Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / May 17th, 2015 | Route 66 - Ezra

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May 17th, 2015 | Route 66 - Ezra · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, Washburn, I I don't remember a time when we've had more graduates percentage-wise going to Washburn.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: That is so cool that they're staying in town.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's so good for Washburn.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: All those sharp kids.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I think there were about three going to K-State, so that helped.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't hear any going to KU.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: So KU will remain a pagan institution.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: And uh just kidding.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: So wow.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh if um if you're visiting today, we're on a road trip through the Bible.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: We're calling it Route 66, because there are 66 books in the Bible.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Nicely done.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: And uh this morning we have arrived at the book of Ezra, I think it's number 15, and uh my theme, title is Move Close to God in a Hostile World.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: So um that's what we're talking about, and uh I'm looking forward to sharing this with you.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Let's start with a word of prayer.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: Father, uh, I echo Lori's prayer, and I pray for Derek, the new director of student ministry, and ask, Lord, that uh uh that you'd bless him and his summer interns and uh high school and junior high groups, and uh Lord, we ask that your hand, you lay your hand invisibly on these graduates as they move off into a new part of their lives, and ask as Lori prayed, that they uh would not drift away, that your spirit would keep them close in Jesus' name.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna start with a joke, the old joke about the CEO, the billionaire who had founded a company and invited all of his uh staff to come out to his ranch for the annual party, you know, 1,500 acres, mountains, streams, and so forth, and they're doing hors d'oeuvres out back and huge swimming pool, but but the guests noticed that uh they he obviously didn't want them swimming in the pool because he had filled the swimming pool with alligators.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: And then he calls them, he says, before going to dinner, he he he gets their attention, he says, Listen, the reason I've filled the pool with alligators is to convey a message, and that is that my motto is courage.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: That I believe everything that I've ever done in life, he was an elderly statesman now, everything I've ever done is due to courage.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I've decided that with my wife gone and so forth, I would love to have a partner, I'd love to share my house or my land or my business with someone, uh, but it's going to take someone with courage, someone who would be prove it by willing to jump in the swimming pool and swim through these alligators to the other side.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: There's a nervous laugh.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, nobody volunteered, and he turned around and well, he said, it's time for dinner.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: So they turn around to go back inside the house, and all of a sudden they hear a splash, and they turn around, and there is a guy.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: There's a guy, and he's swimming for his life, and he's he's paddling, and they all turn around and they watch him as he's splashing through the water, and somehow he's able to navigate through all the alligators, and he makes it out the other side, and comes out and he stands up, and and the CEO goes over to him, puts his arm around him, he says, Well, you have proven your courage.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: What would you like?
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: Would you like to be my partner?
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: Would you like uh split the house, the land, whatever you want?
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the guy says, I just want to know who shoved me in the pool.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you've become a Christian recently and you're in the pool, you know, here this morning, in the pool of Christians, you can be forgiven for thinking that someone has shoved you in a pool of alligators or crocodiles because the fact of the matter is that Christians today live in a hostile world.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Christians are, uh, as uh uh not so long ago, a Fox uh news discussion held it, Christians are under attack.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: Even here in Topeka, to be known as a conservative or an evangelical Christian is to be associated with the Phelps family.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh in in uh across the country, the UNI are well aware that Chick-fil-A has been under attack and under uh has been skewered for its position on traditional marriage.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: Hobby lobby is fighting for religious liberty.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: A group of schools that never get together on anything.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: The Christian universities of our country have, like the Catholic charities, grouped together to file actually a lawsuit against the federal government because of worries that uh that the new health care plan will remove their religious liberty.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: And and this is not just in America, the headline of the London Mail, Christianity under attack.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: Newsweek's headline of a of an issue, Under God, Under Fire.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh two years ago, just two years ago, S.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: E.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: Cup put out a book called Losing Our Religion, subtitled Why the Liberal Media Want to Tell You What to Think, Where to Pray, and How to Live.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: But actually, what this book is full of is story after story after story of how Christians are under attack and and and under ridicule in the entertainment industry and in the media industry.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: For we live in a world where an actress like Gwyneth Poultra has no problem allowing a billboard with her face that says religion is the cause of all the problems in the world.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: I don't believe in organized religion at all.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's what separates people.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: But the the fact that Christianity is under attack is not only a truth here in America, it is a truth around the world.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: We we think of how the Christians were uh persecuted by the Romans in the first century.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: But you can go to a website today that lists Islamic terror attacks on Christians just since 9-11.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: And you'll go through page after page after page.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: And this is acts of terrorism on civilians and on church workers by radical Muslims that have nothing at all to do with war or combat, but innocent Christians specifically targeted simply because they're Christians.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I simply excerpted uh the ten that they listed for this last month, that is the month of April.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: The last one of which, of course, was famous in Kenya, where a handful of radical Muslims went to a school and separated off the non-Muslims from the Muslims and then executed 148, 150 uh who were Christians.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that's last month.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh uh, but but we have stories even from this month.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: I've I've listed some of them.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: A story from a headline from yesterday: Muslims destroy 100,000 Christian homes, murdering 5,000.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: That comes out of Nigeria.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: And the Nigerian bulletin this morning, 70 Christians murdered in plateau by jihadists.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: Ladies and gentlemen, we live in a day when Christianity is under attack.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the questions that you and I uh need to ask, and that we typically ask, how do I survive in a hostile world?
