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Episode 55: Acts and Ezra · North Bible Recap

• 0:09
  SPEAKER_02: Well, good day, everybody.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_02: I'm so glad that you have tuned in to this episode, another number four of North Bible Recap.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_02: And I am thrilled to have with me uh the executive pastor of North Church, one of the two guys anyway, and that is Samson Vargie.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Samson, thank you for joining me.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely excited to be here.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: I've been listening to the North Bible recap.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: I really enjoyed uh all of them, especially the last one.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: So you guys have been doing a great job.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_02: Good.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_02: Well, well, let's don't mess it up now.
• 0:40
  unknown: Okay.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_02: The pressure's on.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_02: Actually, we've talked about this before, is that I I did not realize how much we're gonna we're biting off with this uh by under this undertaking of the North Bible recap.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I'm realizing that hey, this is requiring a lot uh of of all of us.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_02: And then I thought I was gonna get on the easier side of it, but I'm like, man, I'm having to read view all of it too and dive into it so I can know what you're saying and what's going on.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_02: And we have some notes in front of us, but we also are just kind of free-flowing with the spirit too, some.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_02: And so thank you for joining us.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_02: Come on, Holy Spirit, we need you.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_02: So we we are today looking at uh the book of Acts, and we're kind of putting a bow on it in chapters number 24 uh through 28, and then we're gonna dive into the book of Ezra, cover that whole thing, which you did a phenomenal job preaching on uh this past weekend.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_02: And so I want to say thank you for that.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_02: And people are still talking about it, I'm still reflecting on it.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_02: And I got to hear it five times.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_02: Uh besides reading your I could have done that message at the end, maybe not as good and as polished as you, but I I could have I could have uh delivered that message.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_02: But and then we're gonna I'm gonna we might touch in on uh proverbs and psalms at the very end, just some things that um you know I I'm picking up personally.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_02: So let's first uh just dive into uh the book of Acts.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_02: And I just want to remind everybody that's listening, just go back to Acts chapter number one.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, Jesus has given his disciples this great commission to go into all the world and preach the gospel.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_02: But he didn't leave them without the ability to be able to accomplish what he has assigned them to do.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_02: And what did he give them that would give them exactly what they needed?
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: The Holy Spirit.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_02: The Holy Spirit.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_02: It was the Spirit of Jesus in them.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_02: God, the Holy Spirit is God, God is Spirit, and those that worship him, worship him in spirit and in truth.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_02: So God inside the believers, and of course, they spent 10 days in prayer and calling out, waiting for the gift of the Holy Spirit.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, it is men and women, 120 of them on the day of Pentecost in Acts chapter 2, and then the Holy Spirit comes uh with a rushing mighty wind, tongues of fire uh set upon them.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_02: They begin to speak in languages that they had never learned, uh, been taught, and it was a witness to the world that was gathered at that moment um to bring to light to everybody that hey, that there is a new age, the church age.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_02: And that um Jesus said, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_02: So from then on, you just have the incredible story of the New Testament church.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the way you see it play out, as you said, Pastor, you know, Acts 1.8, Jesus says, you know, spirit will come upon you.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: You'll be my witnesses to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, to the ends of the earth.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: And really at the end of the book of Acts, you're seeing the gospel go to the ends of the earth through the power of the Holy Spirit guiding uh the apostles, guiding the church towards the farthest regions, reaches of the known world, and it's gonna go to Rome.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_02: So that's what we're gonna dive into today.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_02: So we're gonna look at chapters 24 through 28, and we're gonna close out the book of Acts, and it records basically these chapters, Paul on trial a lot, uh imprisoned, uh, his defense uh of the gospel and if it where he is, and and then eventually his appeal to you know be in front of Caesar, who is the most powerful man on the face of the planet at the time.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_02: And then he gets that request and he journeys to Rome at the very end.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_02: So let's dive into just quickly chapter number 24.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_02: Uh Paul is before Felix.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um, it's interesting to notice just these individuals, there's a history behind every one of these names.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_02: And Felix is actually a former slave of the Roman people who eventually break earns his freedom, which was done often.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_02: That was not something that was um uh abnormal, but then he rises up in leadership in the Roman government until he becomes like a governor of a certain area, and that's what you have here.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_02: Here he is.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, these accusations have been brought against Paul by the Jewish leaders, and Paul boldly defends himself.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_02: He shares his faith uh in Christ uh and the resurrection from the dead of the dead, and he he really preaches uh not only to those that are the Jewish leaders that are trying to see him killed, literally, uh, but to Felix.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_02: And the Bible says interesting that he was preaching three things.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_02: This really stood out to me because I think that it's still stuff that we are preaching today: righteousness, self-control, and coming judgment.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I think all of us need to remember that.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_02: That one, righteousness, what's that righteousness?
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_02: Right living.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_02: Well, how do we know right living?
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_02: We don't know unless we follow Christ and God's word and the spirit of God.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's right living and then self-control.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_02: I've got to put self-control into practice every day.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it's the last of the fruit of the spirit is self-control.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_02: And self-control of what?
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_02: My fleshly desires, my emotions, my tongue that can cause pain and hurt in people because it brings either life or death.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_02: And it's interesting that this Felix guy who was a former slave, who earns his freedom and rises in the ranks of the Roman government.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_02: But yet when Paul is preaching, it says that he was frightened by Paul.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_02: Who's Paul?
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_02: Paul's in chains, yeah, a slave in front of him, but yet he's scared to death.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_02: What is that?
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's confidence.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's the Holy Spirit.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, he he's convicted of his sin.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_02: He is seen, you know, and and of course, I we don't know.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously, there's no indication that Felix uh made a decision to follow Christ at all.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but who knows down the road if he also showed up uh with Paul in Rome and wanted to hear some more, very well could happen.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_02: But Felix delays the judgment, okay, in chapter 24, and he's hoping for a bribe from Yeah.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know what's interesting about Paul, like the things you talk about, the the righteousness, self-control, like Paul displays all of that every time he's on trial.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: He models that he doesn't uh you know lose control of himself.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: He's being attacked uh falsely um by you know Jewish Jewish accusers, and every time he maintains his composure as he pre-he's a calm witness to Jesus while being attacked.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's incredible to see.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_02: And then he was imprisoned still for two more years, okay?
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_02: And then there's a transition.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_02: Uh there's a transition in leadership.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_02: Festus comes in, he becomes the um the governor.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_02: Uh Felix actually ends up uh moving on to Rome, uh, most likely probably moving up another level of leadership.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_02: We don't know for sure.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but then you have Festus.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_02: And who is Festus?
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_02: Festus is known as a little bit less of a tyrant uh than Felix.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_02: He was much more subdued in his He's got a happy name, Festus, so he should be right.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_02: Oh that that's good.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't think about that one in my studies.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_02: But Festus.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_02: And so then the Jewish leaders are still they're trying to figure out a way to kill Paul.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_02: They're they're they're trying to, they're sneaky, and uh they're just trying their best.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_02: And through this, Paul realizes I don't need to go back to Rome because they're trying to go back to uh excuse me, to Jerusalem.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_02: And they're saying, hey, but but their whole intent is to kill him in Jerusalem.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_02: And and right now they're in Caceria, uh in uh Caesarea.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_02: Caesarea.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_02: Caesarea, yes.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_02: And then so uh Paul at this moment realizes, hey, I'm I'm I'm gonna appeal to Caesar.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_02: And he appeals to Caesar.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, who's Caesar?
