Finishing the Temple
Notes
Transcript
Intro
Intro
I can’t tell you how joyful I am to be back with the people of God. It’s a good and necessary thing, and I am glad we are here this morning. We’ll continue our journey through the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah. You may have asked yourself, “I wonder if Andrew is going to do a Christmas series...” Truthfully, no. If the Spirit leads in that direction, maybe, but I’m not one for doing topical or seasonal messages just for the sake of doing them. This is the part of expository preaching that people often balk at, that I’m not going to preach Christmas messages.
Now, we’ll do a Christmas message on Christmas Eve, which by the way, we are doing a Christmas Eve service.
One of my biggest dreams for rebuilding at Cassville is that we make the collective decision to be a healthy and unified church body, much like Israel was during this time.
T: When we come into chapters 5 and 6 of Ezra, we are knee deep in the rebuilding of the Temple.
Obeying the Word of God
Obeying the Word of God
Now the prophets, Haggai and Zechariah the son of Iddo, prophesied to the Jews who were in Judah and Jerusalem, in the name of the God of Israel who was over them. Then Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel and Jeshua the son of Jozadak arose and began to rebuild the house of God that is in Jerusalem, and the prophets of God were with them, supporting them.
EXP
I love these verses here. The Israelites hear the word of the Lord from their prophets Haggai and Zechariah and they get to work. They start work on rebuilding the house of God!
Do you know what was said to them? Pretty intense here. Haggai 1:1-6 says this:
In the second year of Darius the king, in the sixth month, on the first day of the month, the word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai the prophet to Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest: “Thus says the Lord of hosts: These people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the Lord.” Then the word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai the prophet, “Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins? Now, therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways. You have sown much, and harvested little. You eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And he who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes.
Whoa. This is pretty heavy stuff here. Let’s break it down.
Haggai lists the issues the Lord has with the people of Israel:
They are putting off the rebuilding of the temple: “The time hasn’t come yet! We can do other things first!”
They dwell in paneled houses. Shame on you people who still have wood paneling in your homes, how dare you! No, this is saying that while the temple lies in ruins, they have attended to their own comfort and luxury. They have to have their padded couches and new tables and fine china that never gets used. It just sits in a glass cabinet.
And what’s more, the comfort and luxury isn’t enough for the Israelites. Isn’t it like wealth to do that? No one ever has enough wealth. Gotta accumulate more and more.
APP: Listen, we’re redoing our kitchen right now, and the kitchen up here at the church hasn’t been updated since 19........ Hey, turn the lights all the way up for me there in the back real quick. ________ Look right next to your feet, you see that big stain? Look, you wouldn’t let this stain set in your living room for years and years, why do we let it set in our worship center?
And I know some of you have updated your kitchens too. It’s time to get some of these things right.
Or, hey, let’s bring it to a more personal level, because this building is not our equivalent to the Temple. It’s God’s property for sure, but Scripture tells us our bodies are God’s Temple. So some of us attend to our comfort, our entertainment, our job performance, but we NEGLECT our souls! Our souls lie in ruins because we don’t care to rid our lives of the sin that destroys our very livelihood! We don’t care to do the hard work of building up our spiritual lives that cause us to be cautious of sin and sensitive to the things of God. We build up our collections and hobbies at the expense of our love for our Savior!
Look, if you love something more than you love your savior, that is a very, very big issue. It’s idolatry. We substitute our little hobbies for God’s glory. What an offence!
EXP
The Israelites take the opportunity to make things right. They repent of their ways and get back to their main purpose.
Christians, isn’t this like us too? We constantly have to repent and get back to work on Kingdom work. Fortunately God is ready to pick back up with us. With His beloved, He is LONG-suffering.
T: The enemies of the Jews gather and send a letter to Darius. However, Darius doesn’t respond in kind to their letter. He, valuing King Cyrus very much, doubles down on Cyrus’s edict and allows the building of the Temple to continue.
Finishing the Temple and Committing to Holiness
Finishing the Temple and Committing to Holiness
Then, according to the word sent by Darius the king, Tattenai, the governor of the province Beyond the River, Shethar-bozenai, and their associates did with all diligence what Darius the king had ordered. And the elders of the Jews built and prospered through the prophesying of Haggai the prophet and Zechariah the son of Iddo. They finished their building by decree of the God of Israel and by decree of Cyrus and Darius and Artaxerxes king of Persia; and this house was finished on the third day of the month of Adar, in the sixth year of the reign of Darius the king.
And the people of Israel, the priests and the Levites, and the rest of the returned exiles, celebrated the dedication of this house of God with joy. They offered at the dedication of this house of God 100 bulls, 200 rams, 400 lambs, and as a sin offering for all Israel 12 male goats, according to the number of the tribes of Israel. And they set the priests in their divisions and the Levites in their divisions, for the service of God at Jerusalem, as it is written in the Book of Moses.