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: How do I live in this society, how I live in the workplace, how I live in the family, how do I live as a body of believers?
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: Now, there are a number of answers to that question, but it seems to me that the most simple and fundamental answer to that question comes to us out of the book of Ezra.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the reasons why these later books in the Old Testament, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, these last historical books, are so precious and so priceless as resources in our library, is because these books were pinned especially to a group of God's people who is no longer sitting on the top of the world as they were back in David and Solomon's day.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, they do not even have their own ruler or they are their own king.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's a time when the people of God wielded no political power and they were ruled over by pagan kings.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: And then, as now, the people of faith were asking each other, how do we survive in a hostile world?
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: And you and I are driving along Route 66, and it's dark out, and we see someone hitchhiking, and we pull over and we pick him up, and we start driving, and we ask him what his name is.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: He says, My name is Ezra.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: And we say, Well, what do you do?
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Well, I'm uh both a Bible teacher and a political leader.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: And and it just pops out of us, saying, Do you have any good advice for me on how do you live in a world when Christianity is under attack in a hostile world?
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: And he gives us some advice, but the fundamental and simplest way of summarizing his advice is simply this you need to move close to God in a hostile world.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I'll explain to you really clearly how I think he says that and what I think God has for you and for me.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: But let's talk about this unique guy, Ezra, for a moment, who in 500 BC is one of the great leaders in the world.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: He gives the lie to the idea that you and I, as individuals, can't make a big difference in the world, because this guy does make a big difference.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: His resume we read in Ezra chapter 7, verse 6.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: Ezra came up from Babylon.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: He was, the first thing we learn, is a scribe.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's the Holman Christian Standard Bible.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: The NIV would be closer to the meaning of that word, which is a teacher.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: That is, he's he's someone whose job is that he was paid for copying manuscripts.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: But a person who copied manuscripts in that day was more than just a copier of manuscripts.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: He was also a teacher.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: He was wise and he was highly intelligent.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: The second thing we learn on his resume is not just his job, we learn his giftedness.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: He was gifted, he was skilled in the law of Moses, which simply means that he was a gifted Bible student and Bible teacher.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: The law of Moses specifically was the Torah, what we call the Pentateuch, that part of the Bible which was already in writing.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so we would just say he had a gift for studying and explaining the Bible, which Yahweh, the God of Israel, had given.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: And then finally, in Ezra 7, 6, we read his connections.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: The king had granted him everything he requested because the hand of Yahweh his God was on him.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: He had the greatest of uh, shall we say, personal connections.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: He was connected with the king, Artaxerxes, the greatest king in the world at that time.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: But even more importantly, he was connected beyond the king with Yahweh, the omnipotent God.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: And we read here a clause that we don't read anywhere else in the Bible other than Ezra.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: And it's repeated six times.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's the key clause in this entire book.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: The hand of Yahweh his God was on him.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I want you to picture when you were a child and the hand of your father rested on your head or on your shoulder.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the hand of Yahweh God invisibly rested on this man.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: And we read a few verses later why the hand of God rested on him.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the second of three verses that I'm giving you about this man Ezra.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: For we read, Ezra had set his heart to study the law of the Lord and to do it and to teach his statutes and rules in Israel.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: These were his priorities.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: Study, do, teach.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: In that order.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's vitally important, by the way, if you're a teacher, Sunday school teacher, small group leader, even a teacher of your children or grandchildren, not to leave out that middle point.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: One of the reasons for lifeless Bible teaching today is that too many uh teachers leave out that middle one.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: They simply study and then they take it and teach it.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: But between the study and the teaching, you must do it.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: You must obey it.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: You must practice what it is that you've studied.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, I would say, uh, parents and grandparents, you must not stop with one and two but move on to three.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: Tendency for you might be to study the word and then to live out or apply the word to your life, but then not to teach it.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: You must move on to teach it.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so I admire this guy, Ezra.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: He is a hero of mine.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: He is, in a sense, the first expository preacher in the whole Bible.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: And God had his hand on Ezra because Ezra studied the word, did the word, and taught the word.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: And the third verse is what I've put on your study sheet as the key verse in the entire book.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: Ezra, these words came out of his mouth to the king.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: The hand of our God is for good on all those who seek him.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: There's that word again.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: But his power and his anger are against all those who forsake him.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, if you were here last week, 2 Chronicles, you may remember or may not that the key verse of 2 Chronicles had the word seek in it as well.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: Do you remember that famous verse?