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_02: Who's Caesar?
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: He's uh Emperor, yeah.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_02: All of Rome.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_02: He's the main man, yeah, the top dog.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, he's the guy at the very top of the um of the ladder of the food chain in uh in Rome.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_02: And so he appeals to him, which is a huge um and he's exercising his Roman citizenship.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_02: That's one thing we've got to realize too, is that Paul is a Roman citizen.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, though he is a Jew, he is born into a Roman citizen.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_02: Most likely most people believe that his father is probably the one that earned uh that citizenship.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: Which was a very, you know, pretty high class thing to be able to do.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: It was very uh it was rare to be a Roman citizen.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so it's it's pretty incredible.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: And you actually see, you know, in the Bible it talks about Jesus showed up in the fullness of time.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: That means uh at the best time possible, probably the earliest time possible that the gospel can reach at the ends of the earth.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: So you see a government and a world in which Paul could be like, hey, you can't kill me.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: I have I'm I'm a Roman citizen.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: In any other period before that, that probably wouldn't have been the case.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so you're seeing God use the structures of government and legal, you know, uh structure to be able to further the gospel.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: And you're seeing that just kind of work perfectly according to God's time uh as a result, and Paul is utilizing that to further the gospel.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and you're so right.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um, the time and history of when this is is so crucial because the Roman government provided roadways uh like none other.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_02: And you you you had other dynasties, other great superpowers, so to speak, but that none was quite like Rome.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_02: And their commerce, their ability to be able to move, and if you look strategically on the map of where Jerusalem and Israel is, is the commerce all the way into Africa, yeah, and then running all the way over into not only just into Europe, but also all the way into Asia.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_02: And so it is, you're right.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_02: So the spread of the gospel, it it's prime, it's ready.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_02: And then you got the and and they're using they're they're on the back of the Roman government getting where they need to get.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_02: So pretty amazing.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_02: And then you have uh chapter 25 introduced to uh us as King Agrippa and his wife, and so they come in to hear Paul's case, and so then it leads into chapter number 26, and Paul goes before King Agrippa, number two.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, okay.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_02: This is interesting to me because uh in you begin to, as you study the word of God more and more, you see more and more of like all the connections.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_02: I call them hyperlinks.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and uh I know and on your phone and stuff, you can, or in your computer, you can click things and go to verses, or if you have a Bible that has you know a little dot or something there, a little number, and you go down at the bottom of the page and you can see you know other verses.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_02: But I I love when as I've years and years of reading God's word, those hyperlinks are just in me.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_02: I just like, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_02: And so uh King Agrippa II is actually the grandson of King Herod, who is in chapter 12 of Acts, who gets up and makes a beautiful speech, and he's so proud of himself.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_02: And people are saying, Oh, the gods are among us, and you know, just praising him because they're wanting to give him because that's what people do.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_02: They people just want to tell you what you want to hear to get what they want out of you.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_02: And so uh as he gives this speech and people begin to praise him, the Bible says that he did not give glory to God.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_02: He knew, and it says that immediately he was struck by worms, and over a period of the next several days or whatever time frame, uh he actually dies.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_02: And that was that was um King Agrippa II's um uh grandfather, which is interesting.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: And you look at uh he's also the one, his grandfather's also the one who executes James, and so the threat of execution to Paul here is real, very real because it's just one generation removed, yeah.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh of man, that the that's the guy who executed a key figure, James, you know, Peter, James, and John are the key figures in the church, and the first one's eliminated right away.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and so you see that, and and then I also think um the the level of convincing that the conviction that Paul speaks with, where King Agrippa at one point is in uh verse 28 of chapter 26.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_02: Because Paul is Paul is sharing his testimony, he goes through the whole story in that which is beautiful of his of his conversion and what God did, and and go ahead.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and then he says, Agrippa saying to Paul, after hearing Paul very convincingly, he says, In a short time, would you persuade me to be a Christian?
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like Agrippa is showing that Paul, you're you're starting to convince me because Paul is speaking, one from the Jewish scriptures that Agrippa would know, he would have studied it and at least have awareness of it.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: But he knows that these people, other people that are accusing Paul, cannot refute what Paul is saying.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so such a sp a special moment there that Paul is giving his his defense is really uh actually a witness for the gospel in that moment.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's it's incredible to see that.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you you think about the power of the preaching of the word, it is just and God designed it.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_02: And this, when I talk about preaching the word, I'm not that's not something that me and you just do when we're on stage at North Church.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_02: No, no, we are all called to preach God's word.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_02: And that doesn't mean that you know all of our people at North Church or beyond whoever's listening to this is going to go out and do it the way we're doing it on a stage.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_02: We're we're we're actually instructing and edifying our uh the family of God to go out and be preachers of the gospel.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_02: But everywhere we open our mouth and share our story of life change and testimony and the goodness of God, there's power behind that.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_02: And it it speaks to people hope, conviction, you know, opportunity if they just simply surrender their life to Christ.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_02: And so, yeah, you're so right.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_02: He was like I obviously find uh Felix, who was like struck by his preaching, and then you find King Agripp the Second also, his story was so powerful.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_02: And then you move on in from 26 into 27 because he's appealed to Rome, and now they're beginning to move him in that direction.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_02: What happens?
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so it's a bumpy ride to Rome.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_02: That is to say the least.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_02: It goes from uh uh bad to worse with Paul, it seems like.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and to me, what's so interesting is even when they send him to Rome with his appeal, they're they're like, what do we write as charges against Paul?
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like Paul is innocent, yeah, and they even recognize that.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and then when they go, it's it is a bumpy ride.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: And you you look at Paul's the tremendous favor that's on Paul's life because the centurion who's in charge of Paul, transferring Paul, has tremendous, gives him tremendous favor, like allows him to go visit friends and neighbors and all of that.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but then you also see uh as Paul is traveling that he is the one as so one uh the the ship you know is is wrecked and it's uh they're going through tremendous storms, so the ship is damaged, sailors are trying to escape.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and Paul, you know, the whole time Paul is warning them, hey, don't go this way.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: We gotta we gotta banish it, we can't do this, but they don't listen to Paul.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I love Paul's I told you so sermon.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's a great one.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: Where Paul just says, Hey, I told you this was gonna happen.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: You don't listen to me, but don't worry, because God spoke to me through an angel, uh, that we're all gonna make it, that I still have to go stand before it.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: So him having to stand before Caesar is his hope that they're all gonna make it out of here.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and supernaturally, you know, God moves and they're able to make it to a safe place to Malta, uh, and then from there come to Rome, which is all of it has just been a it's a sheer miracle.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: I actually want to ask you this question because I've seen you, Pastor Rodney, uh uh be able to handle uh attacks.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: And when I say attacks, I mean like you know, people talking badly about you, people attacking you, and you create you have such a composure about yourself.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and even in difficult situations, you have the thing that 14 years of working alongside you.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: I think what I one of the things I admire the most is like you're you're unflappable.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like you just you don't get too high, too low, you're just calm in very turbulent situations.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's what Paul is in this moment.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: He's extremely calm in you know, extremely turbulent situations.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: So my question is, how do you how do you have that?
