Latest / Chapter and First- Bible Teaching Ministry of Fort Smith's First Baptist Church / 60+ Luncheon - Pastor to 60+ Dave Skorupa - September 24, 2026

Transcript

60+ Luncheon - Pastor to 60+ Dave Skorupa - September 24, 2026 · Chapter and First- Bible Teaching Ministry of Fort Smith's First Baptist Church

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, Ryan is going to read the first few verses from Ezra chapter 6.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: That was quite an intro.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: Alright, I'll be starting off at verse 1.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: So King Darius gave the order, and they searched in the library of Babylon in the archives.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: But it was in the fortress of Ekbatana in the province of Media that a scroll was found with this record written on it.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: In the first year of King Cyrus, he issued a decree concerning the house of God in Jerusalem, would the house be rebuilt as a place for offering sacrifices, and let its original foundations be retained.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: Its height is to be 90 feet, and its width 90 feet, with three layers of cut stone and one of timber.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: The cost is to be paid from the royal treasury.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: The gold and silver articles of God's house that Nebuchadnezzar took from the temple of Jerusalem and carried to Babylon must also be returned.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: They are to be brought to the temple in Jerusalem, where they belong, and put into the house of God.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: Therefore, you must stay away from that place.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: Tetanai, governor of the region west of the Euphrates River, and Shethar Bazonai, weird name, and your colleagues, the officials in the region, leave the construction of the house of God alone.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: Let the governors and elders of the Jews rebuild this house of God on its original side.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: Alright, thank you, Ryan.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: So what Ryan just read to you was after a while the Israelites got tired of the delay, and they petitioned the Persian king saying, you need to go back into your records and you need to find that original declaration from King Cyrus that gave us permission to work on this temple.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: And chapter 6 makes it very clear that King Darius, by the way, Darius is one of those names that it's a it's a throne name.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's several people in history called Darius that were kings of Persia at different times.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: This isn't necessarily the same Darius that threw Daniel into the lion's den.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: It was kind of like a title.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: It'd be similar to Caesar.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when we say Caesar, we don't know if we're talking about Julius Caesar or Augustus or what have you, but the title Caesar is in place for the person who was in charge of Rome.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: So Darius has some men find that original letter from Cyrus.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: And in verse 3, they find the letter, and Cyrus had said, Let the temple be rebuilt, the place where they offered sacrifices.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then we even see the dimensions here: 60 cubits, 60 cubits, or 90, as you translated it out into modern uh equivalents.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's this huge temple, and in verse 4 he says, use heavy stones, use new timber, and let it be paid.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to look at that bottom line, let it be paid out of the king's treasury.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's one thing when you're involved in a building project and you're footing the bill.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's another when you're involved in a building project and someone else who actually is the king of an empire is footing the bill.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: Those of you with some real estate background are giving me some interesting looks right now.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: So this was going to be paid for out of the king's treasury.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: But that isn't the end of the letter.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: Look at verse 5.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Bring back the gold and the silver articles that were taken by King Nebuchadnezzar, and take it all back to the temple which is in Jerusalem, deposit them in the house of God.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what does Darius do after that letter is discovered?
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: Darius says to the governor of the region, he says that you guys stay, you people that aren't Israelites, stay away from this temple project.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: He's putting a no-trespassing sign in front of the place where the work is going to take place.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: Verse 7, he says, Let the house of this God alone, let the governor of the Jews and the elders of the Jews build this house of God.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: Let them be the one who are involved in building it.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, don't try to get in there and sabotage this work that the Jews are doing on this temple.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's what had kept everything from moving for 15 years.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Moreover, and this is rather telling in verse 8, which Ryan did not read, moreover, let the cost be paid at the king's expense from taxes on the region beyond the river.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, hey, all of you pagan peoples that are bothering the Israelites, we are now taxing you to pay for the temple project of the Israelites.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that a nice wrinkle?
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that a nice development?
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: This is new.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: This is something that Darius is adding to what Cyrus had said before.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: He says, make sure that they are not hindered.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: But he doesn't stop there.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: In verse 9, he says, whatever they need, young bulls, rams, lambs for burnt offerings to the God of heaven, wheat, salt, wine, and oil, according to the request of the priests who are in Jerusalem, let it be given them day by day without fail.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know what that means?
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now it means the pagan peoples that have been disrupting this project are actually going to provide animals and materials for the offerings that are happening at this temple.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: But it doesn't stop there.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: He has even more that he's going to say.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: Verse 11.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: I also decree that whoever alters this edict, let a timber be pulled from his house and erected, and let him be hanged on it, and let his house be made a refuse heap because of this.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: Alright.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: So not only am I asking you to be taxed to build the temple, not only will you be providing animals and materials for the sacrifices, but if you in any way, shape, or form try to mess with this anymore, you are going to be killed and your house is going to be destroyed.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: So what happens here is that combining the Edict of Cyrus with this new edict that has been issued is the work on the temple is going to be financed by the Empire and protected by the Empire, and the very people that tried to stop this project are going to be taxed in order to make it happen.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now, that's God at work.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: All right?
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's God at work.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: And we see that at the end of verse 12, Darius says, I, Darius, issue this decree, let it be done diligently.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: Verse 13, then the governor of the region and their companions diligently did according to what Darius had sent.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: That is pretty interesting.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: Verse 14 tells us that the Jews began to build the temple, and they prophesied with Haggai and Zechariah, and they built it and they finished it according to the commandment of God, according to the command of Cyrus and Darius and Artaxerxes.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: The temple was finished on the third day of the month of Adar, which is the sixth year of the reign of King Darius.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: The reason we have these things is so that we can tell the time difference between when they started and when they finished.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: Verse 16 the children of Israel, the priests and the Levites, and the rest of the descendants of the captivity celebrated the dedication of this house of God with joy.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: Now that's a really wonderful story, and it shows us that God is able to deliver even bigger on promises that He makes to us, but I've got a few takeaways that I think really fit our group here that I want you to be able to take with you today.