Ezra 3:8-13 • Rebuilding the Ruins
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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
Last week, and this week, we're looking at maybe unusual passages of Scripture for the people of God because we don't turn to them often. Today, Ezra chapter 3, the books of Ezra and Nehemiah were accounts of what happened to the people of God as they are returning to the Promised Land.
After King David, the Promised Land had prospered, and God had given great wealth, power, and blessing to the people. But infighting and idolatry among David's children and grandchildren meant they were vulnerable to enemies who took them into captivity.
As a consequence, they became slaves again.
But God did not forget them. And through prophets like Daniel and Jeremiah prophesied, "You'll get back to the Promised Land, and I'll take care of you as I promised long ago."
Ezra 3 is a description of what happens as the people get back to the Promised Land and don't just return to reading the Word of God, but want to rebuild the temple of God so they can worship Him.
Let's stand as we honor that Word of God. In Ezra 3 and verse 8, we'll read the account of what happens as the people begin to rebuild with God's help despite the ruin that their own sin has caused.
Ezra 3 and verse 8, now in the second year after their coming to the house of God at Jerusalem, in the second month, Zerubbabel, teach that name to your children, Zerubbabel, the son of Sheatiel and Jeshua, the son of Joseph made a beginning, together with the rest of their kinsmen, the priests and the Levites, and all who had come to Jerusalem from the captivity. They appointed the Levites from 20 years old and upward to supervise the work of the house of the Lord and Jeshua with His sons and His brothers and Kadmiel and His sons, the sons of Judah, together supervised the workmen in the house of God along with the sons of Hennadad and the Levites, their sons and brothers.
And when the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord, the priests in their vestments came forward with trumpets and the Levites, the sons of Asaph, with symbols to praise the Lord according to the directions of David, king of Israel. And they sang responsibly, praising and giving thanks to the Lord, for He is good, for His steadfast love endures forever toward Israel.
And all the people shouted with a great shout when they praised the Lord because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. But many of the priests and the Levites and the heads of houses, old men who had seen the first house, wept with a loud voice when they saw the foundation of this house being laid.
Though many shouted aloud for joy so that the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people's weeping, for the people shouted with a great shout and the sound was heard far away.
Let's pray together.
Heavenly Father, we know joy, but we know the weeping too, what it means to face ruin sometimes as a consequence of our own sin in our lives that touches family and friend and can run far away. But Your grace is greater. Teach us of that mercy that You would show in Your Son, even by these words that prepare for Him. We ask in Jesus' name, amen.
Please be seated.
Mary York, a name that you don't know and don't need to know.
A beautiful Christian kid, youth leader, camp counselor, she writes about herself,
"Honesty usually comes easy to me."
But telling this story does not.
I was raised in the church, brought up in a Christian family, steeped in good doctrine, surrounded by Christian friends, and fell away from the faith.
I didn't expect to.
I'm an obsessive, rural follower, gold stars on my Sunday school attendance.
The only tattoo that I have is a phrase from a statue of a martyred reformer in Prague,
where I served as a missionary for two years.
I think that I left a lot of my relationship with God in Prague.
Almost immediately after returning home, I was swept into college and work and making new plans for the future. My Bible reading was the first thing to go.
It was followed by poor choices at school.
Things drew me away from God. Small sins became habitual.
Big sins began to appear. At first, as I began to recognize the trouble I was getting into, I assumed I could work my way out of it.
If I had not witnessed my own progression, I would never have expected to become the person I was, still parading as a put-together Christian, leading youth group, and explaining to my non-Christian friends, "My faith means everything to me."
What a lie.
I kept it up for two years.
Then one night came home from work, sat on the floor, opened my Bible to settle my soul, and recognized I did not know where to begin.
Raised in the church and do not know where to begin to find my way back to God.
She said she read a little brochure, a devotional that she had stuck in her Bible. But as she read the words of Scripture, a voice in my head interpreted every line with bitter, cynical mockery. I had heard that voice before, but never out of my own head.
