Is Worship Big Enough?

Do you ever feel like you have to be happy when you come to church?

Our society puts such a priority on avoiding any kind of pain or discomfort. We try to numb pain, avoid hard things, and ignore emotions we don’t like.

Sometimes, the pressure for us to do that is even greater when we come to church.

I mean, after all, aren’t we supposed to be marked by peace and joy? Isn’t life supposed to seem perfect if we are following Jesus?

It is true: our lives are supposed to be full of joy and peace.

At the same time, though, we also deal with fear, disappointment, and heartache, and we will for as long as we live.

So, here’s the question: Is worship big enough to handle our negative emotions?

In other words, is worship just for the happy and upbeat, or can we worship when we are afraid or disappointed?

As we look at Ezra 3 this morning and seek to rebuild the foundation of worship, I want to hopefully show that when we worship, we can bring our strongest, heaviest emotions with us.

This morning, we are going to see that the exiles who returned to rebuild the temple did just that.

Specifically, they worshiped in the middle of fear and disappointment.

From their example, then, I want us to see how our fears and even our tears can lead us to true, genuine worship.

Start by reading Ezra 3:1-5 with me.

Can we bring our negative emotions to worship with us?

Absolutely.

In this section, we see that worship is big enough to handle our fear.

1) Fear: Run to him for safety

Think about what is going on here.

70 years before this, Jerusalem had been destroyed. The temple was demolished, and God’s people had been carried off into captivity.

Now, a relatively small group has come back from exile and is trying to get worship reestablished again.

To do that, they needed to do two things: get the sacrifices and temple running again, and start observing the feasts God had commanded them to observe.

They have been back in the land for a few months, so they have started to get settled in their towns.

If you know the Old Testament, though, you will remember something: where was the one place they could go to offer sacrifices? And where were the men supposed to come 3 times a year to observe the feasts? Jerusalem.

So, then, if you are coming back to Jerusalem to reestablish the temple and observe the feasts, who would be at home to watch your stuff?

Not only that, we are going to find out in the very next chapter that the people who had moved into the land during the 70 years prior are really unhappy with the Jews being back, so they are in great danger.

With that in mind, look back to verse 3 for me...

The version we are using says “even though they feared the surrounding peoples.”

That makes it sound like these people were a group of courageous individuals, willing to do the right thing even when it was opposed.

Certainly, they were courageous for taking this on.

However, that phrase can also be rendered a different way. In fact, it seems like it is almost a 50/50 split between whether translators take it this way or render it differently.

The other way to look at this is to say that they built the altar, “…for they were terrified because of the peoples of the land” (ESV)

In other words, they didn’t build the altar in spite of their fear, they did it because they were afraid!

At first glance, that may not make a lot of sense.

You are afraid that your neighbors are out to hurt you, so you are going to leave your house, go kill some animals, and camp out in some homemade booths for a while?

How does that make sense?

Humanly speaking, it doesn’t.

However, for the exiles, who looked back at their parents and grandparents and great grandparents, it finally clicked.

Throughout the Bible, you find that God is the one we are to run to when we get scared and need protection!

However, their ancestors had gone after bigger and better armies, alliances, and treaties to try to make their problems go away.

None of that was able to protect them.

When they would surrender and let God lead, he always came through for them.

You see that in Joshua, where God told Joshua to put priests and the ark of the covenant at the front of the line when they marched around the city of Jericho. When the time was right, God caused the walls to fall down, proving that it was him who was able to deliver the city into their hands.

That’s what these exiles were doing. They knew that if they had any hope of being safe, then they had to worship the God who had proven himself to be their protector.

Isn’t that what we said about God a couple weeks ago?

Psalm 121:4 CSB

Indeed, the Protector of Israel does not slumber or sleep.

He is the protector of Israel, so Jeshua and Zerubbabel and the others know that when they are afraid, they are to run to him for safety.

Is that what worship is for you?

When things get scary, which direction do you turn?

When you are afraid of what is going to happen to you or those you love, do you respond with worship, turning to the God who protects, or do you try to fix it yourself?

You are low on money, so you say, “There’s no way I could give. I need to work harder to earn more so I can finally have enough to retire on.” You should know by now that money will never rid you of fear. When you don’t have enough, you worry that you won’t make it. Once you have it, you worry that you’ll lose it.

The same is true of everything else we chase after. We are afraid of dying, so we try to eat right and exercise. We are afraid of our kids resenting us, so we give them everything they want and make them the center of our world.

Stop it! Stop trying to fix your fear on your own.

Instead, because you are afraid, come to God in worship and sacrifice and praise.

Remember what he has done, just like they did when they celebrated the Festival of Booths or Tabernacles.

That was another reminder to them that God brought their ancestors to that land from Egypt, and it took on new meaning for these exiles as they returned from Babylon.

Think back to the songs we have already sung this morning.

They pointed us to the fact that Jesus is the only solid assurance we have and hope of salvation.

He is the only foundation for our hope, and he always will be.

When we come to worship and bring our fears with us, we declare that he is bigger than the things we fear.

We honor him as we declare that we want to run to him first, seek him first, and not try to fix it ourselves.

When we worship, we come to God and can rightly say, “I am afraid, and I don’t know how this is going to work out. I don’t even know what to do, but I am throwing everything I have and everything I am on you, trusting you to keep me safe.”