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: First off, if you encounter a delay or a stoppage on something that God has called you to do, that is not always a sign that God doesn't want you to do it.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: Can't tell you the number of times that people have come to me through the years and they've said, Pastor Dave, I'm really convinced that God wants me to do this, but I keep running into delays and I keep running into problems.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: Certainly God would wipe away any delays, and certainly God would wipe away any problems if God really wanted me to do this.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe God hasn't called me to do this.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: And what I say is not necessarily.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing is outside of God's control.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: So when we feel like things are getting out of our control, one of the best things we can do is get our eyes off of ourselves and off of our feelings and onto the fact that God is in control.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: Second point.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes when we face delays or stoppages, we feel sad, and we even feel, we feel like there's a sense of loss, because we're mourning not, uh we're mourning the idea of what we thought would happen.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: We're mourning the idea that things aren't going the way that we thought they were going to go.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: That creates some sadness in us.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when we think, oh, that that delay, and now that's not going to happen, oh, and we we get sad, we're we're mourning the loss of something.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: But when that happens, nonetheless, we can stand strong.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: We can be optimistic.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: We have reason not to become discouraged because, again, God is in control, and if there's a delay, it may be because God's got something better in mind.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: He has something more grand in his plans.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: The last point here, you know, when we face delays, when we face stoppages, when we face these times of uncertainty, we can't help but go to a place where we start comparing ourselves with people that are not going through delays or not going through stoppages.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: And we ask ourselves, well, why am I having to go through this delay when other people that I know aren't having to go through this delay?
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's like the person who changes majors late in their college career and has to spend an extra year in college.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: Changed majors late my junior year, went from journalism advertising to journalism news editorial, had to spend an extra year in order to get classes that I had not taken.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then I spend years doing advertising work.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's just ridiculous the way that works.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: Or the person who has all of their friends get married, and he's the last one of his, or she is the last one of their friends group to get married.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: And you start comparing yourself to your friends, and you're going, what's wrong with me?
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: All my friends have gone off and gotten married, and I, you know, I'm still here in single land.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: What's happening?
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe it's the person who gets into a career, and their other, their co-workers in the career seem to be advancing fast, but they are just kind of stuck and they're not advancing as fast as their friends are.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I don't have to raise my hand for that one, but some of you know what I'm talking about.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: And you're going, well, what's wrong with me?
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: Why am I having to go through this delay when my friends aren't having these delays?
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: Or the couple that gets married and all of the other couples they know are having kids, but they might have a delay or maybe a complete stoppage due to a fertility issue.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: And they start going, Well, what's with us?
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: All of our friends are having kids and we're not having kids.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: I get to raise my hand again on that one.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: And delays and stoppages create these feelings of not being in control, not measuring up to what it is that you think you should be measuring up to.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: But delays and stoppages, ladies and gentlemen, just remind us that we're not in control.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: God is in control.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: And that God has plans for us that we can't even begin to imagine.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: God has plans for us that are far beyond our ability to understand them.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the phrase God works in mysterious ways, that phrase is actually not in your Bible, but there is this great passage from Isaiah that basically ends up saying the same thing.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: Isaiah chapter 55, verses 8 and 9, God says, My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher, and you could go ahead and add, than your ways.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: You see, God's ways of doing things often do involve delays and stoppages and things that are beyond our understanding.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because God works differently than we do.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so when we face those delays or those stoppages or the things that we don't understand, rather than saying, what's wrong with me?
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps our answer should be, Lord, I'm going to trust you.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to, instead of putting my focus on me, I'm going to put my focus on you.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: I may be powerless in this situation, but you're in control of everything.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: God's goal is not to make you like everyone else.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: God's goal is to make you more like Jesus.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: And the process of us being made more like Jesus differs from person to person to person.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: The way that God makes you more like Jesus might be different than your own family members, might be different than your spouse, might be different than your best friend, might be different than your group of people that you hang out with.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: And you may ask the question, God, why does my path of becoming more like you have to involve this thing?
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: This delay, this stoppage.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: Why does that have to be part of my experience in becoming more like Jesus?
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: God says, my thoughts are different than your thoughts.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: My ways are mightier than your ways.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: God says, my ways are higher than the earth.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: Let's just trust what God is doing.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: And rather than complaining about the process, let's give him honor and glory in it, because at the end of the day, each one of us is going to be made much more glorious than we ever could have imagined when that day arrives when we are made like Jesus.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: Amen?
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that wasn't very enthusiastic, amen.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: But that just shows me you've been listening.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: That just shows me you've been listening.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: Let's be people of faith and perseverance.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: And let's give God the honor and glory.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: Let's close in prayer.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, we thank you for this day and this time that you've given us together.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, I pray that we would be people that would remember that your ways are different than our ways.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: And as we face delays, as we face stoppages, as we face disappointments, as we face challenges, rather than wallowing in self-pity, Lord, I pray that you would give us the strength and give us the understanding to use those as opportunities for praise and thanking you that you're changing each one of us and embracing the idea that challenges mean that you are changing us and working in us.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: And Lord, we thank you for the victory that the Israelites realized in having that temple built.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: And Lord, we look forward to the day when each of us achieves victory through what you are doing in changing us in that day when you will change each of us to be just like the Lord Jesus.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: We give you the honor, the praise, and the glory.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: And God's people said, Amen.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: And we are dismissed.