 years old.

He might be 18, 19, 20, somewhere, you know, still didn't know anything.

But, you know, I didn't know, I didn't know anything at 18.

Who in here knew everything there was to know at 18, 19 years old?

Oh, you're lying.

You'll lie to me about other things, too.

No.

You joined the Navy.

I know you didn't know what you were doing.

No, 18, 19, 20 years old, does anyone really know what they're doing?

Okay, here's what's happening here.

You notice at the end of this, last lines here, appointed the Levites from 20 years old.

Earlier in God's word, when the Levites would be appointed to start working in the priesthood, they would get appointed.

I want to make sure I get this right so I wrote it down.

It used to be that if you were a Levite, they wouldn't bring you into the priesthood to start doing anything until you were 30 years old.

That makes more sense.

That was the original age.

You see that back in Numbers chapter 4 and verse 3.

Numbers 4 · chapter mention

30 years old.

Then during a time of Moses where they were having to do a lot of heavy lifting and moving the tabernacle from place to place, they changed that and they said, Well, you know, we can get some 25-year-olds to do that.

And so it became a case of you could start doing some work in the priesthood as a Levite at 25.

This whole idea of enlisting the Levites to start working in the priesthood at 20 years old, this is new.

And this shows you that when they came back from Babylon, there was a shortage of Levites to do the work.

And so they're working with fewer ministers to teach the word and preach the word and do the things that need to be done.

But notice what they're doing.

They're not saying we don't have enough ministers to worship God.

Instead, they're saying, well, let's get that next generation and train them up early.

And let's go ahead and get them learning now.

And so they enlisted anyone that was 20 years old to be part of the Levite team.

Let's go on to verse 9.

Jeshua with his sons and brothers, Cadmail with his sons, the sons of Judah, they arose as one to oversee those working on the house of God, the sons of Henadad with their sons and their brethren Levites.

Look at verse 10.

When the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord, the priests stood in their apparel with trumpets, and the Levites, the son of Asaph, with symbols to praise the Lord according to the ordinance of David, King of Israel.

The day finally comes when they're going to map out this is going to be the foundation of the new temple.

And just for this ceremony, to sort of show everybody what the foundation is going to be like, they make it a big deal.

They bring out the singers, they bring out the people with the silver trumpets.

They follow things according to the way that it was done years and generations ago during the time of King David.

They're making a great big celebration of worship out of just showing what the foundation is going to be like.

They haven't even poured it yet.

They're just laying it out for the people to see.

Verse 11, they sang responsively, praising and giving thanks to God, for he is good, for his mercy endures forever toward Israel.

Then all the people shouted with a great shout, they praise the Lord because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid.

Must have been a great party.

Must have been a wonderful time.

People are saying, Yeah, I can see the outline, I can see it coming together.

I can see what it's going to be like.

Then we get to verse 12.

But many of the priests and Levites and heads of the father's houses, old men, who had seen the first temple, wept with a loud voice when the foundation of this temple was laid before their eyes.

Yet many shouted aloud for joy, so that the people could not discern the noise of the shout of joy from the noise of the weeping of the people.

For the people shouted with a loud shout, and the sound was heard afar off.

That's a biblical way of saying they made so much noise, you could hear it a mile away.

You could hear it for a mile away.

You know, when I think about sounds that can be heard from a mile away, I think of the airplanes that go overhead from time to time here in Fort Smith, sometimes as late as 11 o'clock at night.

I know as I'm as I'm listening to that noise, and I think, boy, that's inconvenient.

I love it because it's freedom, but nonetheless, you hear that sound.

One thing that I remember is everyone else is hearing the same noise, it's not just me.

That sound is heard afar off.

When the people shouted for joy at the announcement of the plans for the foundation, it was heard afar off.

I got some takeaways and some Bible notes I want you to have today.

First off, let's remember that even before the temple's foundation was mapped out, we are told that the people were afraid.

And even though they were afraid, they worshiped anyway.

You know, a lot of times in this life we find ourselves in times of fear for different reasons.

Could be the finances aren't going to float us until the end of the month.

Could be the diagnosis that we're receiving is a scary one.

The one that we just received is a scary one, perhaps.

All those different things.

When things get scary, worship God anyway.

Worship God anyway.

Don't use the fact that you're afraid to keep you from worshiping the Lord.

Worship Him in the midst of your fear.

Worship Him despite your fear.

Worship God anyway.

Also, I want you to notice that they observed the feast days and the holy days.

Those things that God had commanded them to obey, to worship and offer the burnt offerings and do all of those things, even though they were afraid.

You know, even if our fear continues like theirs did for days and weeks and months after that, even if the fear lingers, continue to worship God anyway.

Continue to worship God anyway.

So despite their fears, we are told that they contributed to the work of the temple.

Would have been very easy for any of them to say, well, you know, Cyrus is the one who commanded us to build that temple.

And Cyrus has said that he's going to help finance the building of that temple.

So I guess I don't have to give anything to the construction of that temple.

That would have been a very rational way of thinking.

Cyrus was the wealthiest man in the world at that point.

And yet we see a record kept for us today, all these thousands of years later, that credits the people for giving to the work of constructing the temple.

So, and they did this even though they were still afraid.

If you're afraid, continue in the work that God's called you to do.

Keep doing the work that God's called you to do even during times of fear and uncertainty.

Now, these last ones, as a Bible teacher, this just gets fun, I will let you know.

So they're putting the foundation of the temple, they're mapping that out for everybody.

The Israelites are celebrating.

It is okay to celebrate something that God is doing even though it's not finished yet.

