Rebuild Introduction- 2 Chronicles 36

Introduction

Puzzles

I am so excited to embark on this journey through Ezra-Nehemiah with you.

We will spend the remainder of the summer, and all of the Fall unpacking these incredible stories of God’s faithfulness, and I truly believe that in studying them God is going to do a great work in your lives, in our church, and in our community.

By faith, Ezra and Nehemiah, although very different from one another, were both concerned with the REBUILDING of the people of God, by rebuilding the Worship of God from the Word of God.

And my prayer is that the Spirit of God, will use these two books to do the same with us.

As a church plant, what 11 months old now, we can deeply benefit from the wisdom found here. And really seek to learn how to go about Building God’s Church.

The way that Ezra and Nehemiah were used to Rebuild is that they began with Rebuilding Worship, Rebuilding the Word, and then they finished by Rebuilding the Walls.

But I fear, that we are all feeling a little bit antsy about our space, and we want to launch into building the Walls, yet neglecting the more important work of building our worship and lives on the Word of God.

As we study Ezra and Nehemiah

We will see that God is concerned with their physical building, but before that and much more important than that, He wants to Rebuild His People by Developing their Worship and Lives around the Word of God.

Church, this is where we are.

We are still very much in discovery of who God is molding our church to be, and what that will look like 1,3, 5, or 10 years from now.

For us to manufacture that vision, would be to get ahead of the Holy Spirit of God, and focus on the Walls while neglecting Worship and the Word.

So… let’s be where we are. And learn from Ezra and Nehemiah how to be Built into the Church that God is calling us to be.

So we have a lot to look at over the next 20 weeks, but to day is going to be a little different.

A little more teaching than preaching, and I plan for us to start this series kind of like a Puzzle.

Strategy of Puzzles.

You dump it out, and immediately precede to what…

Flip them over

Build your Border

this is so helpful, because it provides the frame that all the remaining pieces fit into right.

It may be slow going, and may make you feel like you’re not really getting anywhere beacause you have all these pieces left… but it actually saves you a ton of time in the long run.

And this is what we are after today:

I want to flip all the pieces over concerning Ezra/Nehemiah and then give us a framework a Border, that will help the details of each book make sense!

And similarly it may feel like slow going, but it is so important for us to have a fuller picture at the end!

Today’s Goal then is to answer 2 Questions:

Where does Ezra-Nehemiah fit in the story of the Bible?

Why should we study them today?

Where do they fit?

Old Testament Overview

In the Hebrew Bible Ezra and Nehemiah they are actually 1 Book, not split into two.

the division goes back to when the OT was translated from Hebrew to Greek, in the 3rd century BC.

But originally they were one book, a unified work with a single offer, so consequently I believe they should be studied and preached as one book.

So where do they fit in the Bible?

The English Bible is comprised of 66 books, with the OT holding 39 books and the NT 27.

Now Ezra-Nehemiah is found in the Old Testament, and in our English Bibles they are kind of in the middle, because our Bibles are organized topically, or by genre.

Let me show you.

The LAW (5 books); History (12 Books); Poetry (5 Books) Major Prophets (5 Books), and Minor Prophets (12 Books)

Again, these are all ordered by genre. And that makes sense logically, but have you ever tried to read the OT through from Genesis to Malachi, and just get totally confused!?

So many places, and characters ,and kings, and threads, and narratives, that it just gets really jumbled up and confusing.

Because it’s not chronological! It’s by genre. So we get confused because we don’t have our pieces flipped over.

So let me flip over these pieces so we can get a big picture view of where Ezra-Nehemiah fits.

So where does Ezra-Nehemiah fit chronologically?

Let me show you;

Well it begins with Genesis, but you’ll notice that Job (a poetic work) dates pretty far back.

But then we move into the LAW (ex, lev. num, and deut.)

Once the Law has been given, and the people of God redeemed and built, we have the Historical Books

Joshua, Judges, and Ruth.

Then the People of Israel want Kings— so we have 1 & 2 Samuel, and 1 chronicles where David, a King after God’s own heart ascends the throne.

This is where we get most of our poetic writings.

Psalms from David, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon from Solomon.

But after Solomon the Kingdom entered a tailspin.

In 1 & 2 Kings, 2 Chronicles the kingdom divides into the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judah.

This is a result of judgement, but God all the while continues to call his people back to himself. To rebuild them so to speak.

So he sends the Prophets...

But they wouldn’t listen. they were stubborn. Hard hearted. And eventually God brought about a severe judgement in the form of the Exile.

