Ezra 2 - Who is your Father?

TextSlidesHandoutQuestionsAssistantSharePreachExportEzra 2 - Who is your Father?Jeremy Houser / General Adult

EZRA 2

Vocab Front load:

Faithfulness, the quality or state of being faithful, believe in God’s reliability, trustworthy, and dependable. Faith, to believe in God. and to fear him with a firm conviction that the Lord is reliable because of his never ending faithfulness. Doubt, lack of faith, to have no confidence in something or someone, even to fear the reliability of something or someone.

Connect Neurons:

Does knowing who your family is matter? Knowing the heritage of you family might bring with it old recipes for brussel sprout soups, or the knowledge of a Gmas secret sowing method, maybe even the right to inherit grand dads WWII service rifle, or the claim to Great Grandmas wedding ring, it could even mean that you receive the deed to the ownership of the families land and all the privileges and joy that comes from living there.

Luke I am your father - the Dark Lord Darth Vader super evil mortal enemy of all that is Good, and Luke the earnest trustworthy farm boy luke, finds out about his family heritage that he is indeed the son of this man. It wrecks him, he is filled with doubt about who he is, and whether he can have faith in the force to guide him, doubt that anything good will come of him if his father is so evil.

Objective:

Knowing who our family is hugely impactful on our view of the life!

For all of you who have had fathers and mothers give you reason to doubt them, which should honestly be all of us because all have fallen and none is perfect, hopefully not as bad as darth vader… but this can give us a temptation to blame God for something that we think is evidence of his unfaithfulness, and when we do that our faith turns to doubt God’s faithfulness, and then that starts to wreck our thinking as we like luke are filled with doubt that anything good will come, fall into despair that we have any reason to have faith in God.



Why should you care?:

We are up against a world, and our own inner lawyer, that tells us God is not reliable, he is not worthy of our faith, that we should doubt him because of all the “bad things that are happening”

But what I want to lead us to tonight is that not only can we have faith confidence in who your heavenly father is, as a reliable, trustworthy, and dependable daddy who will never leave you!

I want you to clearly see our faithful Father, so you can put your full faith in his faithfulness!

Read it:

- Pray

Read, Boys say a deep manly TWO when you here 2, Girl’s say a beautiful and wonderful THREE when you hear 3. Girls ai - say ayeBoys a - say ahh(Pause for commentary)

Teach it:

Show - NASB list

Evidence of Gods Faithfulness in his people. I want you to clearly see our faithful Father, so you can put your full faith in his faithfulness!

v1 God was faithful to his people to bring justice to the land by declining his children for a time in the exile, the time of which was what God had said by Jeremiah in chapter 25, and here we see him bringing back to the promised land a huge group of his people. From ch 1.5 we know that this group is

English Standard Version Chapter 1

everyone whose spirit God had stirred to go up to rebuild the house of the LORD that is in Jerusalem.

When talking with Pastor Jonathan about this text, he made the comment that this is like a massive church plant, complete with their own sound system of hundreds of singers!

English Standard Version Chapter 2

64 The whole assembly together was 42,360,

So we need to ask, is God faithful? has he preserved the nation of Israel and returned them to Judah, to Jerusalem the chosen city of God? Yes!

And what are they to do now that they have arived in Jerusalem?

68 Some of the heads of families, when they came to the house of the LORD that is in Jerusalem, made freewill offerings for the house of God, to erect it on its site. 69 According to their ability they gave to the treasury of the work 61,000 darics of gold, 5,000 minas of silver, and 100 priests’ garments.

Do we give our money to just anyone? nope, and we usually They respond in faith, by giving freewill offerings to rebuild the temple, the place where they can commune with God. This is not a tithe but a over and above gift from what God had given. Can you start to see how the people as they have completed this 4 month long journey are celebrating God’s trustworhtyness to

English Standard Version Chapter 2

59 The following were those who came up from Tel-melah, Tel-harsha, Cherub, Addan, and Immer, though they could not prove their fathers’ houses or their descent, whether they belonged to Israel: 60 the sons of Delaiah, the sons of Tobiah, and the sons of Nekoda, 652. 61 Also, of the sons of the priests: the sons of Habaiah, the sons of Hakkoz, and the sons of Barzillai (who had taken a wife from the daughters of Barzillai the Gileadite, and was called by their name). 62 These sought their registration among those enrolled in the genealogies, but they were not found there, and so they were excluded from the priesthood as unclean. 63 The governor told them that they were not to partake of the most holy food, until there should be a priest to consult Urim and Thummim.

Apply it and land in the Grace of the Gospel!

English Standard Version Chapter 2

2 They came with Zerubbabel, Jeshua, Nehemiah, Seraiah, Reelaiah, Mordecai, Bilshan, Mispar, Bigvai, Rehum, and Baanah.