I tried to pray, only to find my heart empty of words and my mind doubting that I had a listener. God was not there. For the first time in my life, I found myself believing I was cut off from my Savior.
That night, on the floor with my Bible, I recognized I had two options, despair and walk away for good, or confess that I did not know the way back and ask for some help.
She said I'd send a text to three believing friends. After all, it's college, so she texted them.
I am doubting my faith, and I do not know the way back.
Why do we have Ezra and Nehemiah?
Because in the great mercy of God, he speaks to a people who have made ruin of their own lives and helps us know the way back.
How after you have messed up so badly, how when you think God surely won't listen, can't listen, turned his back, maybe he's not there at all, what is the way back?
And God with wonderful mercy and blessing says to us, what is the way back? Just right there in the middle of that verse, we're describing architecture, verse 8, and the way in which the people are coming to build the temple again, right there in the middle after Zerubbabel and Jeshua, we read this simple phrase, "They made a beginning."
They began again.
Despite the hurt and the ruin and the betrayal and all that they have done that has messed up their lives and everybody else so badly, they begin again.
And it's actually one of the marks of the great mercy and grace of God that he says to us, "Begin again."
You can do that. It sounds sweet, but the bitter cannot be ignored if God is actually saying to these people, "Begin again."
Because that means they have to start something again that has been blessed but has been ruined by their own sin. We're well into this Bible story through the Bible in a year, but you need to remember with the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, God said to these people, "I'm going to bless the nations with this message. By faith you'll be made right with me. Not by your works, not because you perform better, but by faith."
And through Abraham, the nation began to grow, always turning back to their own performance and working in such a way that they ended up in slavery.
But God rescued them. He gave them path through the desert. He got rid of their enemies. He gave them blessing in the Promised Land.
And there they go into a wilderness, a land taken over by pagan tribes, and suddenly the nation begins to grow.
And in ways that are hard for us even to discern in this moment, it's as the swamps of Manhattan become New York City.
Kickapoo hunting grounds become the golden mile of Chicago.
It's amazing. It's wondrous. It's glorious. It's beautiful. It's profitable. The trade routes go, I mean, they are just, they are doing great.
But as the people of God begin to have kings after David that are celebrating the greatness, they want more of it for themselves. They turn on each other. They turn to idolatry. The nation is divided, and as a result, the people go back into slavery as the enemy takes advantage of their vulnerability.
And I just gave you a history lesson.
What difference does it make?
If you are the people of God, now having for 70 years been captive in Babylon, now going back into that beautiful land, and there are no cities, and there is no temple, and there are no...it's rubble.
In the height of Israel's glory, millions of people living in Israel.
Now the scholars say the best estimates are maybe 50,000 in three waves are going back into the Promised High. Maybe one in ten has survived the slavery, the captivity, the torture, the abuse, the hurt. Let me compare it to, I think of my wife Kathy's father, who was one of the diaper division in World War II. The men drafted late in the war to get into the front lines early, preparing for the battle of the Bulge, the great Allied push.
But the consequence was they had only two weeks of training before being pushed into one of the greatest battles the world has ever known. And Kathy's father's unit of a hundred men had eight survive, of which he was one. He never spoke about it. The only time he ever mentioned it to me was at my son's graduation where we were visiting a Civil War park, and he pointed to a .50 caliber weapon from the Civil War, and he said, he said, "That's what they gave us against tanks, and they went through us like paper."
And now the people of God are saying, "Yeah, we're back in the Promised Land, but it's rubble and it's ruins, and our families are destroyed, and we've experienced hurt and torture and..."
Who caused that?
Our sin, our idolatry, our selfishness. And they look at the ruin of it all and must wonder as God turned his back, and what he says is, "Begin again."
We can begin again.
It's part of the great mercy and blessing of God that he says we can.
We need to remember as parents when we look back over times with our children, we were talking about this between the services, and we think, "Oh, Lord, please help them to forget."
The rage, the poor choice, the selfishness, and we say, "God, look at what I caused. What am I going to do about it?" God said, "Begin again."