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then how does it as how do we achieve that as believers, that composure in those so you just don't see me at 2 a.m.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_02: in the morning when I'm crawling up in a little ball, crawling, crying like a baby.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: There's that too, yeah.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_02: You know, and and I say that um somewhat jokingly, uh, but there's also a measure of that, that uh there comes a private time where you are just like broken before God, like, God, I can't do this without you.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know what to say, how to say it, how to handle it, and I don't know if I have the strength without you.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_02: And it's almost like when you come out of that prayer closet, and sometimes it's just laying in bed at night and just realizing that I need you, God, uh, that gives you the strength to be able to stand in front of, you know, uh in Paul's case, your accusers.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_02: And in my case, it might not be like accused, it can be sometimes, but it's you know, people that just whatever, pushing back against something or whatever that I think it's it really is in that time, that alone time with God, that gives you the strength to be able to stand publicly.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_02: It's our private life that uh you know our our public life is made you know so uh real.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_02: And um and it and I think Paul definitely had that.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I think you see it in his writings, I think you see it in his life.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_02: Is that um I'm sure on that ship uh when he was downtime, whenever the bus is asleep, maybe he's just sitting there meditating on the things of God.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_02: If he has a scroll or something, he's gonna go through it.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I doubt if he had his iPhone 17.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_02: Uh but but anyway, who knows?
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_02: He may have.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_02: He may.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_02: But uh, but I got a feeling that he is he is meditating on what he has learned and what he's thinking.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_02: He's he's calling out the Holy Spirit, realizing that it's not by my it's not by power, but it's by my spirit.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_02: You said it this weekend, um, quoting um Zechariah.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_02: And um, and it's just a powerful thing that he is um leaning on is the power of the Holy Spirit to give him what he needs.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: And how many times do you see Paul being visited by Jesus, by the Lord, and or being visited by an angel, uh, and and or him telling about it?
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I I think those are not just one day he's just sitting there and just the angel just shows up.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's him in prayer with God, and God meets him absolutely right in those points points of prayer.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I think God does that for us too.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know, you you so you so what what's going on?
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_02: Paul is on the ship, it's going, it starts falling apart, and he says, stay on here, and then literally everybody makes it to the shore, either swimming if they could swim, if they couldn't, they were hanging on to planks and boards and whatever they could and made it to the shore.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_02: It's interesting, right before that though, they it says that they they threw down before the ship started four anchors and uh waited till daybreak, and that's about when the ship began to fall apart and stuff.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_02: And uh have you ever preached a message on the four anchors?
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_02: No, you have.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I have.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, I've I've preached a I I've I've preached a couple of messages on the four anchors.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and so you can make those four anchors whatever you want.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_02: If you're a preacher out there, you're gonna give it a sermon and you've got that chapter, just make it whatever.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the anchor of faith, the anchor of love, the anchor of hope, the anchor of you know, the spirit, whatever it is.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, just you can change it up.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_02: But um, and I don't think it's that wasn't what Paul was talking about, but he just but still, it's still there's some it's it's it's a beautiful story of a man's resolve to serve God, to finish well, and that's what I love about Paul because he later on he would say, I finished my course.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I fought a good fight.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, henceforth there was laid up for me a crown of righteousness.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_02: And so chapter 28, though, um, he makes it to the Malta and kind of what happens there.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah, so that that's an interesting situation where he gets, you know, they're they're they're collecting wood and their twigs to get warm, to get drunk, yeah, to get drunk soaking wet.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: And then out of nowhere, a snake comes and bites Paul, and the the people of the the you know island see what happens.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: What kind of snake it is, and they're like, that's a poison snake.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's a deadly snake, and they're waiting for Paul to die.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: And they even say, they're like, This guy must have been like a really bad, bad guy.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because like after escaping something like this, you would expect this person to die.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Paul doesn't, Paul still lives, and then they're like, Oh, actually, he must be a god.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: You know what?
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: And that happens throughout the book of Acts.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_02: Where it's like one moment they're like praising him as God, and next time they're going to kill him.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_02: And then, or the moment they're you think he's, you know, evil, and then all of a sudden they think he's a God.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_02: That's how that speaks to the fickleness of human nature.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_02: And we do that too.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_02: We do it with sports where we will just one moment be praising some quarterback and he's awesome, amazing.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_02: Week number three, we're like want him, you know, benched and put somebody else in there and removed off the team.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_02: But that's just human nature.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_02: That's why we must be grounded on something that doesn't change.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_02: And that is God's word, his spirit, his church.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I was actually listening to a podcast.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: Pastor Shannon actually sent it to me.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a pastor who had experienced tremendous revival uh at Asbury.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: And he was talking about after each sermon, um, what he's taught himself or started doing is he will every he'll think back to all of his you know points where people laughed or had a good moment, and he'll just like, Jesus, I give you that crown.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: I give you that crown.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: And and he says the reason he does that as an exercise, as a discipline after his sermons is because he he wants to make sure every crown that he gets, he's laying at the feet of Jesus.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I think that has to be the way Paul lived his life because he is.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's just like you said, there's at times people worship him like a god, at times people stone him and try to kill him like a dog, right?
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so that that is in the middle of all that, Paul is unshakable because his source, his identity is sealed in Christ.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: He's laying down every crown to Jesus, and that's the same way we're called to do it.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_02: So good, so good.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_02: So kind of wrapping up um the book of Acts and chapter number 28, um, it ends by just really showing that the gospel is unstoppable.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's really like even in chains, the gospel is not chained.
• 23:58
  unknown: Yeah.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_02: And that Paul had trials, shipwreck, imprisonments, but God's mission cannot be stopped by human opposition and suffering.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_02: God is going to open the doors that he wants to open.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_02: We just got to choose to be obedient.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_02: And I love these last two verses of the book of Acts, because it says, for the next two years, Paul lived in Rome at his own expense.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_02: He welcomed all who visited him.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_02: And then what did he do with them?
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_02: He welcomed boldly proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ, and no one tried to stop him.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_02: I love that.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, um, but I've heard this from the time I remember I was in high school hearing this for the first time, and it stuck with me.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_02: Is that we are continuing the book of Acts and we're living in chapter 29.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_02: So like yeah, chapter 28 ended, but now we're the Acts 29 people.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_02: And so we should continue with the gospel.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_02: But tell tell us about because it kind of leaves there with Paul.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_02: And kind of could you give us a little bit more uh history that maybe is not uh filled in that is not filled in here, uh, but that church history gives us, that um, you know, Roman history gives us in regards to Paul.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so we don't know exactly what would have happened to Paul after this, but there is church history and church tradition that kind of helps us understand what might have happened.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so most likely after this kind of two-year house arrest period in Rome, uh, there wasn't just like you saw earlier, there's really no case against Paul.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: And some scholars say that perhaps the the Jews didn't even show up to accuse Paul and make his, and so he's just kind of standing on trial before Caesar.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: He gets to make his defense.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: There's no one to accuse him, and so he's just released, he's freed.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so most people believe that Paul was released uh after that two-year imprisonment, but during that time, he writes prison epistles, right?