That’s our little rainbow there. Babylor concus Judah, and we have the first waves in the lives of people like Daniel and Ezekiel.

But even while exiled, they continued to prophecy hope. Hope of a Return of a Rebuild, ultimately fulfilled in a Messiah!

And after 70 years in exile… in spite of Israel’s continued unfaithfulness,

God was faithful and brought His people back home inorder to Rebuild His People with right worship from the Word of God.

That’s where we find Ezra/Nehemiah--- the last story of the Old Testament.

Alright, are you with me so far!? Do we have a general overview of where Ezra and Nehemiah fall chronogically?

What I’m really wanting you to see, is that the story chronicled in Ezra & Nehemiah are the last books of the OT chronologically!

Okay are pieces are flipped.

But now we need to start providing a border.

And I’m going to do that by showing you 2 THEMES that run all throughout the OT, that are essential in understanding the OT as well as Ezra-Nehemiah.

Those two themes are Covenants and Hesed

Covenants & Hesed

Covenants

To begin, understanding the Bible begins with the concept of Covenants.

A covenant in the ancient world was similar to what we would call a contract, or treaty, or will.

Each covenant established the basis of a relationship, the conditions for that relationship, and the consequences if those conditions were unmet.

For us, we can think if it like a marriage.

The Basis— Love between one man and one woman serve as the. basis for this covenant.

The conditions— the Vows… to love and serve one another until death serve as the conditions.

And we all know the consequences can be devastating if one party or both fail to uphold their covenant.

In the Bible, God established a covenant with His people, and the BASIS for His contractual relationship with us has always been, and will always be HIS STEADFAST LOVE.

In Scripture, this is the HESED of God. Often translated, mercy, steadfast love, kindness or goodness.

I prefer Steadfast Love, because as we will see shortly… even inspite of us constantly breaking our covenant with God, He remains steadfast in His love for us.

He remains committed to the covenant, solely on the basis of His Steadfast Love, and not our behavior.

So let me give you a few examples:.

Abraham

In Genesis 12 & 15, God makes a covenant with Abraham and His decendents.

The basis is God’s Hesed--- Deuteronomy 7:7 “It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples,”

God promised to provide a nation, land, and that they would be a blessing to all nations.

The conditions are unconditional… regardless of what the people of Israel (who were the decendents did), God would bless them and through them bless the nations.

Moses

In Exodus 19 & 34, God makes another covenant with the people of Israel after the Exodus.

The basis is the Law. In His Hesed, steadfast love, God supplies the Law to teach the people hwat is meant to govern and shape a blessed nation to be a blessing to all nations.

The Law wasn’t salvation, but meant to distinguish God’s blessed people from the surrounding nations.

This covenant WAS CONDITIONAL.

It clearly defines blessings and curses based on obedience or disobedience.

This IS SO IMPORTANT FOR US in framing the border of Ezra and Nehemiah, so turn with me to Leviticus 26.

Leviticus 26:1 ““You shall not make idols for yourselves or erect an image or pillar, and you shall not set up a figured stone in your land to bow down to it, for I am the Lord your God.”

It goes on in verse 3, “If you…” and you see all the blessings that will come.

Leviticus 26:14-15 ““But if you will not listen to me and will not do all these commandments, if you spurn my statutes, and if your soul abhors my rules, so that you will not do all my commandments, but break my covenant,”

then… all these curses. And what’s so interesting about these negative consequences is that they get worse as time goes on.

Disease and fever, and your harvest will be bad, you’ll lose your battles… But look at Lev 26:18 “And if in spite of this you will not listen to me, then I will discipline you again sevenfold for your sins,”

God is in essence saying… that discipline is intended to get your attention, but in spite of that and you don’t listen then I’ll discipline further.

Land won’t yild, and wild beasts will roam you.

Vs 23 And if you don’t listen to that, then it gets worse, Lev 26:25 “And I will bring a sword upon you, that shall execute vengeance for the covenant. And if you gather within your cities, I will send pestilence among you, and you shall be delivered into the hand of the enemy.”

vs. 27 but in spite of that and you don’t listen it’ll get worse.

You’ll be so starved you’ll have to eat your own, and your cities will like waste

And look at Lev 26:33 “And I will scatter you among the nations, and I will unsheathe the sword after you, and your land shall be a desolation, and your cities shall be a waste.”

Now look at Lev 26:40-42 ““But if they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers in their treachery that they committed against me, and also in walking contrary to me, so that I walked contrary to them and brought them into the land of their enemies—if then their uncircumcised heart is humbled and they make amends for their iniquity, then I will remember my covenant with Jacob, and I will remember my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land.”