We haven't done devotionals in years. We've been put off our path. How can I start now without being embarrassed? I won't feel right.
Begin again.
But, Lord, I wasn't even a believer when I raised my children, and now I feel so bad that here that I'm in my adult, senior years as a believer in you, and I see all the consequences on my children and grandchildren, what do I do?
Begin again.
With these children, with these grandchildren, with the telephone call, with the letter, with the invitation to a sports event, with supervising their games, with simply expressing that you… Begin again.
In our community, so many people in this day and age experiencing career trauma.
So many years with this company, and then dealt with so badly, so hardly, feeling the abuse, feeling the neglect, feeling, "Doesn't anybody care? What do I do now?"
Begin again.
Lord, this marriage, we are in such bad patterns with each other, with you, to make any sense to try to fix this.
Begin again.
Begin again.
Say you're sorry maybe for the first time. Begin this thing again.
It's recognizing what God is calling us to do is to not let the past define. And for some of us, what we're saying, we're so embarrassed, we think God is Himself so ashamed of us that we are unwilling to start again with Him, the people who are in habitual sin or addictive illnesses.
I've tried so often, I've worked so hard, I've failed so frequently, how do I possibly move forward? God says, "Begin again." I mean, we tease about the people who think, "Listen, stopping smoking is no problem. I've stopped many times."
What now?
Begin again.
And maybe it's not smoking, but something far more difficult for your soul or your family or your future. What do you do?
You begin again.
And as you begin again, you recognize God is there to help. So much of the Christian community in the last few weeks is talking about the story of Josh Harris, the young pastor who wrote the book, "I Kissed Dating Goodbye." writing the waves of the Christian courtship and purity movements, and as a consequence, very early in life, got fame and wealth and fortune and a very large church, which divided during his tenure.
And at the end of that, he kind of said, "You know what? Maybe I need to get some seminary training."
But having gotten the training, he repudiated much of the book that he had written that gave him the fame, saying that what he was actually teaching people was kind of a form of legalistic purity as though your resolve would keep you safe through life instead of trust in God. And it was well-intended. Certainly we believe in the morality that was being advocated, but it was just kind of a hunker down and tri-harder form of Christianity with harsh judgment of those who did not measure up. And even as he reputed it later in life, you recognize it created such tension in him and others that what made the news two weeks ago, of course, was he also kissed his wife goodbye.
And then he kissed his God goodbye, no longer a Christian.
I've only met Josh a few times. Each time I've met him, I must tell you, I felt like I was meeting a sensitive, warm personality who was in some measure at odds with the nature of the books he had written, as though the harshness and the legalities of the writing were at odds with his own personality and that tension in him ultimately affecting his marriage and then affecting his relationship with God.
Anyway, and those who know him well, I don't know him well, but the friends after his very public repudiation of his faith wrote a public letter to him, the last lines of which are absolutely beautiful.
The friends wrote to Josh, "If the day comes when you see the bankruptcy of life without the lamb slain, may you know that no matter how many steps you've taken away from Jesus,
it only takes one to get back.
You begin again."
And there is Jesus saying, "I'm here and I will help and we'll begin again."
And it's not just left up for grabs what that would look like.
Part of what God is teaching us through this ancient people is not just that it's okay to begin again, but what it means to build again.
As we are building again, we build with his word. That was last week with Nehemiah. Remember the joy of the Lord as our strength comes out of recognizing God is speaking from his word to his people to give us guidance of the good and safe path for life. So we turn to his word. But it's more than that. God is saying, "You also can turn to me."
We put this description of the temple being rebuilt into some sort of architectural history. But do you recognize spiritually what's being said? God is saying, "You can come back into my house. We'll build again. And what will happen here? You can confess your sin and make reconciliation with it. This is the place where you acknowledge who you are and I acknowledge I knew it all along and I'm still here for you. Here is the grace of God in the midst of your hurt." And what that is doing, it's allowing us by saying God is inviting his people back into the temple, back into worship, back into a relationship with him. God is saying, "I will not let your past define you."