On the fourteenth day of the first month, the returned exiles kept the Passover. For the priests and the Levites had purified themselves together; all of them were clean. So they slaughtered the Passover lamb for all the returned exiles, for their fellow priests, and for themselves. It was eaten by the people of Israel who had returned from exile, and also by every one who had joined them and separated himself from the uncleanness of the peoples of the land to worship the Lord, the God of Israel. And they kept the Feast of Unleavened Bread seven days with joy, for the Lord had made them joyful and had turned the heart of the king of Assyria to them, so that he aided them in the work of the house of God, the God of Israel.
EXP
As the people committed themselves to God’s Plan and rebuilt the Temple, it is said that the people prospered in those plans.
“Prosperity” here refers to the success of their plans. Listen, if your definition of prosperity is that you will prosper in carrying out God’s plan for your life, I’ll agree and wholeheartedly support you. However, if your idea of prosperity is getting rich through your religion, then you’ve got the wrong idea of what faith is. Paul tells us in 1 Timothy that those who view faith as a means to great gain have a depraved mind and are deprived of the truth.
Four years later, the Temple is built! That project is complete, now for a time of celebration.
So they bring out the offerings and give glory first to God.
Then, here’s the part where I want to land the sermon: verses 19-22. We see the Jews purify themselves. Then, do you remember last week when the Jews told the people of the land, no, you can’t build with us? That makes us bristle, doesn’t it? Seems exclusionary.
Verse 21 has a lot for you, watch: READ. So we see it wasn’t about the color of their skin, but their commitment to the One True God.
The people were most-concerned with their holiness before God. This led to their prosperity.
APP
Listen, I hate to use the language of prosperity because it makes me sound like a get-rich-quick pastor with a Ponzi scheme. “Send me money and God will return it a hundredfold.” These guys are stealing your money. But if you use Scripture, this is the word it uses. But let’s use a word with less baggage, shall we?
If we want to see success as a church, as Cassville Baptist Church, we have to commit, each one of us, to our own personal holiness.
Do you think about your holiness? About the fact that since God has saved you from sin, you are no longer to return to it? It not longer identifies you, Christian, be free from it.
Don’t make your house in sin. Don’t compromise with sin. Sin doesn’t just want a part of your life, it wants your life.
I fear we don’t take sin seriously enough… Do you know what the New Testament says about throwing holiness to the wind and living a life of disobedience? It’s not good…
What I’m about to read is a very terrifying portion of Scripture. I don’t read it lightly. When I read this, I know that as your pastor, I’m dealing with people in many different places in their faith. I have young Christians who are still figuring it all out. I likely have some Christians who have doubted their faith from the beginning. But I also know that I have some in the congregation who are false converts. Who do not realize that they are not Christians. Who still need to get right with God. Who prayed a prayer once, but never saw the life-changing difference that faith makes in one’s life!
Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for forty years. Therefore I was provoked with that generation, and said, ‘They always go astray in their heart; they have not known my ways.’ As I swore in my wrath, ‘They shall not enter my rest.’ ” Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. As it is said, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.”
Take care that you’re not one of these false converts that Hebrews is describing here.
There’s a difference in praying a prayer and having a life-saving faith that produces the obedience of faith in one’s life! Faith isn’t just nodding in agreement that Jesus came down. I have a friend who’s a Deist, believes Jesus came down to show us how to live a better life, maybe even save folks, but he doesn’t follow Christ at all! James says even the demons believe that Christ is the Son of God! So faith isn’t just believing that Jesus is Who He says He is! It’s a full trust, moving all of my chips onto the bet that Jesus is the Christ, and that bet produces something within me that desires to follow Him!
If you’re living one way Monday through Saturday, but come here on Sunday with your church mask on, there’s a good chance you may be a false convert. Jesus says when we get to Heaven, there will be many who say, “Lord, Lord,” and He’ll look at them and say, “Depart from Me, I never knew you.”
Some will say, “Pastor, only God can judge me.” Hello! That should freak you out! That’s not a comforting thing to fall in the judgment of the Lord, because His standard is perfection, and buddy, we don’t add up.
Yes, salvation is a free gift, but if your response to sin is casual or uncaring, I have a lot of questions about your salvation, and you should too. And that’s just what sin does to us… It hardens our hearts and makes us callous to the things of God. Don’t harden your hearts or get stiff at this message because you need it!
Yes, I believe that the saved will always be saved, and nothing can change that. But you need to make sure you’re really saved. That’s why Peter tells us to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. That fear and trembling piece is the understanding that if I’m not really saved, it spells my doom.
Listen, I know we have some in here who are false converts, they exist at every church. Yeah, you can give me the church answers, you can put on the mask, but does your life reflect a life hidden with Christ?
Conclusion: Listen, God may be calling you right now to trust Jesus. Will you respond to Him today?