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: The key verse?
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: Let's say it together.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: If my people which are called by my name shall humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: If you weren't here last week, we spoke about revival, the four requirements for revival in this first.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: The third, to seek his face.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, I so appreciate those of you who Twitter me or Facebook me or email me during uh the week after sermon to interact with a message.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: And several of you did this week about that word seek, which is such a key word in the fifth century BC.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: We find it as sort of the synonym of relationship to God.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I love this word too, and I want to share with you what what one of you uh uh um texted me about this.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: David, remember, said, When you said, seek my face, my heart said to you, your face, O Lord, I shall seek.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: Wonderful.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: Psalm 28.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, Psalm 27.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: And one of you texted me this week a wonderful quote I was unaware of from Saint Anselm, Anselm, uh a leading theologian a thousand years ago.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't this a wonderful quote?
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: Say this with me.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: Let me seek you in longing and long for you in seeking.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: I I was blown away by that.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: Let me seek you in longing and long for you in seeking.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: So, so God says, uh the kind of a people I'm looking for are people who seek me, and that is a synonym for having a fellowship with, a close relationship with God.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the first thing that Israel has to do, God's people, is if they want a close relationship with God, they need to leave Babylon and they need to get back to God's city.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: They need to get back to Jerusalem and they need to rebuild the temple because that's where God says, I'll meet with you.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: So that's going to be the first thing that happens in this book.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: And if you don't mind, we're going to do about three minutes here of seminary-level sort of sort of review, Bible school level review.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, for those of you uh who don't look at the Old Testament much, a review would be that um way back in about a thousand BC, you had a united kingdom, Saul, David, and Solomon.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: All right?
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: And then the kingdom divided after Solomon.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: It split into ten tribes in the north called Israel, and two tribes in the south called Judah.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: All of the north went bad, okay?
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: 19 kings and they were all bad.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: Twenty kings in the south outlasted the north, and and there were there were half a dozen good kings there.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: But God got so sick of the rebellion against him that in about 600 BC, he allowed at Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon to come down and take Israel into captivity.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: This was a prediction that he had made, and it happened.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: They had a seven-year exile.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine if you would nine, you're 900 miles away from home, away from Jerusalem.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: For 70 years, you are in a foreign land.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: You have a hard time singing the songs of Zion, Psalm 137, in a minor key.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just so hard.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have altar, you don't have a temple, you don't have fellowship with God, you can't get your sins forgiven so forth.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: You're just, and now all of a sudden, we are going to find out at the end of this time, God does a remarkable thing, and this is the story of Esther, Ezra, Nehemiah, and brings his people back to the land.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how this book starts, real quickly.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: In the first year of Cyrus, I want to share with you the archaeological thing about this.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: So they're talking about Cyrus the Great, very famous person in secular history, in his first year.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: Cyrus, king of Persia, he had knocked Babylon off the top of the mountain.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: He's now boss, 539 BC.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: And the word of the Lord spoken through Jeremiah was fulfilled.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: That is, that they could come back to the land one day.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord put it into the mind of King Cyrus to issue a proclamation throughout his entire kingdom and to put it in writing.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: This is what King Cyrus of Persia says.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord, the God of heaven, this is so remarkable.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord the God of heaven has given me all the kingdoms of the earth.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: And has appointed me to build him a house at Jerusalem in Judah.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: My goodness.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: Whoever is among his people, may his God be with him, and may he go to Jerusalem in Judah and build the house of the Lord, the God of Israel, the God who is in Jerusalem.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: Let every survivor be assisted by the men of that region with silver, gold, goods, and livestock, along with a free will offering for the house of God in Jerusalem.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: How remarkable.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, we know from history Cyrus did this with all of his captured peoples.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: He was that generous.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, we have one of the great archaeological discoveries of all time, discovered 130 years ago, nine inches long, called the Cyrus Cylinder, discovered there in Babylon.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: It sits in the British Museum today.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: It dates from this exact same time period as Ezra 1-1.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: And on that cylinder, he says, I have established Persian rule, and I will allow deported peoples to return home.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: Wise political move makes them happy.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: Israel becomes a buffer in Jerusalem between him and his worst enemy, Egypt.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: So you have this wonderful thing of Cyrus Silar.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, the United Nations is so taken with this that they have a copy of it inside their front door, and they label it the first declaration of human rights, is by Cyrus the Great.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: That is, that is, that freedom of religion, freedom of all peoples, and so forth.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: And Cyrus was used by God to send back these Jerusalemites because God can't have his son, the Messiah, born in Babylon.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: He needs to have him born in Bethlehem.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: So he's got to get his people back.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: Alright?