Don't yet you. Don't let you have your past define you either.
That's so hard for us to do. We're so tempted to say, "The ruin that I can see of what I've done, the consequence,
that's who I am." David Palleson is a name some of you may know, a man who in many ways rescued the Christian counseling movement from some kind of mechanical and formulaic ways of using Scripture in people's hurting lives.
Kathy and I read his books a long time but only met him for the first time last year. And in meeting him at a conference, suddenly we discovered, "Have you ever done this? You meet somebody and he said, "I feel like I've known you all my life." You know, you're the older brother with wisdom and kindness that everybody wants to have.
He died a few weeks ago of a fast-moving pancreatic cancer which caused us and others to kind of re-look at his readings. Why were we so drawn to him? And so much of it was the honesty of what Scriptures say and how we deal with things. He wrote an article once which was simply titled, "You'll Never Get Over It."
It doesn't sound like a Christian message. I mean, we're supposed to have reconciliation and healing, and yet he said, "You'll never get over it, but you don't need to be defined by it."
If you've ever been seriously betrayed, I mean seriously betrayed as a Christian, abused, or rebelled, there may be people around you, even Christians who will say, "Just get over it.
Just move on.
You're forgiven.
They're forgiven.
Just move on."
If you had been the people of Israel and you are walking back into a nation of rubble and your families have been decimated by evil and cruelty, and you know that is your own idolatry that's behind it all, and somebody said, "Well, just get over it. You punch them in the nose.
What do you mean, just get — how do I get over this?
This is my background, my life."
Palleson cites with honesty a woman he counseled. She says, "I'll never get over it. What happened to me was so wrong, confusing, overwhelming, the pointlessness, the cruelty, the betrayal, the loss. At times I find it hard to believe that this even really happened.
The distress and pain seem unbearable and like it will never end.
At time the flashbacks are so real it's like it's happening again.
At times the treadmill of anger and resentment and confusion that goes nowhere, I still can't get off.
And then I feel terrible for still being on the treadmill.
At times something will happen, something so minor or innocent, but it will trigger a reaction to me that's totally out of proportion with reality.
I'll never get over it."
Said Palleson, "You're right.
You'll never get over it. Hear me rightly.
I don't mean that the poison and the darkness of the experience will always haunt you with equal power, but this experience is now part of your life, part of the patchwork of your existence which you have to deal with through the grace of God, learning more of and about Him as you go.
You will not get over it, but you don't need to forever be defined by it."
What does that mean? It means that we are able with the people of God to make honest confession. This is part of my life. This is what has happened. And at the same moment say, "But God, you are greater than that. And if it was done to me, you are more powerful than anything else in this world to take me to higher ground." So yes, the valley is real. I came through that path, but the mountains are real. There is morning after the night. I can't deny the night was real. I can't deny that it is there. But the morning comes.
And so I trust God through it as these people do when they are making a place for confession and acknowledgement of God's grace at the very same moment. If what they are doing is they are saying, "I will not be defined by the past."
The second aspect of the building is the willingness to say, "I will believe as an act of faith, as difficult as it may be, as hard as it may be, I will believe as an act of faith that God has a future for me."
That's why they are rebuilding. Despite the ruin, despite that it doesn't measure up at all to the way it was in the past, I'm going to believe that God has a future for me. It must have been so hard for these people to hear the prophet Haggai who wrote in this same period that the people of God were experiencing the rebuilding of the temple. He wrote, "The latter glory of this house will be greater than the former."
That must have been so hard to hear. We have seen the golden domes of Solomon.
We have seen the glory of the kingdom. And now we're trying to rebuild this temple out of rubble. And you are telling us that the glory of the future is greater than the glory? How could that be? Now, they could not have foreseen that Herod the Great was coming to build an even greater temple than Solomon.
But it's unlikely that was the temple that Haggai referred to.
Instead, he would refer to the temple that is our Savior, who ultimately would indwell us by His Holy Spirit that our whole lives in every moment would glorify God wherever we walk, whatever we experience. There is a greater glory of the temple that is coming. And we believe that when we believe there is a future, and I will believe that there is a future, and in doing so, we invest in small, practical acts of obedience till the Lord brings that future in.