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: So that's where he writes Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Philemon.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so he's writing a lot while he is.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: Think about it.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is the enemy trying to keep Paul down, and Paul's active, and we have some letters as evidence of that.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_02: So good.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then he's released.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and we know that Paul had to go to Crete.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: So he went to Crete, uh, went to Ephesus, Macedonia.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and it's during this time that Paul writes back to remember when he goes to Crete, he establishes a church there, he leaves Titus there, then he goes to Ephesus and visits and sees there's problems in Ephesus, so he leaves Timothy there, then he goes to Macedonia.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: So it's during that secondary mission mission trip that he writes those letters back to those young men that he's been mentoring, Timothy and Titus, and tells them how to lead the church while he's gone.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: Good.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then he's most likely then imprisoned again.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and this is where we have 2 Timothy, and that's the one where he says, you know, I've ran my course, I've I've finished my race, and the prize is awaiting me.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so you're seeing Paul is coming to the very, very end of his life, and probably at under very harsh, uh most say this is probably under when when Nero was persecuting Christians at a very high level.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so Paul is gonna die here in prison, and he knows that that's really what's awaiting him.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: And you see this tremendous passion of Paul to end his life well and to make an impact for the kingdom, and that's where Paul's story would end, in probably around AD 67, and as a martyr in Rome.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and that's that's the close of Paul's life.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that's where we would kind of reconstruct, if you will, yeah, the ending of Paul's story.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_02: What a great story.
• 27:32
  unknown: Yeah.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_02: What a great story.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously, we talked about in um Pastor Christian that kind of the first part really leans into Peter and his story, second half of Acts or more leans into the Apostle Paul and his story, but it's all about you know the gospel of Jesus Christ moving forward and obedience to what Jesus had given us in Acts chapter one and giving us the power to be able to do that.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_02: So let's move on uh to now the book of Ezra.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, and let's look at it.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_02: So one of the things about the book of Ezra that um maybe some don't know is that the book of Ezra and Nehemiah are actually one book.
• 28:10
  unknown: Yeah.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_02: It was initially written as one scroll, and it was literally, matter of fact, it was one of the later books.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_02: Some of them were divided earlier.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_02: It was one of the later ones that was divided, and eventually it was divided into Ezra and a Nehemiah.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_02: And um you break it up into uh three major key people, though that those two books that originally two books is uh Zerubbabel, and uh which we'll you'll cover in just a little bit, and then uh Ezra, uh who the book's name after, and then Nehemiah.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um Zerubbabel came to rebuild the temple.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_02: Uh Ezra came to really reestablish the Torah and the community of faith.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_02: And then you got um uh Nehemiah who was rebuilding the walls around Jerusalem to protect.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_02: And so beautiful story.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_02: But I want to just say something that I think is very important.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_02: When we talk about the scroll of Ezra and Nehemiah being divided into two, um, it's interesting because I've actually been in synagogues and I've been in Israel worshiping uh with um you know Orthodox Jews.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_02: And it is a beautiful thing to be able to experience because their worship and their purpose is so much in line with how we worship and purpose.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_02: Uh their passion, their energy for the messiah, that but just the hard part I hate to see when I'm there is that they're missing out because they're still wanting the messiah to show up.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, well, the messiah has come.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's the um the joy that we have.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_02: And our our worship should be exuberant, exciting, uh, passionate.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_02: And it's interesting too, uh, Pastor Samson, is that when they um get ready to read God's word, they don't pull out you know, a tablet like you know I do and read from or or even a Bible like that.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_02: They literally have the scrolls, they pull these long scrolls out, and they'll begin to gently page after page turn to the find.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_02: And it takes them a while to be able to find that.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_02: And it it was really astounding to me to be able to watch because incredible.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_02: It really was incredible.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_02: So anyway, we're in the book of Ezra, and I want you to take it and run with it.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: So just a little bit of context to who uh to whom and what Ezra really is all about.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: So Ezra, this period, Ezra Neemai comes after the Babylonian exile.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: So just to give you context, um, if you remember David in the time of the kings of Israel, um, you know, God establishes the covenant with David.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: He promises to uh as long as the the sons of David follow after you know God, that he would bless them and they would they would always have a man to sit on the throne of David.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: And the problem is they don't live consistent with that.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh they fail that covenant over and over again.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: So at one point, God divides uh the nation into the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom, um, and uh the northern kingdom is taken into captivity by Assyria, which was the world's superpower at that time.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then um, you know, the southern kingdom sees all that, and then it's just two tribes that are part of that, Judah, which is the largest tribe, and Benjamin, which is one of the smaller tribes, those two tribes.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: And that's mainly the been like the the nation of Israel at up to at that point.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: They're called the nation of Judah.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh they do not live according to God's word, they walk away, um, consistently worshiping idols, you know, doing uh practices of the neighboring nations.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: So God brings in Jeremiah, who we just finished reading right towards the end of that.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: Prophets like Jeremiah and Jeremiah, and Jeremiah prophesies that they're gonna be under captivity for 70 years because of this.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and so Nebuchadnezzar and now Babylon, which is now the superpower at that time, comes in and actually takes away.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there's three groups of captives taken away.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so they're taken away cap in captivity.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and so this is where Daniel happens, all of that.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_02: They're taken away to Babylon.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: To Babylon.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, yeah, which is literally, you're talking about a six to seven month journey to be able to get there because you're talking about thousands of miles.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, absolutely.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and so they're they're not home, you know, they're far from home.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so, but Jeremiah tells them, hey, God is telling you to go plant vineyards, build houses, pray for the prosperity of Babylon, like pray for the city that you live in.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so the Jews, some of the Jews faithfully, and as a remnant, faithfully obey that.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then the through Daniel, actually, Daniel realizes that they're coming to the end of that 70-year period, somehow miraculously, um, the following Isaiah's prophecy, 150 years before the fact, Cyrus, a Persian king, when Persia becomes the new superpower after Babylon, the Persian king comes in and he sets all the Jews free and tells them they can go back home.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now, can I tell you something wild about this?
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, because uh one of the reasons that people doubt the dating of uh the conservative dating of uh Isaiah, uh that they believe Isaiah was written much later, but not by Isaiah, by somebody else, is because this prophecy is in the book of Isaiah, right?
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Isaiah chapter 44 and 45.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um because Isaiah prophesies that God is going to use Cyrus, it names him uh to bring back the children of Israel.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it happens in Ezra chapter one, you see it, and it happens uh that Cyrus makes a decree and brings it back.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but what's crazy, Josephus, who is a Jewish historian, writes that Cyrus may have actually seen the actual prophecy.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that he would have known about this prophecy, and he was so amazed that his name was recorded in a Jewish book that he's like, I gotta, I have to do this.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so he follows through.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and some scholars say that it might have actually been Daniel himself that would have shown Cyrus that prophecy.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's all kind of you know tradition, historical tradition.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: So we don't see that in the Bible, but it's pretty amazing to see something so clearly prophesied in scripture and miraculously happens 150 years later.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: Isaiah would have known idea who Cyrus was during his day, but he prophesies and it happens.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that's Ezra chapter one is the decree from Cyrus that frees all the Jews to come back.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you you you talk about Daniel, you talk about Jeremiah, you talk about these great prophets.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_02: And like like Daniel is he went through so many kings, yeah, uh that that but he remained.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_02: And and you find that with Jeremiah too.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_02: He just went through, he kept he kept just preaching God's word, kept obeying God.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_02: It pays to follow God, yeah, it pays to obey him, it pays, even though Jeremiah went through a lot, even though um Daniel and then Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego went through a lot, even though you know uh Zerubel and all these, they went through much, but it pays to follow God and to live for him.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you see the way God responds.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so when when these people come back, so the first group that comes back comes back under Zerubbabel, and he is his name literally means planted or born in Babylon.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: So he was born in Babylon, and now he's coming home, and this is he hasn't been home.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: This is home for the first time, and he's home.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: And God, and supernatural, he's the the governor, and God is using him to rebuild the temple.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: So they lay the foundation of the temple, and I talked a little about this in the message.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: They laid the foundation of the temple, and you look at chapter three, at the very end of it, um, and there is a mixed response to the laying of the temple or the laying of the foundation of the temple.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_00: It says that uh some of the people were shouting for joy, uh, and some of the old men were weeping.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so I already know my response, but I just want to hear from you, Pastor.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure you've kind of thought about this passage too.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, why is there weeping?
