Sermon Tone Analysis

As we begin this morning, would you please turn in your copies of God’s Word to Ezra 5:3-5.

It is on page 337 of the pew Bibles.

Have that place book marked, we will read those verses shortly.

Last week we continued our journey through the Old Testament Book of Ezra.

So far in the Book of Ezra, we have seen just under 50,000 people from the Nation of Judah return from captivity for the expressed purpose of rebuilding the Temple of God in Jerusalem.

By the way, I didn’t point this out earlier, but I did want to take a moment to point it out now.

There were likely 1 million plus Israelites in the Persian Empire at this time, but slightly less than 50,000 returned to Jerusalem.

There is an important lesson here we all need to take notice of, and that is this; Next Slides

While it is God’s desire that all who are called His children would be fully devoted to Him, He does not force our devotion, He gives us the freedom to choose.

There will come a day, according to Philippians 2:10&11 that all will worship Him: Next Slides

Philippians 2:10&11

But for now, we are given a choice.

The question for each of us this morning is, Next Slides

Have I chosen a life of devotion to Him?

If you have, based on what I see in Scripture, your “devotion” will be backed up by how you lead your life.

You see:

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It is impossible to be devoted, without living a life of devotion, because devotion isn’t a spoken word, it is a lived out word.

Now, back to the Book of Ezra, we started by looking at the decree of King Cyrus, that the Nation of Judah return to rebuild the Temple of God, and that he was fulfilling a prophecy that literally named him, yet was written about 150 years before he was even born.

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Ezra

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map

The Nation took the 900 mile journey back to their homeland and not long after getting back to Jerusalem assembled a makeshift temporary altar to God.

They were fearful of the people that had inhabited the land in the 70 years they had been gone and understood that if they were going to have success in their efforts at rebuilding the Temple of God, they needed God’s blessing on their efforts.

Thus they gathered on the Temple mount and joyfully worshipped and sacrificed to God there.

After that, they began to lay the foundation for the temple, but soon, some of the inhabitants of the land wanted to join them, but this was nothing less than an attempt of the enemy to water down their worship.

Once they were not permitted to join in the rebuilding effort, they began to bribe government officials and they also brought verbal threats and soon, in discouragement, the returning exiles stopped building the Temple and that stoppage lasted for at least 15 years.

As a wake up call, God sent 2 prophets, Haggai and Zechariah, to move the people from their complacent lives, back into as life of service to God.

That is basically where we left off last week, with the 2 prophets God sent, working side by side with the people, in rebuilding the Temple.

So, let’s start there this morning.

Having the 2 prophets, Haggai and Zechariah right next to them, working alongside them, encouraging them, supporting them, had to be a huge source of encouragement to Zerubabbel, Jeshua and the rest of the returning exiles.

As I mentioned last Sunday morning, I wonder if this wasn’t one of the ways God used to let them know that He was with them.

Keep in mind that Scripture gives the picture of Christ followers being the hands and feet of God, in many ways this is what Haggai and Zechariah were doing.

But as we have already discussed in previous weeks, our enemy does not give up easily, here they are after 15 years of complacency, starting anew the rebuilding of the Temple, when we read in chapter 5 of a second attempt to stop them in their tracks.

At this, would you please stand, in honor of the reading of God’s Holy Word?

Again, we will be reading Ezra 5:3-5.

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Ezra 5:3-5

Now this attack is slightly different, probably meant more to discourage them than anything else, in fact in many ways this was more of a test than an attack.

And most Biblical scholars believe that this attempt at discouragement, like the previous one, likely came from the ones who moved into the land during the Nation of Judah’s captivity.

The ones the New Testament calls Samaritans.

To give you an idea why I don’t believe this was an attack, we have to look into history for a bit.

After King Cyrus dies, His son Cambyses took over the throne.

Now Cambyses was nothing like his father and he never fully had the support of the people, and more importantly never had the support of the military.

In fact many historians credit his greatest military campaign in Egypt more to his father, King Cyrus, than him.

Finally after 8 years of constant conflict, Cambyses committed suicide.

The military appointed the next king, who was a strong leader and a distant cousin to Cambyses.

His name was Darius.

Now Darius immediately appointed many area governors and gave them strict instructions to alert him of any potential conflicts, something his cousin failed to do.

That appears to be exactly what is taking place here in Ezra 5.

Here we are in the 2nd year of his reign and one of his governors, Tattenai is alerted to the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Tattenai isn’t about to take any chances.

That is what we read in verses 3-5.

But I want to make sure we don’t miss what I believe is the key phrase of verses 3-5.

“But the Eye of their God was on the elders of the Jews”.

We see a similar picture in Psalm 34:15

and also in Psalm 33:18

Ezra, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit wants to paint a picture for the reader here, a picture of “the attentive care that one exercises in behalf of the object on their concern.”

A modern day picture might be to use a baby monitor.

Often times before new parents bing their baby home, they have already set up a baby monitor in the baby’s room.

That first several months every sound they hear at night and they are out of bed rushing in to look on the baby.

In some ways, their eyes on constantly on this one that they love.

So too are the Eyes of God the Father, always on those Whom He loves.

Take joy and encouragement in knowing that God has His Eye on you.

Because “the eye of their God was on” them, the governor of the province did not force them to stop building.

Instead, the next thing we read is that a letter was sent to the current King, King Darius, asking him to have someone look into the archives of King Cyrus, to see if he had issued a decree that the people should return to the land of Judah and rebuild the temple.

We won’t read the entire letter they sent to him, but I do want to look at one very important part of the letter.

It was the response of the Jewish Elders to the governor of the Province.

You see it in chapter 5 verse 12 where we read:

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Did you notice what the Nation of Judah didn’t do?

They blamed no one but themselves.

They didn’t blame that nasty Nebuchadnezzar for their captivity.

They took full responsibility.

This is a very important lesson for us to learn.

Our tendency is to look for someone else to blame when things don’t go our way.

Our upbringing, our family, our spouse, our family heritage, our friends....we even say things like “The devil made me do it.”

To push the blame on anyone else but ourselves.

The lesson we need to take from Ezra 5:12 is this; Next Slides

When we sin, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

The sooner we learn that lesson, the sooner we will start to see great victories in our battle against sin.

As we continue on in Ezra, and moving now to chapter 6, we see that Darius had the archives searched, and low and behold he found the decree by King Cyrus.

By the way, Persian law dictated that once a King made a decree, it was permanent, even after that King died, all following Kings had to obey the decree also.

That is why Darius made a search of the archives.

I love what he does next.

He tells Tattenai to leave the people alone, and that he is to see that the cost of the rebuilding of the Temple be paid for from the taxes he collected in that region!

That’s what I call a move of God!

And just in case anyone tries to cause any problems, Darius adds one more decree.

We see it in verse 11 of chapter 6;

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You get the impression that upon reading the decree of King Cyrus, whom Darius respected greatly, Darius decided to one up Cyrus’s decree with one of his own.

A royal “Anything you can do I can do better.”

So, what we see here is that God gave the returning exiles a very important job to do, but as He always does, He made sure they had everything they needed to get the job done.

He does the same with us today.

I have said this before and I will say it again over and over again as we travel through the pages of God’s Word: Next Slide

When God Calls Us to Do Something, He Always Give Us Everything We Need to Accomplish the Task.

With the Prophets Haggai and Zechariah working alongside them, encouraging and supporting them, with help from The LORD of Hosts, we see in Ezra 6:15

15 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.

4 1/2 years after they started rebuilding the walls again, they were able to complete the rebuilding of the Temple.