It's okay to take steps along the way to just stop and celebrate the fact that God is doing something in your midst, even when the work isn't finished anyway.

As you continue to read in Ezra, you're going to hear that after they laid that foundation, there were lots of stops in the work.

And it took a long time for that temple to eventually be built.

But God doesn't say to the Israelites, hey, what are you guys celebrating for?

You don't know how long this is going to take.

No, everything about this celebration is viewed as positive.

Feel free to celebrate what you see God doing even before the work has even gotten any kind of steam behind it, okay?

And it's perfectly acceptable.

Now, this last slide is my favorite point in the whole thing.

You know, we get to that verse 12.

And if you remember verse 12, that's the verse where the older people who 70 years ago had seen the temple, that they saw the plan drawn up for the new temple, and they started to cry out because they thought it wasn't as good.

They thought, oh, the new temple's going to be weak and lame compared to the old temple of Solomon.

You remember that verse?

Okay.

Well, when you look into the Bible here a little bit, you find out the dimensions that Solomon had for his temple were actually considerably smaller than the dimensions of the temple that were going to be built under Cyrus.

Cyrus had given the Israelites instructions as to how big the temple was supposed to be.

You can read about those in Ezra chapter 6.

Ezra 6 · chapter mention

And in Ezra chapter 6, Cyrus says, I want it to be 60 cubits by 60 cubits by 60 cubits.

Ezra 6 · chapter mention

Alright?

And the original temple was only 60 cubits by 20 cubits by 30 cubits.

The new temple that Cyrus had ordered them to build was considerably larger than the old temple of Solomon.

And yet these men who 70 years ago had seen the Temple of Solomon, when they saw the plans being laid out for the new temple, they groaned and moaned, and the Bible says they cried with a loud voice over how much less wonderful the new temple was going to be than the old temple.

You know, there are people in this world that will ignore the tremendous blessings that God is doing in their lives right now because they are in love with some idea that the blessings they had previous were better.

Don't do that.

We all look at the past with rose-colored glasses.

We all remember the best times of the past, and we have a way of forgetting the rough parts of the past.

A few days ago I was listening to some music that I had listened to as a younger man back in the 80s and 90s, and when the best music in the world was made, you know.

We all think that the music that was present during our high school and college years was the best music that ever existed.

Most of us do anyway.

Because youth is there and we connect with that, and that's I will I will go ahead and let you know that there was a lot of garbage music in the 80s and 90s.

I'm well aware of that, all right?

But I was listening to that and I thought, oh, that's when music was great.

And then I started thinking about it, you know, that it was during that time that I lost a job, and it was during that time that I broke up with a girlfriend, and it was during that time that I had cars that never wouldn't run well, you know.

Why am I why am I romanticizing the music of those times when really life was pretty terrible?

I wasn't married yet, you know.

I uh I was trying to learn how the world worked.

80s and 90s were terrible.

They were terrible compared to now.

Life is so much better now.

We have a tendency when we think of the blessings of the past to think that those blessings were so much better than the blessings we're experiencing right now.

Let's not do that.

Let's enjoy the blessings that we're having today without comparing them to the blessings of the past.

Let's be grateful for what God is doing today, and let's not be resentful that today wasn't as bright and sunny as how we remember yesterday.

Okay?

The complaints of the older men in verse 12, the men that were saying, oh, the old temple was so much better than the unfinished, unstarted work on the new temple.

Don't avoid praising God today for a blessing.

Because you are comparing it to some groundless blessing of the past.

Praise God in the here and now for what he's doing in the here and now.

Here's the point I want to end with: praising beats complaining.

Praising beats complaining, especially when the complaints are groundless.

These men were complaining that they weren't getting a smaller temple like the one that Solomon had built.

They were complaining that Cyrus had ordered a bigger temple to be built.

And why were they doing this?

They were doing this because there are always people in every group that rather than praising God for the blessing they have today, they want to complain to God because they're comparing it to a blessing in the past.

You know what?

Let's not be those people.

Let's be people who praise God in the here and now.

Let's be people that praise God for what he did in the past, as well as for what he's doing in the present, as well as what he's gonna do in the future.

Amen?

Let's try that again.

Amen.

That's better.

That's better.

All right, let's close in prayer.

Heavenly Father, we love you and we trust you.

We thank you for your word.

Lord, in those times where I have complained about the present because it wasn't in my mind as good as the past, I repent of that.

And instead, Lord, I pray that you will give me a mind and a heart and especially a spirit to praise you for what you're doing right now.

And I pray, Lord, that that would bring you honor and glory and bring me closer to you.

Lord, I do thank you for the blessings of the past.

I do thank you for the blessings that you are bringing in the future.

But overall, Lord, I just praise you for letting me be a part of your kingdom and saving me.

Lord, thank you that you've been growing me through the years in my knowledge and understanding of you.

Thank you, Lord, that you've been growing me in things like patience and endurance.

Thank you, Lord, that you've taken me through hard times and good times.

Let me praise you whether I'm afraid or whether I'm confident.

And Lord, above all else, we pray that our time together here as a group and in your word has been glorifying and honoring to you.

Lord, keep us strong today and in the days to come.

Many in our number are going through real problems.

They're going through real challenges.

Lord, many in our number are going through real times of difficulty.

And it would be my prayer that during these times, that their friends and loved ones and people in this fellowship could come around them.

But I also pray that they would find ways to praise you in the midst of fear and struggle.

Lord, we love you.

We thank you for the salvation we have in Jesus Christ, that name above all names.

It's in his mighty name that we pray, and God's people said, Amen.

And we are dismissed.