Lev. 26:44-45 “Yet for all that, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not spurn them, neither will I abhor them so as to destroy them utterly and break my covenant with them, for I am the Lord their God. But I will for their sake remember the covenant with their forefathers, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations, that I might be their God: I am the Lord.””

So a very clear conditional covenant had been established.

And for a while things went pretty well.

Under the leadership of the Judges, and King David the people of Israel for the most part followed the conditions established in the Mosaic covenant.

But after David, the People of Israel fell into ruin, and totally abandoned their covenant with God.

All throughout this turbulent time, when God’s people were reaping the negative consequences of faithlessness, God was still faithful.

He had compassion on them, and time and time again He sent prophets to turn them back.

But these prophets didn’t just preach repentance. They prophesied a New Covenant.

Jeremiah 31:31-34 ““Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.””

These prophets prophesied the unchanging, constant Hesed of God.

In God’s steadfast love, a new covenant is promised. One that will change His people from the inside out, and not the outside in. One that will cleanse them of sin through forgiveness.

Lamentations 3:22-23 “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”

Church, do you see the faithfulness of our God! His HESED never ceases. His mercies never come to an end.

We are all so undeserving, yet time and time again God has honored His love for His people, solely on the basis of WHO HE IS not WHAT WE DO OR WHO WE ARE.

But although the promised New Covenant had been given, its fulfillment would be futuristic… for now, the consequences of unfaithfulness must play out, and they were judged and eventually exiled.

Judged & Exile

In 2 Kings 17, the Northern Kingdom of Israel was conquered and exiled to Assyria. This occurred in 722 B.C.

2 Kings 17:7-8 “And this occurred because the people of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and had feared other gods and walked in the customs of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel, and in the customs that the kings of Israel had practiced.”

Church, now pay attention to this: Their sin was categorized 2 ways.

They abandoned their God.

And become like the world around them!

Then about 100 years later, the same fate happened to the southern Kingdom of Judah.

2 Chronicles 36:13-14 He stiffened his neck and hardened his heart against turning to the Lord, the God of Israel. All the officers of the priests and the people likewise were exceedingly unfaithful, following all the abominations of the nations.

2 Chronicles 36:15-16 “The Lord, the God of their fathers, sent persistently to them by his messengers, because he had compassion on his people and on his dwelling place. But they kept mocking the messengers of God, despising his words and scoffing at his prophets, until the wrath of the Lord rose against his people, until there was no remedy.”

2 Kings 25:21 “So Judah was taken into exile out of its land.”

EXILE

So the people of God are reaping the consequences of their unfaithfulness.

They had rejected God, and conformed to the world around them, and consequently were exiled.

Ezra-Nehemiah

Rebuild

Ezra 1:1-3 “In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and also put it in writing: “Thus says Cyrus king of Persia: The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever is among you of all his people, may his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and rebuild the house of the Lord, the God of Israel—he is the God who is in Jerusalem.”

Ezra & Nehemiah will put God’s Hesed back on display!

From the basis of his own steadfast love, God will lead a return and a rebuilding of His People.

It is not based on us, or our acts, or our love for him.

In fact, the opposite is true.

In spite of our rejection of God, and love of idols…

In spite of our desire to conform to the patterns of this world…

His steadfast love never ceases

Jeremiah had prophesied a Return and a Rebuild, and after 70 years of Exile, Ezra and Nehemiah tell the story of the Rebuild.

It chronicles 3 Waves of Return that spans 100 years.

Zerubabel (Ezra 1-6)

Ezra (Ezra 7-10)

Nehemiah (1-13)

Why study them today?

First,

Paul says Romans 15:4 “For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.”

So we need to study these things that happened back then, so we can learn from their example and be instructed on how to avoid their consequences!

And the consequences occurred for what 2 reasons again!?

Rejection of God and worship of Idols

Conformity to the World around them.

Oh Church, is this not where we find ourselves today!?

In the 1980s J.I. Packer suggested that the church in the West was going through a period of judgement for its manifold disobedience and unfaithfulness to God’s Word.

And the past few decades I believe have proven that to be true.

Rejection of God

We have seen a massive erosion of faith and rejection of God.

This trend has been deemed “The Death of God”.

The rise of secular culture has led to an abandonment of belief in God.

According to Pew Research,

In 1970 90% of Americans identified as Christian, In 2009 that number had dropped to 78%.

But the trend is rapidly getting worse. That’s 12% in 40 years.

It’s dropped to 64% or an additional 14% from 2009-2019!

