Sermon Tone Analysis

Last week as we looked at Ezra 7 we discovered 5 things in the life of Ezra that set him apart over everyone else which opened up the door for God to accomplish great things through him.

Each of the 5 things we looked at need to be applied in our lives as well, and as they are, God transforms our lives and begins to move in powerful ways through us.

The 5 things are: Next Slides

We need to Set our hearts to study God’s.

We need to set our hearts to obey what we learn as we study God’s Word.

We need to set our hearts to teach what we have learned and applied from God’s Word to any God places under us.

And as we, like Ezra, set our hearts to do these 3 things:

We will experience the Hand of the Lord on our lives.

Next:

We need to trust the Hand of God on our lives.

With this as a review, if you haven’t already, turn on your Bibles to Ezra 8, which is page 499 in the pew Bibles.

As we move forward this morning we see what resulted from Ezra’s devotion to these 5 things.

Now initially when we think about what the results were, my first thought was Artaxerxes letter of decree, which included the long personal laundry list of requests Ezra provided to the king.

While the kings decree certainly resulted from Ezra’s devotion to these 5 things, as I thought about it, I believe something even more significant resulted, particularly from how God moved.

We see this in Ezra 7:27-28.

Let’s look at these verses together, in these 2 verses we see: Next Slides

Ezra Praises the King of the king.

Vs. 7:27-28

Before we look at 7:27-28, let’s jump back to 7:12, which is the beginning of the letter King Artexerxes gives to Ezra, and particularly to how King Xerxes refers to himself in that letter: Next Slide

Ezra 7:12

Now there are a couple theories on what Artexerxes is stating here.

One is that he is referring to himself in kind of a god like way, similar to one of the titles that is regularly used of Jesus in Scripture.

While that is certainly a possibility, I think it is more accurately more of a boast of what he and the Persian Empire, under Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes and himself had accomplished, namely they had conquered many kingdoms and as a result he was a “king of kings”.

In fact if you look at your translation, at least every translation I looked at, the “k” in the first king is lower case.

Whereas when you see Jesus referred to as the King of kings in the New Testament, that “K” is capitalized.

Additionally, Ezekiel calls Nebuchadnezzar “king of kings” in Ezekiel 26:7 and Daniel refers to Nebuchadnezzar as “king of kings” in Daniel 2:37.

Clearly Ezekiel and Daniel were not making claims that Nebuchadnezzar was a god, they were merely pointing out that he had conquered other kingdoms and as a result he was a king of kings.

We have seen Artexerxes refer to himself as a ruler of rulers, as a king of kings, as we read on we see Ezra give praise to the Sovereign Lord as the Ruler over all peoples, the King over all kings.

In other words, the only reason Artexerxes is in the position he is in, is because the Hand of the Almighty is on his life.

As we reads through the rest of Ezra, we notice that this is the norm for Ezra.

In his commentary on the Book of Ezra, and in writing about Ezra 7:27-28, Robert Jamieson states the following:

“This devout thanksgiving is in unison with the whole character of Ezra, who discerns the Hand of God in every event, and is always ready to express a pious acknowledgment for the divine goodness.”

An outlook like Ezra’s ought to be the goal for all of our life’s.

Let’s look at Ezra 7:27-28: “27 Blessed be the Lord, the God of our fathers, Who put such a thing as this into the heart of the king, to beautify the house of the Lord that is in Jerusalem, 28 and Who extended to me His steadfast love before the king and his counselors, and before all the king’s mighty officers.

I took courage, for the Hand of the Lord my God was on me, and I gathered leading men from Israel to go up with me.”

The first thing we notice in reference to the movement of God in verse 27 is that Ezra credits God with the control of the heart of the king.

“Blessed be the Lord, the God of our fathers, Who put such a thing as this into the heart of the king”.

This declaration matches well with what Solomon wrote in Proverbs 21:1 Next Slide

Proverbs 21:1

God controls the lives and actions even of kings.

This thought is echoed in several other different passages regarding several different kings: Next Slides

Nebuchadnezzar-Daniel 4:31-32 & 35

Next Slides

Cyrus-Isaiah 45:1-3

Next Slide

Darius-Ezra 6:22

The point is this, God controls the lives and actions of kings and rulers.

