Sermon Tone Analysis

In last weeks message, we looked at the victory the Nation of Judah had experienced in overcoming great odds, which included their fears of the people who had taken over the land during their 70 years of captivity and their return to The Heart of Worship.

They had come to realize that true worship does not need a Temple, it can take place anywhere and starts in the heart.

They also had come to realize that their only hope for victory came from hearts wholly devoted to worship of God.

That Ultimately, Victory over Fear and Anxiety Come from Hearts Completely Dependent Upon God.

That God would be their protector, He would be their strength, He would be their Sustenance.

To a very large degree, Ezra 3 is a chapter filled with victory!

Is there anything more glorious than being a part of God’s victory in your life, in the life of your family, in the life of your church family?

For me, those victories fill me with a great deal of excitement, almost like an adrenaline rush.

Unfortunately, too much of the time what appears to be an adrenaline rush ends up being more of a sugar rush.

Have you ever had a sugar rush?

It’s pretty incredible....for an hour or two....then comes the crash and you are more like the walking dead than a bundle of energy.

That happens a lot, in fact to a certain degree that “crash” frequently follows our times of great victories, except for us spiritually, the crash is not the result of too much sugar, it is often the result of an attack of the enemy, a spiritual attack.

The last thing our enemy wants is for us to get used to spiritual victories, so following each spiritual victory we are a part of, he attacks.

Early March 1993, we had just had a baptismal during our evening service.

27 individuals were baptized that night, publically acknowledging their faith in Jesus Christ.

Of the 27, 24 were teens who had come to Christ through our youth ministry.

The church was packed and a good deal of those there that night were non-Christian family members of the teens being baptized!

Every Sunday night we had both youth group and the adults also had an evening service, pretty much every Sunday we had more teens for youth group than the adults had in their evening service.

God’s mighty Hand was on His youth ministry there, and as the Youth Pastor, I got a front row seat to His move.

Honestly, from a ministry standpoint, it was one of the most exciting things I have ever been a part of!

I believe it was the following week that Pastor Jake and his wife and 2 youngest kids headed to Florida to watch one of their oldest sons at spring training for the college baseball team he was on.

He was playing baseball on a scholarship to Malone College.

So off they went to enjoy some spring baseball.

It was either Monday or early Tuesday that I got a call from the chairman of the Elder board, they had called a special board meeting and since I was on the elder board, I needed to be there.

I really didn’t think anything of it, we had just had a meeting 2 or 3 weeks earlier.

This would have been about the 13th or 14th Elder meeting I had been a part of and at each and every one they all talked about how exciting they were at watching what God was doing in the youth ministry.

There was a part of me that was more excited than ever for this meeting, I mean the baptism was barely more than a week past, surely they would be more excited than ever about the youth ministry now!

I could not have been more mistaken.

In fact the whole surprise meeting was called to critique the youth ministry.

For the next hour or two, I dejectedly listened as the youth ministry, in my eyes, was torn apart piece by piece.

Before the evening ended they let me know that if I was going to stay, my salary would be cut in half and the youth ministry budget would be cut by 90%.

They needed an answer within a week on whether I would stay or not.

I was devastated.

At that time, Pam was midway through 5 months in the country of Chile.

That is a story for another time, but I can tell you that this was not the time to share with her what was happening, she had enough on her plate.

I had to talk to someone so I called my dad.

I was certain he would tell me to leave.

Instead he began to ask me some questions;

Jim, did God call you to Monument Bible Church?

Yeah, He really did, Dad.

Has He called you somewhere else now?

No, I really don’t think He has.

Well if God has called you there, and if He hasn’t called you anywhere else, then why does your salary matter?

If He has called you there, then He has obligated Himself to take care of all your needs.

I wasn’t prepared for my Dad’s response.

If I’m honest, I was looking for a way out, encouragement from him that it was OK to leave.

That isn’t exactly what I received!

Now let me give you a little bit of the back story on what was taking place.

Most of our elders had been there from the very beginning, in fact they started the church.