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we see people, you know, in our world.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we Well, I I I think that no one knows exactly the reason you can say, oh, this is why.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_02: There's just we all we all um project what we think or what we want.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_02: And obviously some people think that they were weeping because they remembered the, and the Bible doesn't even mention it there, the uh the beauty of the temple of Solomon, and this was pelled in comparison to it.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and yeah, yeah, that that may be a little bit of it there too.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_02: And but you even pointed out in your message this past that there's there's also the a weeping sometimes of just you you see God re being re-established among you, you see the foundation of the temple being laid, you see the temple going up, you see this, and so it is a place now where God, because what the temple represented in the Old Testament is it was that place where where God and man connected and met.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_02: And obviously, we understand, and even throughout the Old Testament, it's not like God's everywhere, God's omnipresent, God's you can meet God anywhere, and God did that everywhere, but it was symbolic.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, it's just like when we take communion.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_02: When we take communion, it's a symbolic of what Christ did for us.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_02: And it's uh it's a way of connecting.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_02: And um, and so that's what you have.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_02: The symbol uh of the temple was a symbolic place for the power of God.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_02: And so were they weeping because of, you know, it wasn't quite as good as what it was, or were they weeping because of wow, sometimes I cry when I'm rejoicing.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I weep in that sense of like, God, you've did it, you've brought us back, yeah, you've re-established worship here among your people.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_02: And so, whatever reason, I don't know, but you you'll, I'm sure you will give me the answer.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I would agree with you.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: I would agree with you.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I love the way that the verse ends.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_00: It says, the joyful shouting and the weeping.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_00: This is uh Ezra chapter 3, verse 13.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_00: And the joyful shouting and the weeping mingled together in a loud noise that could be heard from a distance.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so I just love the concept of the weeping and the joyful sounds are mingled together.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I really think that is that's what worship looks like in when we worship in church, when we gather together, there's some people that are coming to church and they're weeping.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_00: There's some people that are joyful, but just because you might be sad about something doesn't mean you stay away.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, your worship isn't welcome.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: No, you're welcome.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_02: No, I think that you you you kind of pointed it out a little bit over the weekend, too, is that this was a generational thing too, yeah.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, because it was the younger ones that were more of rejoicing and exuberant, and it was the older ones that were weeping.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, because and and that makes sense.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_02: It even makes sense a lot of times in our lives is that uh the older crowd had seen the former and now it's being re-established.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_02: They had been through so much more.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_02: It's not that the younger people have not been through stuff, it's just that their response to what has happened before them is a little bit different because of the experience of these older people that they're like their tears, they're weeping tears of joy, of uh and and crying out to God.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_02: And and then there's good there's people that are just screaming and shouting and jumping up and down, yeah, and um, which was represented a younger generation who had never seen before, did not have a any reference point.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and so all they know is that you know this is our opportunity.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and there is, I mean, the reference point is Solomon's Temple, yeah, because these old men remember Solomon's Temple, which was one of the great wonders of the world at that time.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: People from all over the world would come to visit Solomon and to see this spectacular temple and to even see Solomon's house because it was an amazing sight.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: And there is this reality that that's what we used to have, and we don't have it anymore.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: But I think they are seeing the re-establishing of it because if you think about it, it wasn't Solomon's temple that Jesus would walk into.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: It was actually this temple that they would reestablish.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the humbled temple, uh, the one that was destroyed and rebuilt again.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes we think that God shows up at our high points when everything is great.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_00: But sometimes really what God does is he breaks us down and he humbles us.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and that's when he could really move inside of us.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_02: That's good.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_00: There is a there's a good there's a power in that realizing that as good.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_02: You know, the in in the the re-establishing of the temple and the rebuild of the temple did not come without a pushback, did not come without adversaries, did not come without challenges.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_02: Talk to us a little bit about that because I mean they they were they were met head on.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_02: And anytime the gospel is going forward, anytime we're gonna do what's right, anytime we stand for righteousness, there is always gonna be dark forces pushing against us.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_00: So chapter four, the very next chapter says there's immediate opposition.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so the the surrounding neighbors and the countries around them, uh, which all of these countries are all part of the same province, right?
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: They're in the province called the province beyond the river.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and that's how the the Persian, you know, uh government saw them.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_00: They're all one group.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_00: So all the people around them in that same province complained because they said, Hey, you're not allowed to build.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now, they were allowed to build because there was actually a decree given by Cyrus, but so much bureaucracy is happening here that everything just stalls.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_02: And so some things don't change.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_02: Taxes, yeah, bureaucracy.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_02: It's the same.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_02: It's always the same.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, a strongly worded letter can do so much damage.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's what happens.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so nothing happens.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_00: So chapter four is the enemies write a letter to the king, and this is a different king at this point.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and this king writes back and says, Hey, I want you to stop, because they're they tell them a lie.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_00: They say that that if they have they rebuild the city and they're no longer gonna pay taxes or tribute to the king of Persia, and they're gonna be their own kingdom, and so the king just stops it.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so 16 years goes by, there's no movement, and it's we know through the prophets Haggai and Zechariah.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_00: 16 years, 16 years of nothing.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_00: That sounds like a lot of our road work around here.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yeah.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_00: Go ahead.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_00: You live that.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so nothing happens, and so God sends two prophets.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, you see this in Ezra chapter 5, verse 1.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_00: It says, Now the prophets Haggai and Zechariah, son of Ido, prophesy to the Jews who were in Judah and Jerusalem in the name of the Lord, the God of Israel, who was sent over them, who was over them.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and so they are prophesying, God sends them to stir up the people of God to action.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so they go and they prophesy to Zerubbabel and they prophesy to the people, and they say, You have to move, right?
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_00: So Haggai will tell them, Hey, you need to you need to stop building your own house because some of them just left to go build their own houses.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_00: You need to come back and build God's house, right?
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_00: And Zechariah would tell them, Hey, you're not gonna do this by might or by power, but by the Holy Spirit.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so they would hear the challenge and credit to Zerubbabel and to the people because they hear the conviction of the Holy Spirit.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: And instead of saying, get away from us, we don't want to hear from you, like their fathers had done during the time of the kings, during this time, they listen to the prophets, they obey the voice of God through the prophets.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's good.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_00: And they act, even though they don't have permission to do this because they're still under ban, right?
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_00: From doing this, they don't have the resources up to this point.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_00: They're just poor people living in this broken down country or this city, but they just act.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, sometimes I learned a long time ago, sometimes it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_02: Just go.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_02: Just go, just go.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's what they do.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and so then immediately the the neighbors see this uh and they send a letter to the king at the time, at that point, and it's a different king this time.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh his name is Darius.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and King Darius receives a letter from a guy named Tetaniah, who is the governor of this whole province.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_00: And Tetaniah basically is asking King Darius he says, Hey, these guys are saying that they have permission to build.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Because they're going back to Cyrus and they say to the king, can you investigate and see if they have permission?