Senior researcher said, “If recent trends continue, Christians could make up roughly 35% of the American population in 40 years.

God is dying in America. We have rejected Him, and taken up the worship of lesser things.

And the general trends within the church aren’t much better.

We play church, and use church words, but if we were really honest many, if not most, would admit,

as David Wells writes, “God is less interesting than television, commands less authority than my own appetite for influence or affluence, and his truth is less compelling than advertiser’s sweet fog of flattery or lies.”

Now that isn’t the story of other parts of the world.

The church in Africa and Asia is rapidly growing! But in America...

We have largely rejected God.

Conformed

But we’ve also conformed to the world around us.

Instead of being a distinct people of God, we have begun to play church by the rules of the world.

There’s no prayer, no fasting, no worship… but there’s growth because we’ve adopted the efficiencies and effectiveness of worldly scalable strategies.

We’ve built buildings, but inside they are absent of Presence and Power.

We come wanting to be transformed and learn, but ignore the call to live unconformed.

Theologian David Wells writes,

In short, we have given up our green card and instead taken up citizenship in this world. We’re done with all the just passing through stuff, and just want to settle in, buy homes, open up IRA’s and plan to be here for the long-term. We have in short become like the world around us. We have become worldly.”

Look around, are we not there?

Old mainstream Protestant denominations are rife with disagreements between those who want to be faithful to the Scriptures and those who simply wish to be in tune with the values of our time whatever the cost.

Now more than ever, we are being tempted to adapt Christian faith to our cultural context, and instead of offering an alternative view of life and living, we are being tempted to instead become an echo of our culture.

This extremely popular liberal teaching that encourages conformity to the world is sure to reap the judgement of God.

It is without question then, that the church of God needs to be Rebuilt.

And There is perhaps then no better book of the Bible to show us the way than Ezra & Nehemiah.

May what was written down in former days teach us and instruct us, and fill us with Hope.

Because… as we will see. The HESED of God never changes, his steadfast love never ceases, and His mercy is new for us this morning.

May God REBUILD us!

Conclusion

Here’s how I’d like to close today… I’m going to give you a little spoiler alert.

What’s crazy about these books is that after 100 years of Zerubbabel, Ezra, and Nehemiah Rebuilding and Reforming… the people of Israel do it again.

After all God had just done for them, they return back to idolatry and confmority

Future Fulfillment

So the end of these books are kind of depressing.

They leave us wondering… will this ever be rectified? Will we ever be the people God has built us to be? Will we ever be faithful as he is faithful?

And it’s in that question, that God once again sends his prophets.

And the pophets of Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi begin prophecying about a future fulfillment. A time where

As Haggai 2:23 “On that day, declares the Lord of hosts, I will take you, O Zerubbabel my servant, the son of Shealtiel, declares the Lord, and make you like a signet ring, for I have chosen you, declares the Lord of hosts.””

As Malachi 3:1 ““Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts.”

As Zechariah 12:10 ““And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him...

This is how the OT ends!!!

The people are unfaithful, but God is promising a better future…

And then the NT opens

and we read the geneology of Jesus Christ in Matthew 1, who was the son of Abraham, and son of David, and descendent of Zerubbabel!

And the birth announcement of John the Baptist where Gabriel says, “He will be the messenger, to go before the Lord and prepare the way before him.!”

And the NT records that in the Sacrifice of Jesus, grace and mercy are poured out as we look on him whom we have pierced…

And that’s how we are going to close this morning. By marveling at the wisdom of God, in the story of God, and the provision of the Son of God.

He is a covenant making, and covenant keeping God.

This morning we are going to take a moment to remember His Hesed, by taking communion.

So if you are serving communion go ahead and make your way to your places.

Communion, or the Lord’s Supper is a symbol of the New Covenant that was prophesied and fulfilled in Jesus.

At the Last Supper, Jesus brook the bread and gave it to His disicples with the words, “This is my body given for you, do this in remembrance of me.

He then took the cup and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.”

The New Covenant that Jesus spoke of is a contrast to the Old.

The Old was the conditional agreement that established laws and ceremonies that separated Israel from the other nations.

But Jesus came to establish “a better covenant” a new one in His blood. A covenant that establishes grace and mercy and forgiveness through faith in Christ that seperates the church from the nations around us.

If you are a believer in Jesus, someone that has entered into covenant with God through the New and Better way Jesus Christ, take the bread and cup and take a moment to remember His Hesed.

If you aren’t a believer, I’d like to respectfully ask you to let the elements pass you by, but also invite you into consideration of all we discussed today.

In a moment I’ll return to lead us through taking of this meal together.