What neither Jake or I knew at that time was that they had been forced out as Elders at the church they were all a part of before starting Monument Bible Church.

Because of that, they decided to start this new church.

What they didn’t anticipate was that the people of the church had quickly fallen in love with Jake and me, and these men were loosing their grip on the people.

They called this special meeting while Jake was out of town on purpose.

Their feeling was that if they could get me out of the door quickly, it would be easier to go after Jake next.

A man of God, My father, kinda spoiled their plan.

Now let me share with you what was really happening.

God was moving, and He was moving in a powerful way!

God was blessing both Jake and my ministry there and our enemy hates it when God moves.

The enemy often attacks at the weakest point and I was the weakest point.

It probably would have worked had I not called my dad.

This is something very key we all need to understand.

Next Slide

Our enemy, the devil, knows our every weakness and that is where he attacks first and most.

If you think about it for a moment or two, you can probably come up with the area you are the weakest.

In fact, I’d like you to write it down right there in your sermon notes.

My area(s) of Weakness is/are:

_______________________________________

That is the lesson we learn in the section of Scripture we will be looking at this morning.

Ezra laid out for us the greatest weakness the returning exiles had in Next Slide

Ezra 3:3

They were fearful of the people of the land.

Now that fear dissipated a bit when they all gathered at the altar, but it came back strong in chapter 4.

Turn with me in your Bibles to Ezra chapter 4 Next Slide

Ezra 4-Page 495 in the Pew Bibles

Next Slide

Now if you just skimmed over these verses you might think, “Hey, this is great!

There are people already in the land that want to come alongside the returning exiles to help them rebuild the Temple!”

However, as you look a little closer, you realize that they were nothing more than: Next Slide

Wolves In Sheep’s Clothing

We see this in both verses.

First of all, at the start of verse 1 we read: “ 1Now when the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the returned exiles were building a temple to the Lord, the God of Israel”

In writing this verse, Ezra immediately identifies them as “adversaries”.

As we have mentioned several times, there is nothing in Scripture that is here accidently, there is a purpose behind every word we read.

Ezra identifies them as adversaries because that is what they were, they were not their friends, they were enemies.

In verse 2 we read: “for we worship your God as you do, and we have been sacrificing to Him ever since the days of Esarhaddon king of Assyria who brought us here”.

Now this identifying factor is not quite as clear as Ezra identifying them specifically as adversaries, but it is there.

In looking at verse 2, how does Scripture indicate they got into the land?

“Esarhaddon king of Assyria who brought us here”.

A couple of things to note here.

The fact that Scripture indicates they were brought there by an Assyrian King tells you they were currently living in, what was once, the Northern Kingdom of Israel, the place where the 10 northern tribes lived.

After the Israeli civil war split the Nation in 2 following the death of King Solomon, this Northern Kingdom had nothing to do with God, as a Kingdom they turned their back on Him and that resulted in their destruction at the hand of the Assyrian Empire in 722 BC.

When the Assyrian Empire would conquer a land, to the best of their ability they would take everyone captive.

Then they would bring either some of their own people, or perhaps captives from other conquered lands and have them move to the newly conquered land.

That is what they did in this case, so when we read in verse 2 that “Esarhaddon king of Assyria who brought us here”, we are seeing that these were not Israelites here.

Now they likely had some Israeli blood in them, because history indicates that when the Assyrians conquered the land, some of the Northern tribe were able to escape being taken away.

Then, once the dust settled, they came back and over time intermarried with the people the Assyrians brought back to the land.

Something else happened right around that time, because the people there did not worship or fear God, we learn in 2 Kings 17:25 Next Slide

Once people started dying from lion attacks, the Assyrian King starts thinking; “Oh no, we have angered the God of this land!”

So he had them locate some of the former priests of the land and brought them back to teach the people the rules and regulations of the God of the land.

These ungodly priests established a loose form of worship to the God of Israel, but it was a loose worship and they all continued to worship their other gods as well.

While it did stop the lions attacks, they had no true devotion to God.