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so they write the letter, the king goes and he investigates, or I'm sure his officials investigate.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and when they investigate, they find the old scroll with the decree from King Cyrus.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_00: So good.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's just been sitting there for years, and they open it up and they're like, Oh, love this.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_00: They have permission.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so they give him permission.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_00: So the king writes back, and not only does he give them permission, right?
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_00: He tells them in chapter six, he tells the enemies of Israel to keep away, chapter six, verse six, keep away, let the work of this house of God alone.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then he says, How are you gonna pay for it?
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you're gonna make the enemies pay for it.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_00: He says, All of the cost is gonna come from the royal revenue.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna come from the people of the province beyond the river.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_00: So the whole province is now paying for this rebuilding effort.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_02: So good.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_02: That is so good.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_02: You know, there's throughout the scripture, in fact, there's one passage that says that God has laid up the um, you know, the wealth of the unrighteous for the godly.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_02: And that this is what's happening here.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, okay, I'm I'm I'm going to flip the script here, yeah, and I'm going to use an ungodly king to be able to fuel the uh what needs to be happened for the rebuild of the temple.
• 45:27
  unknown: Yeah.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_02: And then you have the temple that is built, and just absolutely wonderful.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_02: Then it goes back to the weeping, the rejoicing, and all the stuff that we've talked about.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, and they're celebrating.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh chapter seven is actually where you see the the character that's named as this this is where the re there's there's another way of returning, yeah, but then there's also reform.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_02: There's one thing to just build the temple.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_02: Now they begin to realize, okay, we need to we need to reform how we've been living.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_02: And we need to actually it's let's actually walk the walk that we say we're you know, we worship this God, but now let's walk the walk.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so God sends the man for the job.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_00: His name is Ezra.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and Ezra's really interesting uh because Ezra is not a governor, he's not a political person, he's actually a priest from the high priestly line.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_00: And it actually tells you whose line he's from.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_00: So if you look at Ezra chapter seven, it says that Ezra is the son of Phineas, the son of Eleazar, which is the son of Aaron.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_00: So you know in the tribes, there's a there's the tribe of Levi, which all the priests come from.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but you could be a Levite, but not a priest, a high priest.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so the high priestly line comes from Aaron, specifically, and specifically Phineas, his grandson.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_00: And if you know what Phineas is famous for, uh in the historian, in the book of Numbers, right?
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sure everybody knows what Phineas is famous for.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_00: Phineas is, right?
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_00: In the book of Numbers, there's an interesting situation.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it's where the children of Israel worship Baal for the first time.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it's while they're still under Moses and they worship Baal, and this is such a terrible thing because Baal worship is going to be a problem all throughout their time during the time of the kings.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's like God looking into the future and seeing just how like have you ever met someone?
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like, if you can go back to like their life is broken, they're dealing with some, but you remember that time that they had that gateway incident, yeah, that first time that they took that drug, the first time that they made that mistake, the first date that started all the mess, all of that, right?
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_00: The first Facebook message they sent.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_00: And you you were like, man, if I could just stop them from taking that first step, maybe you could stop all of this.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_00: And in a way, I feel like God's heart is burdened.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's a nationwide plague brought into Israel while they're there, uh, near the Moabites, where all this worship is happening.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so people are dying left and right because God is trying to prevent them from worshiping Baal.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and there is actually, while near the tabernacle, there's a couple worshiping by sex, by intercourse.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_00: That was the way that Baal worship would happen.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_00: You would worship by having sex in front of the idol.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so God is like, who's gonna act?
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_00: And he's asking Moses to act.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_00: Moses doesn't really want to do anything, Aaron really doesn't want to do anything.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_00: And Phineas, the grandson of Aaron, sees that in a tent, just not too far away, in just kind of broad daylight.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_00: There's a couple worshiping the idol of Baal, a stone's throw away from the tabernacle.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so he grabs a spear, it's pretty horrific.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_00: He goes in and he kills them.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_00: And it says that God is so impressed with the zeal of Phineas that he affirms the line of Phineas as the high priestly line.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_00: So he separates out the family that would come from Phineas because of their zeal.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so that is the heritage of Ezra.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_00: So Ezra comes from that line.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, I've learned something today, folks.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_02: I have learned something today.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_02: That's great.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_02: Go ahead.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_00: No, and so Ezra shows up and you see that play.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_00: He has a tremendous zeal for God and for obeying God's word.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, for the mosaic law.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so he is coming up not as a governor.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_00: He's not a governor, he's not a political leader.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_00: He is just a worshiper and a student of God's word.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's how he shows it.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so you look at who are the kind of people like sometimes we look to politicians, sometimes in our world, as the solution of political things.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_02: That happens all the time.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_02: Sadly to say, but it does.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_00: And and really, who are the people that are going to make the difference in today's world?
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's people like Ezra.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_00: Who love God, who are passionate about God.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_00: When you look at Ezra's, it's actually super cool.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_00: Ezra's performs, how he performs it.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_00: But you see it, and he's just actually just a man who's on fire for God, who's passionate about God's word.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so you see this playing out in Ezra's character.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_00: So every chapter notates it, gives us a clue into the kind of person he was.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_00: So think about this.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_00: Ezra was a student of God's word.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_00: Ezra chapter 7, verse 10.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_00: It says, This was because Ezra had determined to study and obey the law of the Lord and to teach people those decrees and regulations to the people of Israel.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_00: So what was Ezra passionate about?
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_00: God's word.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_02: The word of God.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I mean.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_00: We've talked about our church for so long.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like the Bible's not boring.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_00: You're boring.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_00: And you have, Pastor Ivan, you have such a tremendous passion for making sure everyone has a heart, like, has a heart for God's word.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_00: The word every sermon comes from our scripture reading, but we're all reading together.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_00: This is from our scripture reading plane.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_00: Why is being a student of God's word so important?
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_02: Because heaven and earth will pass away, but the word of God remains.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_02: The flower fadeth, but the word remains.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_02: It's because in the beginning was the word, the word was with God, and the word was God.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_02: And the word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_02: Who is that?
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_02: It's Jesus.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_02: Jesus is the word of God.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_02: The word of God came to heal our disease.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_02: The word of God is the one thing that will not change.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_02: It will remain.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's the same yesterday, today, and forever.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_02: And so in a in a world where truth is fluid and it's changing all the time, I'm talking about truth about world standards.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_02: But there is an absolute truth.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_02: There is the hope that we can have in God's word.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_02: And if we lean into God's word and hide his word in our heart, no matter what happens, circumstances, situations, what the world may bring, we're going to remain strong and steady and steadfast.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_02: And um I think that that's very important.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_02: And of course, you know, Ezra was a man of prayer and fasting even mentions in here.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_02: He calls him to fast.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_02: And he would be fasting.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um, he he would mourn over sin and unrighteousness.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's very much a part of it too.
• 51:52
  unknown: Yeah.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_02: Even the situation with, you know, intermarrying and what they were doing there.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_02: He he was calling them out on that.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so you go into that fasting, you see Ezra practice fasting publicly, right?
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a situation where they're traveling over, they don't have a guard, they don't have any sort of protection as they're traveling.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_00: This is dangerous.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_00: How long did you say it was from Babylon to you know I threw out those numbers?