This should be a particular comfort to us.

In just a few short months we can all expect to be inundated with political commercials as we enter into another election cycle, and of course this election cycle includes a presidential election.

One thing is certain, this will likely be one of the, if not the ugliest presidential election in history.

For many there will not be a single person running in the end that you really want to vote for.

So much of the time it becomes a matter of choosing between the best of the worse and in the end you feel like it is a loose loose election.

Rest assured, based on what we see in the verses we just looked at, God is still in control, even if the individual you want in the White House doesn’t end at the 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

We still have a responsibility to vote our conscience, but we have no reason for despair no matter what the outcome happens to be.

By the way, this is about as political as you will ever see me get from the pulpit.

This brings us to the next thing we see in Ezra 7:27-28, and that is: Next Slides

God’s Purpose behind controlling the life and actions of the king:

To Beautify the House of the Lord in Jerusalem.

Vs. 10

2. Vs. 16

By the way, I want you to notice something in regards to what we see in chapter 7 about how the House of the Lord was beautified, in reviewing the list of what Ezra was bringing with him to Jerusalem, you don’t really see anything we might consider necessary for beautifying the Temple.

If you go back to Ezra 3, you see some specific items that would add to the outward beauty of the Temple.

We see no such list here, yet Ezra is clear that beautifying the Temple was God’s plan here.

Taking that into consideration, Next Slides

What did Ezra do to beautify the Temple?

I believe the answer lies earlier in chapter 7, in fact we looked at some of it last week.

What did Ezra do to beautify the Temple?

First, look back a few verses at the last phrase in verse 10, what do you see there?

“and to teach his statutes and rules in Israel.”

The first thing we see is that Ezra is to teach those that had already returned, as well as those returning with him from God’s Word.

This also includes their obedience to God’s Word.

We will see how serious obedience to God’s Word was to Ezra when we look at chapters 9 & 10.

Second, we see in verses 16.

In verse 16 we read: “with the freewill offerings of the people and the priests, vowed willingly for the house of their God that is in Jerusalem.”

Guess what, our joyous giving to the Lord brings Him joy, it is a beautiful part of our worship to of God.

Chapter 8

This brings us to chapter 8.

In chapter 8 Ezra begins by going through a list of 1514 men who committed to going with him on the 900 mile journey back to Jerusalem.

If you include women and children, the number likely approached 6-8,000 people.

The absence of Levites on the Journey to the Temple in Jerusalem.

I imagine things were pretty chaotic for this journey so after about 8 days on the move Ezra decided to stop and asses the situation and review the people that had joined him on the journey.

They stopped near a river and camped for 3 days.

As they were reviewing the people that were returning with Ezra, it didn’t take long before Ezra noticed something that had to really disturb him.

Here they are going back to Jerusalem to do the Lord’s work which included service in the Temple of the Lord, and not a single member of the priestly tribe of Levi had joined them.

The Levites were essential workers for the system of temple worship that Ezra was going to promote once they returned to Jerusalem.

Understanding the need of Levites in temple worship, Ezra selected some of the leading men that had gone with him and sent them back to find some Levites so that they could persuades Levites to join them.

While this caused a significant delay, it was absolutely necessary.

By the way, I want you contrast the heart of Ezra with the hearts of the Levites.

Ezra was willing to serve the Lord no matter the terms, The Levites only wanted to serve the Lord on their terms.

Ezra had set his heart to study, obey and teach the Word of God.

He was willing to sacrifice a great deal to do so.

Additionally he was willing to drop everything he had become accustomed to in the Persian Empire, make the 900 mile journey back to Jerusalem, to a city that was still very much in shambles.

While the Levites seemed to want to only serve God on their own terms.

We do get the impression from verses 17-20 that these men did perform some sort of service to God in Babylonia, but they showed no interest in returning to Jerusalem.They had grown so comfortable in the Persian Empire that they had to be persuaded to go to their homeland.

This brings us to an important lesson we need to understand: Next Slides

God Sets the Terms of our Service to Him, Not Us.

We need to pattern our service to the Lord after Ezra, not the Levites we see in chapter 8.

Let’s look at verses 21-23 together now.

I’ve entitled these verses: Next Slides

Who Needs and Army When You Have Jehovah Sabaoth?