If you aren’t comfortable enough with God to do that, I would point you back to the message from a few weeks ago. Look over Psalm 121, and keep digging into it until you see God as he really is.

Worship is big enough to handle fear, because fear lead us to acknowledge our need, just like Zerubbabel and the other exiles did.

This passage deals with more than just fear, though.

As we read the second half of the chapter, we see that worship is big enough to handle...

2) Disappointment: Run to him for fulfillment

Read verses 8, 10-13.

A few months after what we read first, they began to lay the foundation for the temple.

On one hand, it was a beautiful moment of celebration, because God had kept his promise to bring his people back to the land.

He had, as Ezra said in Ezra 1:1, kept his word that Jeremiah had spoken.

They had a great worship celebration.

Did you notice, though, that there was a group there who wasn’t as excited? Look back at verse 12 again.

These were the old folks. They would have been over 70 years old, and they had seen what it all looked like before.

Now, as they saw the foundation of the temple being laid, they wept. Why?

The temple they were building would never be as grand as the previous temple.

Not only that, but it was their fault that it had been destroyed. They had been around, they had sinned, and God had punished them, just like he promised.

Many of those priests, Levites, and leaders would have remembered the horrific events of the conquest of Jerusalem.

They lost parents, siblings, and friends and would have carried that for the last 70 years.

Seeing the foundation go up was more bitter and sweet because it reminded them of all they lost.

We need to stop and acknowledge something here: sin has major, life-altering consequences.

We believe and teach often that God can and does completely forgive sins, but that doesn’t mean that he always eradicates all the consequences of that sin.

There are relationships that may not be mended until we stand perfect in God’s presence forever.

Sinful choices and actions, both yours and those of others, may impact things for the rest of your life.

There are words that can’t be unsaid, decisions that can’t be unmade, and consequences we will carry.

Maybe what you need to know is that you have permission to weep over that.

You know what I don’t see in this passage? Any word of rebuke for the priests who were crying.

Nobody said, “Hey man, get over it. What’s done is done. Move on.”

Instead, their weeping mingled with the shouts of joy, and I believe both were an act of worship.

Their tears weren’t selfish here; they were mourning over what sin had cost. They were mourning over their own sin, and wishing with everything they had they could go back to make it right.

When we worship with that kind of weeping, we are crying out to God saying, “I know this isn’t how it is supposed to be, and I am sorry for my part in it.”

We are declaring than God is better than we are and we could ever hope to be.

We are looking forward with anticipation to the day he wipes every tear away from our eyes and all this pain is done away with.

“But Sean, doesn’t Paul tell us in Philippians 4 that we are supposed to rejoice always?”

He does! We also see this in James, though:

James 4:8–10 CSB

Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be miserable and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.

There are times when we should be broken for what sin has cost.

Look at the devastation around you. Next time you watch the news and hear of wars or shootings or tragedy, it is okay to weep over it and say, “God, how we long for you to wipe out every trace of sin and the curse.”

That doesn’t contradict the command to rejoice in Philippians 4, though. Your mourning over your sin and that of others is mingled with rejoicing in the fact that God is big enough to handle it.

There may be more to their weeping, though.

These men would have known well the promises that God had made. They could tell that with that few people in that place at that time, there was no way this temple would be everything God had promised.

As one commentator notes,

“…they could tell that all the glorious end-time promises the prophets have made are not coming to pass. The desert isn’t blooming. The Messiah isn’t reigning. Jersualem isn’ t being exalted.” (James Hamilton, Jr.)

Yes, God was fulfilling the promise to bring his people back to the land and rebuild the temple, but there was still more left undone.

It broke their heart to see that this temple would be a shell and shadow of what it had been and what had been promised.

However, here’s where it gets so amazing: God wasn’t done yet. Not by a long shot.

Who is the guy leading the rebuilding of the temple? Zerubbabel.

Want to know what was amazing? Turn over to Matthew 1:12.

Last time we looked at Ezra, I mentioned that you need to be careful when you skip over the lists of names.

If you do, you miss incredibly nuggets like this.

Matthew 1 recounts the lineage of Joseph, who would have been the one through whom Jesus’ lineage was tracked.

Nestled in the middle of that list, you see this nugget:

Matthew 1:12 CSB

After the exile to Babylon Jeconiah fathered Shealtiel, Shealtiel fathered Zerubbabel,

Same guy from Ezra, isn’t it? Look back at Ezra 3:2.

It would take 11 generations, but one day, God was going to do something more amazing than Zerubabbel or any of those there the day the foundation was laid could have imagined: he became the temple.

Think about it: what was the temple? The place where God put his presence and the place where sacrifices to him were made.

Centuries later, one of Zerubbabel’s descendants according to the genealogy they would have used, would be the fulfillment of that!

In case you think I am stretching this, here’s what John tells us about a time that Jesus confronted people who weren’t using the temple properly:

John 2:19 CSB

Jesus answered, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it up in three days.”

John 2:21–22 CSB

But he was speaking about the temple of his body. So when he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the statement Jesus had made.

Jesus is God in the flesh, so he was the embodiment of God’s presence on earth

Ultimately, he wouldn’t just receive the sacrifice, but he would himself be the sacrifice.

The fulfillment that the old men longed for was to see the Messiah, but they had no idea what it would cost.