We read the history lesson, verse 7. What did these people do to build the temple? They gave money to the masons. That's not the benevolent organization. Those are people who use bricks.
And the carpenters in food and drink and oil to the Sidonians and the Tyrians to bring cedar trees from Lebanon to the sea to Joppa according to the grant that they had from Cyrus the king of... What did they do?
They gave money to the masons and meals to the truckers.
They're in this rubble field, and they're providing some acts of obedience and kindness to others.
More than that, as they begin to praise, did you catch it? Verse 11, "And they sang responsibly."
When the worship begins, it's almost as though it's so devastating to them what's happened, that they cannot conjure the words of praise themselves.
And so like we do in the modern church, they read and they sing responsibly. Tell me what I should say. Let me hear the words of God that I might repeat them. And in these practical acts of obedience, small as they may be in the moment, they are rebuilding the world in which their future lives will thrive.
As if to say what I am doing with these small acts of obedience in faith that God has a future for me is I'm actually building the world in which God will work. And I'm not abandoning God. I'm not abandoning my own obligations.
I'm believing that in faithfulness of the day, God is building my future, and He's building His glory. That requires us to turn from fruitless acts of remembering.
The old men see the foundation of the new temple being built up, and what do they do? They weep.
We remember the former days. We remember when it was so much better.
And yet what they are being called to do is to acknowledge the greatness of God.
The Lord is good, and His love endures forever. That against the tape that is replaying of all the former hurt and pain and ruin, they are thinking of what God is and is doing.
So hard for us.
If you have been terribly hurt, if you have sinned terribly, you know exactly what the woman who was talking to Paulison was talking about, it just comes like a flashback right into my present.
I pass a person.
I pass a place. I see a commercial. I hear the voice of a child. And suddenly that tape is playing in my head again. And I'm reliving the pain. And I'm reliving the anger. And I'm reliving the bitterness. And I actually want the bitterness to go out again.
Instead it's almost as though we by faith had to take ourselves by the shoulders and that is fruitless. That is going nowhere.
It is real.
But God is good for His love endures forever.
And as an act of will, we don't keep replaying the tape.
But the reverse is we return to the ordinary rhythms of the Christian life.
Frank confession, honest gratitude, reminders of the grace of God and praising Him for His goodness. They go to the temple. What happens there? They confess their sin and sacrifice is needed that will come in Christ Jesus.
They acknowledge that God's glory is great but ultimately against the tape of pain and hurt and bitterness that's replaying, they are putting in its place the praise of God, the rhythms of the Christian faith, which is saying ultimately that amidst the ruins, as strange as it may sound, the way in which they are progressing, the way back is not just by beginning again and not just by building again, it's by worshiping again.
How do they worship again? They let the praise begin.
Verses 10 and 11, "When the builders laid the foundation, the priests in their vestments came forward with trumpets." I forgot my trumpet this morning.
"And the Levites, the sons of Aces with symbols." I don't know if we've had symbols lately in the worship.
It's profound praise.
What can we do to marshal our resources, to give God praise against the voices in our heads and the voices in our circle and the evidence before us of the ruin of our own sin? What can we do? We trumpet the praise of God. We say, "Here's how great God is." Yes, this is what we have caused. But this is who He is. When we turn back the voices of the darkness with what we know to be true about God, He is good. His steadfast love endures forever. We have been selfish and sinful, God.
But you are good, for your steadfast love endures forever.
We have experienced terrible consequences of sin. But we have done what others have done to us.
But you are good, for your steadfast love endures far beyond this forever.
We have seen the day of evil, and we have known its ruin.
But God, you are good, and your steadfast love endures forever. So I'll begin again, and I will invest in these small acts of obedience as much as you give me the grace to begin again, to start again, to believe again, to act again, and the strength that you give, believing that there is a future.
And when I do that, I will be able to worship you again with reality.