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: So we continue to read in Ezra 1, 5, and 6.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: So the family leaders of Judah and Benjamin, along with the priests and Levites, everyone God had motivated, prepared to go up and rebuild the Lord's house in Jerusalem.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: And all their neighbors supported them with silver, gold, goods, and so forth.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: And King Cyrus himself brought out the articles of the Lord's house, the temple, that Nebuchadnezzar had taken from Jerusalem and placed in the house of his gods.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: 5,400.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: Silver, gold, all kinds of things, including the great menorah candlestick.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that something?
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: That Cyrus would do that.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: God was working in him, by the way, exactly the way he worked 500 years later in Caesar Augustus.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know the story in Luke, too.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: God needs Mary and Joseph down in Bethlehem.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: So he moves in the mightiest ruler in the world in that day, 500 years later, to pass a proclamation that will send everybody back to their hometown.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody thinks about the fact that this was just as amazing.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: God works in the mightiest ruler in the world in that day, Cyrus the Great, to send Israel back to the land.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: So the exiles returned, Ezra 2-2, to Jerusalem and Judah, each to his own town.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in Ezra and Nehemiah this week and next week's book, you'll find that there are three returns, two of them in our book of Ezra.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: In Ezra 1 through 6, there is a return under Zerubbabel.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: Bounced back to Jerusalem.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: Sir Rubberball.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: And they rebuilt the temple.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's in Ezra 1 through 6.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then later, the problem is the people had departed from God, Ezra 7 through 10.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: So God sends Ezra back, the writer of this book, and revives the people.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then next week we have the wall gets rebuilt.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: So those are the three returns.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: We have the temple rebuilt, then the people revived in this book, and next week the wall rebuilt.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: These three returns happen under Under different rulers.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: God oversees the whole thing.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a whole remarkable return.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: And they're returning back to a place in the world that you and I know of.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's one of the great wonders of the world.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: The Temple Mount in Jerusalem today has a golden dome.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: It has the silver dome of the El Aksamasque.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: And when God's people, the Israelites, returned to this place, they found that it, of course, was all broken down.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: Solomon's temple had been destroyed.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there was no ark anymore, and none of that stuff.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: We've never found the ark since then, by the way, despite what the movies tell you.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so their first goal is there, they need to build the altar so they can uh so they can have their sins uh uh wiped away by God, and then they're gonna build the temple.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the story, that's what they do in this book.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: But all of that is like Bible school stuff.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: You say, what difference does it make?
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the difference it makes is that all of this is that God wants his people to have fellowship with him.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so the first of the two lessons of this book is that you and I survive in a hostile world by establishing fellowship with God and not giving in to the opposition against fellowship with God that the enemy would bring upon us.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: And again, a key line, Ezra 8.22, the hand of our good is for the hand of our God is for good on all those who seek Him.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what does that mean practically?
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'll just tell you what it means for me.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: This is not a great theological answer.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: For me, it just means talking with God and walking with God each and every day.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's what fellowship with God is all about.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: You get up in the morning, even before you climb out of bed, you go, God, thanks for this day.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: Here I am.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: And you crawl out of bed because if you talk any longer, you fall back asleep.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: So get out of bed, you know, you go to the bathroom, you wash your face, you do whatever it needs to do, but you know, you're talking with God.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: You say, God, you know, I ask that you forgive me for yesterday, what I did yesterday, and I ask ahead of time that you please be gracious to me, protect me from sin, and you just talk with him and walk with him through the day.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's fellowship, that's just simply fellowship with God.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how it's defined basically in the in chapter one of 1 John, a book about fellowship with God.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: If we walk in the light, as he's in the light, we have fellowship with one another.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: Blood of Jesus Christ keeps on cleansing us from all sin.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: Walk with God, talk with God.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: What a privilege.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine?