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_02: I would say it's uh it's over two around 2,000 miles.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but but what you have is these are key routes that thieves, bandits would look for opportunity to be able to overthrow somebody who was not, and so most not able to defend themselves.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_02: And so it was very risky to be able to travel, especially if you're traveling with supplies or anything like that on this type of journey, because uh these individuals, that's all they did.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_02: They look for opportunity to be able to overthrow.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_02: And so oftentimes when uh governments would travel, they travel with armed soldiers and stuff so that they they would wouldn't mess with them.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_02: But somebody like Ezra, they're easy pickings uh un unless there's angels of the Lord protecting them because they've been fasting and praying.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and so that's what you see in Ezra chapter eight, as Ezra is traveling, they're at the they're at the Ahava canal, right?
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_00: And they are not sure how they're gonna keep moving forward because they don't have any sort of soldiers with them.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't want to ask the king because they they and you gotta think they're loaded up with gold and silver, all the stuff to bring to the temple for worship.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_00: They're easy pickings, but Ezra says, you know what we're gonna do?
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna fast.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna fast and pray for God to protect us.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_00: So he declares a fast.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_00: You see the spiritual boldness of this man, yeah, who is a student of God's word, and he says, you know what, we're we're gonna we're just gonna trust in God to send his angels to set charge over us.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_00: And uh it shows me the kind of character that Ezra has uh and this humility that he has.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_02: You know, going into chapter number nine now and looking at that, um one of the things that he's also calling them out is because of they have intermarried with um the other nations around them.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and which and I'm gonna stop and kind of lean into that just a little bit because I think sometimes we can read the scripture and like misunderstand what is going on here.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um was it because um, you know, it was an Israelite marrying somebody from another nation, somebody with a different skin color, somebody with a different, you know, uh complete background, or is there more to it than that?
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_02: In which um I actually wrote this down in my studies this this week.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_02: Uh Ezra chapter 9 and verse number two, okay?
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_02: It says, For the men of Israel have married women from these people and have taken them as wives for their sons.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_02: So the holy race has become polluted by these mixed marriages.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_02: Worse yet, the leaders and officials have led the way in this outrage.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_02: And of course, he's calling them out on this.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_02: But I but it's it's important to understand what's going on.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_02: Is God upset because he talked about a holy race?
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, a holy race.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_02: What does that mean?
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_02: I wrote in my own notes this, and I and this is what I wrote down, and I hope that you'll receive this and understand more of what's going on because you didn't marry somebody that looked like you.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_01: No, yeah.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think so.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_02: You're very dark-skinned, she's very pale.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_02: She's very white, yeah.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_02: She's I mean, I mean, I I'm I'm I would be considered white, but she's like, why do white?
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_02: She's a she's a so is that wrong?
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, here, here.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_02: I wrote this down.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_02: God calls us to be holy as he is holy.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_02: It means turning away from the ways of the world, living set apart, and surrendering completely to Yahweh.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_02: Holiness does not separate us from the people of different races, whether in friendship or partnership or even marriage.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_02: Instead, it declares that through the shed blood of his son, the dividing wall between all people has been torn down.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_02: In Christ, we are one family worshiping one God.
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_02: Our purpose is to worship him alone.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_02: Nothing and no one should distract us from the calling of being a holy people.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_02: So what's going on here?
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_02: It's not an issue of skin tone, it's not an issue of nationality, uh, it's an issue of who you're worshiping.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_02: And they were intermingling with people that were worshiping gods that were pulling them away from the one true God.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_02: And that was the issue.
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, Ezra, it's interesting because at the very, very end of Ezra, and some people are very confused on this, um, where Ezra demands, or Ezra actually doesn't demand, but the people say, hey, we're gonna separate ourselves from uh these foreign wives and the children that have come from these.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_00: So it looks like God is, you know, demanding a mass divorce, which we know from scripture, God hates divorce.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_00: So why would why would that happen?
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I think just to give a little bit of historical context to it, I think what really is happening, if you look at the end of Ezra, um, there is this great move of repentance um where the these people realize, hey, we have sinned.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to look at why they realize that, which is really interesting the way we get there.
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_00: But just the the the bones of it is they realize they've sinned, they realize they've taken foreign wives who worship four uh false idols, and they've allowed idol worship into their community through this process.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so all the all the people from all of Judea have come and they're going to stand trial, if you will, and they're gonna go family by family.
• 57:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and I think what's really how if if it was just a mass divorce, well, they would just all there wouldn't be needs of trials, there wouldn't be need for a judge or uh any sort of decision-making process because it'd just be like, hey, you just need to divorce your foreign wife and be over with it.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_00: But it seems like what's actually happening is that every family is coming forward, family at a time, and they're standing before you know their community, the leaders of the community, and they're saying whether they're worshiping an idol or not.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_00: And if they are, then they needed to make a separation.
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a hard separation to live differently for God.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and if they weren't, if if, because there's nothing in scripture about marrying, marrying outside of their race is wrong, there's nothing like that.
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's totally fine.
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_00: So if they're if their families are choosing to live for Yahweh, then they're blessed and continue on, their children are blessed.
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_00: But if they're living different, and this is a hard word for some people, they're they have to cut that off.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and the way I look at this is like God is demanding something, demanding holiness, like you said, holiness of his people.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_00: And there is a special holiness that God is demanding of the Jewish people in this passage.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_00: So a helpful way for me to look at it is when when you know, when my wife was pregnant, she's been pregnant four times, okay.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_00: We have four kids, but every time she got pregnant, there's certain things she couldn't eat.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_00: So we can she loves to eat sushi, but man, we had certain limitations.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_00: Before she was pregnant, she can eat all the fish with all the mercury in it she wanted.
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_00: Once she's pregnant, apparently there's rules against that.
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know, she can drink as much coffee as she wants, but once she's pregnant, she can't.
• 59:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I look at the Jewish people as being special in a sense that they're pregnant with the promise of the coming Messiah.
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_02: That's good.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's some laws and stipulations specific to them that even for us that we don't carry because of that, because they're carrying the hope of the coming Messiah.
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so they are choosing, God is demanding of them to live holy and separate from the nations around him so they can preserve a godly line that would lead to Jesus, right?
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_00: And that that is what really what's happening here.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_00: But I want to look at how we got there.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_00: Look at Ezra chapter 10, verse 1, because remember, Ezra's not a politician.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Ezra is a man of God, and this is what Ezra happens or happens in the book of Ezra.
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_00: It says, While Ezra prayed and made confession, weeping, casting himself down before the house of God, a very great assembly of men and women and children gathered to him out of Israel.
• 1:00:05
  SPEAKER_00: For the people wept bitterly.
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then one of them says, We have broken faith with our God and have married foreign women.
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_00: And therefore, now we let us make a covenant to put away these wives and their children.
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_00: So, what's happening?
• 1:00:21
  SPEAKER_00: Ezra didn't preach a sermon, he didn't make this law or political move to outlaw the marrying of whatever.
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_00: What does Ezra do?
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_00: Ezra just stands in front of everyone, he turns around, he faces the temple, he bows in front of God, and he begins to weep and repent for his people.
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_00: And they see it and they fall down and they weep and they repent.
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um and there is something that happens where look at contrast with the end of Nehemiah.
• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_00: Nehemiah is very frustrated at the end of Nehemiah because the same thing is happening to Editude.
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_00: And Nehemiah goes and physically attacks people, beats them up, and he is trying to make a change, right?
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_00: Because he's a political leader.
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_00: But Ezra, that's not Ezra doesn't demand the change, okay.
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_00: He's just praying.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_00: His reform is born, his revival is born out of prayer.
• 1:01:12
  SPEAKER_00: A few weeks ago, we were in After God's Own Heart, and I'll this is a beautiful moment because I got to pray with a lot of people during this time.
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_00: But you asked people to repent.
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_00: We were talking about repentance and David's repented heart, and you said something I thought that was really beautiful to be like some of you need to just not just repent for yourself, but you need to repent for the people in your life.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I I kind of asked the question, I was talking to my group of guys and say, how do you repent for someone else?
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_00: What does that even look like?
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_00: Because that is a mode of leadership, right?
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_00: How do you repent for someone else, Pastor?
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_02: Great question.
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_02: Great question.
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_02: But you you but you find that throughout the script scriptures, um, as leaders would step up and begin to repent on behalf of a nation, on behalf of uh individuals.
• 1:01:58
  SPEAKER_02: And I would encourage anybody to listen to me.
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_02: If you got family members that are far from crossed, um obviously we understand uh what it means to repent for our own sins.
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_02: But to repent for other people's sins is another level of intercession.
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_02: It's a depth of prayer that obviously your repentance for them does not actually automatically change their heart.
• 1:02:23
  SPEAKER_02: But what it does do, it sets into motion uh the work of the spirit um to begin to set the stage that they will turn to God and they will cry out to God, and they will, and it's just it it's something I don't think we do enough of, uh Samson.
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_02: I think that we need to be called to uh repent on behalf of others.
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_02: And um and I believe that if we do, we will see the revival and we'll see the work uh that needs to happen.
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_02: And so instead of always just so sometimes just calling them out all the time in their sin is is not as effective as just falling on your face and repenting for their sins.
• 1:03:03
  SPEAKER_02: And then God begins to work.
• 1:03:05
  SPEAKER_02: And it's a beautiful thing.
• 1:03:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think when we as leaders make confession, uh it creates the permission, if you will, for others to confess.
• 1:03:17
  SPEAKER_02: So good.
• 1:03:18
  SPEAKER_02: So good.
• 1:03:19
  SPEAKER_02: So good.
• 1:03:19
  SPEAKER_02: So Ezra is awesome, amazing book.
• 1:03:23
  SPEAKER_02: You know, the Bible's not boring.
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_02: You're boring, we're boring.
• 1:03:28
  SPEAKER_02: Uh the Bible's brilliant.
• 1:03:29
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, just real quick, I just want to touch on uh Psalms and Proverbs, okay?
• 1:03:33
  SPEAKER_02: Because obviously we're reading that along with us with our with our reading plan.
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_02: And um, I want you to turn to just uh Psalms 118, okay, because that's gonna be in our reading um this weekend.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_02: And as this goes out, uh it will be in our reading.
• 1:03:48
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I'm gonna read um Proverbs chapter 23.
• 1:03:52
  SPEAKER_02: Uh Proverbs chapter 20, just one word.
• 1:03:54
  SPEAKER_02: Proverbs is so awesome.
• 1:03:55
  SPEAKER_02: Just as like verse after verse, because I love it because it just jumps around.
• 1:03:58
  SPEAKER_02: You barely find you rarely find more than two or three verses that kind of flow together.
• 1:04:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's just like jumping from one thought to the next thought to the next thought.
• 1:04:06
  SPEAKER_02: And in Proverbs chapter 22, 23 and verse number two, it just says, if you are a big eater, put a knife to your throat.
• 1:04:18
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, sometimes I just kind of sit there and read these and I just think about them like, wow, what does that mean?
• 1:04:25
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, if you're a big eater, put a knife to your throat.
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_02: This is not some weight loss program, which I mean, maybe that could be the solution to your weight loss program too.
• 1:04:36
  SPEAKER_02: That's a snapshot.
• 1:04:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but that there's more to it.
• 1:04:39
  SPEAKER_02: I I wrote this down, um, and I'll just focus on that big eater because it's talking about doing this before a king.
• 1:04:47
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:04:47
  SPEAKER_02: And it says, I I wrote this practice self-control in your life.
• 1:04:52
  SPEAKER_02: And this is not just about eating, uh, that can be part of it, um, but be disciplined to recognize when enough is truly enough.
• 1:05:03
  SPEAKER_02: To ignore restraint is to open the door to mockery and to become a captive of your flesh.
• 1:05:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:05:12
  SPEAKER_02: And so, I mean, just God's word is just wonderful, it's beautiful.
• 1:05:17
  SPEAKER_02: And just one little sentence like that, you can just stop and meditate.
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_02: And how does that apply to my life?
• 1:05:22
  SPEAKER_02: What are the things that I'm allowing to control me?
• 1:05:26
  SPEAKER_02: My emotions, my flesh, and and literally teaching this isn't isn't just this is self-control.
• 1:05:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:05:32
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:05:33
  SPEAKER_02: So Psalms uh 118.
• 1:05:35
  SPEAKER_02: Just kind of take off and read just a little bit of that.
• 1:05:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, uh, I actually will like the ending of it.
• 1:05:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so 118, the ending of it says verse 22, the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.
• 1:05:49
  SPEAKER_00: This is the Lord's doing, it is marvelous in our eyes.
• 1:05:52
  SPEAKER_00: This is the day that the Lord has made.
• 1:05:54
  SPEAKER_00: Let us rejoice and be glad in it.
• 1:05:56
  SPEAKER_00: Verse 25 says, Save us, we pray, O Lord.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_00: Another way we can say that word is Hosanna.
• 1:06:02
  SPEAKER_00: We pray, O Lord.
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord, O Lord, we pray, give us success.
• 1:06:07
  SPEAKER_00: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
• 1:06:09
  SPEAKER_00: We bless you from the house of the Lord.
• 1:06:11
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord is our God.
• 1:06:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so that points to somebody.
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, absolutely.
• 1:06:18
  SPEAKER_02: You know, that the first part, first um, verse one all the way through, is just talking about Thanksgiving, praise forevermore, and all this stuff.
• 1:06:26
  SPEAKER_02: Well, why?
• 1:06:27
  SPEAKER_02: Because it how you ended right there.
• 1:06:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's Jesus.
• 1:06:30
  SPEAKER_02: Hey Samson, thank you for joining us.
• 1:06:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's been fun.
• 1:06:34
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm so glad that you joined us out there, and it's been a wonderful time.
• 1:06:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I have learned some things.
• 1:06:41
  SPEAKER_02: I have enjoyed our conversation.
• 1:06:43
  SPEAKER_02: Uh came a little bit like stressed.
• 1:06:45
  SPEAKER_02: How's this all gonna come together?
• 1:06:46
  SPEAKER_02: Because you've been busy, I've been busy, we hadn't had time to talk about it, but I think God kind of took over and he he helped us out.
• 1:06:53
  SPEAKER_02: So, hey, I'm so glad that you joined us.
• 1:06:56
  SPEAKER_02: I hope that you share this with somebody.
• 1:06:58
  SPEAKER_02: I hope that you're learning, growing, and we will look forward to seeing you next time on North Bible Recap.