The reality is surprising to us. What does this worship look like? Yeah, trumpets and symbols. We get that. Verse 12, "But many of the priests, the religious people, and the Levites and the heads of fathers' houses, old men who had seen the first house, wept with a loud voice, so that you could not distinguish the weeping from the rejoicing as the message went forward of the foundations being laid."
Not just history lesson. It's what ought to happen weekly in the church of Jesus Christ where real worship by real people is occurring, that we weep for what we recognize as in the past. There is ruin. There is sin. There is abuse. There is trauma. There is hurt. God, I'm not going to hide this from you. I'm going to hide it from anybody else. We gather in the places of worship where we really want to worship, where people are unveiled before us, and they acknowledge what they are experiencing, their hurt, their pain.
But at the very same moment that the pain is coming as the people are singing, "But God is good."
And His love endures beyond all of this, that there is right with the weeping the rejoicing. Isn't that the nature of the gospel always? That the death of sin is a lot like the death of saints.
What happens with the death of saints? We grieve the loss and rejoice in the glory.
And when there's death of sin, what do we do? We grieve for the loss that the sin has caused in our life, for the ruin, and we rejoice at the same moment for what the mercy and the grace and the goodness of God are bringing forward into our lives as we can begin again and build again and worship again. And it's really as these two voices come together, the weeping for what has been, and the rejoicing for the God who has seen us through and gives the future that we don't just worship again, we actually become part of God's mission again.
Oh, the wondrous last verses, "The people shouted with a great shout, and the sound was heard far away."
Here's the reverberating of the gospel, the weeping that's real and the joy that's real so that people don't listen to us as though we are people who don't know the real world, don't know real hurt, don't know our own sin. We acknowledge it. At the same moment we say, "But our God is good for His mercy endures long beyond all of this, and we trust Him, and we turn to Him, and we seek Him." And when people hear that from us, that's the power, not just that we pretend anything, but that we are saying, "Here's the wonder amidst the ruins.
There is love that does not cease, but builds my future and gives me the blessing to begin again."
Mary York, after she texted those friends, wrote about them. "The three people I reached out to were not randomly chosen.
They were friends who had confided in me their own struggles with faith and obedience.
They were the people I thought might know how to help, not just judge or pity or condemn. They were people who knew tears, and they knew how to rejoice in God at the same time. They'd been the path. They were the ones worth listening to." And then she wrote of what she learned from them.
"I share this story, the mission beginning, in order to share my own self-crafted image as a poster child for the Christian community. Me, the missionary associate, the youth leader, the camp counselor, the school evangelist.
No, I am the sinner, ransomed and redeemed, lost and found. The story is all about a great God who knows who I am and still sent His Son for me, who knows my sin, but whose grace is sweeter and whose mercy is free.
Even though the road home can look long and feel empty, we are not walking alone.
Christ is walking with us, and He will be with us the moment we turn around, however far we have wandered.
However many steps you have taken away."
Just one step back, and He says, "Now let's begin again, and our future with Him is wondrous." Father, so lead us into the beauty of a God who is willing to tell us of a people who knew what would be to be among the ruins of their own sin and betrayal and hurt, and find their way back to You.
And for such a moment, Father, I now pray in this church.
I can't speak such words without recognizing there are people who feel their steps have taken them a long way from You.
Or the hurt done to them is now, even as I speak, replaying in their minds, and they can't seem to be getting off the treadmill of replaying what makes them bitter and hurt and despairing.
But they hear the other song.
Our God is good, for His love endures forever.
And even as there is the patchwork in their lives of the hurt, may the blanket of grace now cover and be their shelter as they move forward into the life you are bringing.
Father right now, I pray for those who simply need to begin again with a marriage, with a righteous habit, with an end of bitterness.
Would you help them to resolve, even in this moment, to begin again?
And in the regular rhythms of the Christian walk, build the reality of your care so that your future with them is beautiful and bright, and they sing with wonder and joy amidst the tears.
God is good, for His love endures forever.
May this be our song, our joy, and our strength. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.