God's Glory in Our Good
Notes
Transcript
Intro & Story
Intro & Story
This passage finds Ezra in the midst of leading his people back to Jerusalem. Before we get to Jerusalem, there are some important pieces we need to see in the journey home.
Ezra gathers his posse of people headed back to the motherland, and tells the King Artaxerxes that he will require no military support! For the hand of God is on Israel.
We see an eternal truth here in this story of Ezra’s journey to Jersualem. Namely, we see the Glory of God in the Good of His People. Or, “God’s Glory in Our Good.” So today as we see this theme in Ezra, I want to suss out what the meaning of “Our good is,” and help us see from a biblical perspective what it means when we say things like, “God’s favor,” or “God is for you,” and what we cannot mean, biblically.
God’s Plan for His People
God’s Plan for His People
I gathered them to the river that runs to Ahava, and there we camped three days. As I reviewed the people and the priests, I found there none of the sons of Levi. Then I sent for Eliezer, Ariel, Shemaiah, Elnathan, Jarib, Elnathan, Nathan, Zechariah, and Meshullam, leading men, and for Joiarib and Elnathan, who were men of insight, and sent them to Iddo, the leading man at the place Casiphia, telling them what to say to Iddo and his brothers and the temple servants at the place Casiphia, namely, to send us ministers for the house of our God. And by the good hand of our God on us, they brought us a man of discretion, of the sons of Mahli the son of Levi, son of Israel, namely Sherebiah with his sons and kinsmen, 18; also Hashabiah, and with him Jeshaiah of the sons of Merari, with his kinsmen and their sons, 20; besides 220 of the temple servants, whom David and his officials had set apart to attend the Levites. These were all mentioned by name.
Why does God care about our good?
His Love
His Glory
What does God do for our good?
Protection, Providence, Life, Salvation
Don’t Ignore Ordinary Means of Grace
We look pretty often for those big miracle moments in which God shows up big time. And we look for them and bank our faith on God doing what we want Him to do instead of trusting that He is with us every step of the way, going before us, guiding our path.
Ezra knew what God had set in order for His people if they would only follow it. So Ezra sought to help Israel follow God’s plan for them.
We too are to follow God’s plan for our lives if we are to expect God’s good in our lives.
Examples: Read your Bible. Follow God in your daily life. and this one is a sneak peek at next week: Marry a believer. Be a member of a church body that preaches the Gospel.
DON’T just live your own way and expect God to bless it.
What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?
We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.
What Paul is saying here in Romans is that to be set free from sin and to return to it is like the sad story of the prisoner who continues to make the decisions that put him in prison. To leave, and be free of that place, and yet to continue on the outside the life that was lived before, landing him in prison over and over again, unable to break the cycle.
Instead, God has our best in mind all the time. And He’s laid out His expectations for us and our good. We expect God to show up in big ways without seeking Him in the small ways.
T: So what does it look like to seek that good God has for us?
Seeking OUR Good
Seeking OUR Good
Then I proclaimed a fast there, at the river Ahava, that we might humble ourselves before our God, to seek from him a safe journey for ourselves, our children, and all our goods.
So we fasted and implored our God for this, and he listened to our entreaty.
EXP
Ezra brought the people to a commitment to fast and pray for the Lord’s provision on their journey.
Ezra did this because he believed that God was leading them to Jerusalem. He also believed that if God was calling them to it, He would be the one to provide their ability to do it. No doubt he recalled some of David’s Psalms of dependence on the Lord in the midst of great need as he called his people to do this.
Ezra knew that seeking good was meant first for God’s glory, then for his community, and not for him to seek at all. Instead, Ezra’s job in his own good is non-existent. It’s an act of faith to trust that God will care for our good. Were Ezra to seek his own good, he may have asked the king for that military escort. Instead, we see him dependent upon God through his prayer and fasting for the protection of his people.
In the New Testament, we see a similar trend of how we are to go about seeking our own good.
Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor.
See, according to 1 Corinthians, we’re not to seek our own individual good at all, but rather the good of others. Paul says this in the context of things that a Christian has the *freedom* to do, but that may cause a breach of conscience for another believer. Scripture’s command here is to defer to the good of your siblings in Christ.
In fact, our freedom in Christ is not freedom to indulge, but freedom from the flesh and the self to seek the good of others.
For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.
So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
The point is the glory of God. God will care for you, that’s a given. Your job is to glorify Him as He sustains your every need. It’s a scary thing, the faith that it takes to live this way. It involves entrusting your very wellbeing to the Lord.
It also involves orienting everything in our lives toward the glory of the Lord! Why do you eat? To glorify God. Why do you drink? To glorify God. Why do you go to work? To glorify God! Any other reason falls short. And that’s where you get into trouble as a believer, when you lose sight of the fact that our lives are not to be lived for YOUR gain or YOUR glory, but all for God’s gain, and God’s glory!
So why do I label this point Seeking OUR Good? Well, I use the word in the plural possessive, not in a sense of all of us individually seeking our own little good here and there. Again, this is actually what the Bible tells us not to do; Scripture actually tells us that our own good is what we entrust to the Lord, and others’ good is what we seek.
T: Why do we do this? Because it leaves room for God to show up in our lives.
What Our Good Tells the World
What Our Good Tells the World
It shows the watching world, “Hey, these Christians live a different kind of life. A life that should not work. Self-sacrifice is not the way of the world. It goes against common sense. It goes against our base instincts. The world tells you: Collect! Collect! Acquire all of these things that you “need” for yourself.
It would have been easy for Ezra to say, “Oh, look, Great King Artaxerxes, can we have a military escort to go along?” He would have likely obliged. There’s no telling that Artaxerxes had offered this military escort. Ezra said that he did not ask, meaning Ezra would have been the one to initiate.
For I was ashamed to ask the king for a band of soldiers and horsemen to protect us against the enemy on our way, since we had told the king, “The hand of our God is for good on all who seek him, and the power of his wrath is against all who forsake him.”
Our good shows the world that God cares for us. Therefore God will show the world His care for His people. It results in His glory.
However, when we seek our good over and above the good of others, it shows the world that Christians are an insular, selfish people, much like the rest of the world. Sure, this can be a baseless accusation, but sometimes it’s true.
However, when we allow God to fill in the gaps it shows that profound reality that God truly cares for us.
So seek the good of those around you. Seek the good of your brother or sister in Christ. Show the world just how much God cares for you. How He’s shaped your character to care less for yourself and more for your brothers and sisters in Christ.
It’s a radically different life than the normal American life. But it’s the life of following Christ. A life not of self-reliance, but God-reliance.
How can we do this?
Students, are you helping those who consistently make lower grades than you to study?
Adults, do you give yourself to making the lives of your coworkers or fellow parents better at what they do?
Do you give self-sacrificially of your days to those less fortunate with nothing to gain for yourself, but everything to gain for the Lord?
This is exactly what the Lord Jesus did for us. In the Garden before going to the Cross, Jesus cried out to God the Father, “If there is any other way, please deliver me from this. Yet not what I will, but Your will be done.” Jesus submitted His very life, what He did not have to give over, for you and me. And God get all the glory for it.
Conclusion
Conclusion
So do you know this Jesus as Lord?