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine having the privilege of fellowship, getting to talk with God and walk with him all the time?
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: And yet we give up that privilege so easily?
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: We're like that couple walking in Central Park recently moved to, recently moved to New York City.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: A jogger goes by and and he brushes against the guy, you know, nothing major.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: Jogger goes on, the jogger then checks and realizes he's lost his wallet.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: He goes, I know that guy's he's pickpocket.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: He circles around and goes right back to that guy, and even though he's bigger than him, he sticks out his hand and says, the wallet.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: Guy pulls it out and hands it to him.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: Jogger runs on, sticks it in his pocket, and runs on home.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: He gets home, he pulls it out, he goes, Ooh, that's not my wallet.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: His wife says, You left your wallet on the table.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: He opens the wallet, he calls the number inside the wallet, and the guy says, Yeah, he says, I I I didn't, I I I uh sorry, I took your wallet.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I'd like to give it back to you.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, good, the guy says.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: He says, I got a question.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: You're a lot bigger than I am.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: Why, when I put out my hand and ask for the wallet, did you just hand it to me?
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he says we just moved to New York City, we're kind of scared.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: We know the people here are, you know, pretty dangerous.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: We decided if anybody ever asked us for our money or anything, we just hand it to them.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he gave us, he gave up something precious to them a little bit too easily, but no more easily than Christians sometimes give up this incredible, incredible privilege, this incredible possession of fellowship with the Lord, simply because the people I work around don't have much use for God, right?
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: Or the people that I hang around, they don't have their quiet time, so why should I?
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: Or, you know, it's not really cool anymore, so why should I give my time walking with God and talking with God?
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: Don't give up this incredible privilege.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now, there can be active opposition to it because you and I have an enemy, an invisible enemy, the enemy of God, which who will work against us and put stresses in our lives.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: So when you and I get up in the morning and want to have a quiet time, he'll work against it.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: And there was opposition back then, too.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: We read in Ezra 4.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: When the enemies of Judah and Benjamin heard that the returned exiles were building a temple for Yahweh, they discouraged, they bribed, they frustrated, they accused.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: And they were successful.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: And the work stopped for a while, and we have to read in Ezra 5 that it took a couple of prophets, Zechariah and Haggai, to come along and say, get back to, don't give up this incredible opportunity for fellowship with God just because you've got a little opposition.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: So eventually they did finish.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: It took them uh 20 years, but they finished, and the temple wasn't, of course, as good as Solomon's, but they finished the temple, and there was incredible joy.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: You read about it in chapter 6, and just shouting and dancing and celebration.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: The same thing, by the way, that's going on in Jerusalem today.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: Today happens to be Jerusalem Day in Israel, and so you have thousands of people out on the streets, you know, in Israel right now.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's seven hours later over there, but right now waving flags and celebrating the reunification of Jerusalem, which happened at the end of the Six-Day War.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's kind of nice because we happen to be celebrating, you know, something that happened, you know, you know, back in 516 BC when the temple got finished, and people all over Jerusalem were waving flags and they were going around and shouting.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: I just thought I'd share that with you that we have something in common.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: That fellowship with the Lord, if you don't give in to opposition, if you determine that you're going to go ahead and do it, no matter what's around you, I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna walk with God and talk with God, you'll find great joy.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: But the second problem is that you can have serious blockage that stops your fellowship with God.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so the other half of this book, 7 through 10, chapter 7 through 10, tells us to eliminate fellowship blockages.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: Don't give in to impurity.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I'm scared to talk about this.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: This is a part of the Bible I wish wasn't there.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'll be very honest with you.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: Here are four chapters that kind of make me cringe.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: Four chapters that will never be on focus on the family, to be honest.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because God commands divorce.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: Let's watch.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: Ezra chapter 9, impurity.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: Should be impurity.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: But the leaders approached me, chapter 9, 1, and they said to Ezra, the people of Israel, priests and Levites, haven't separated themselves from the surrounding peoples, whose detestable practices are like the Canaanites, Hittites, and about 15 other Its.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: Indeed, the Israelite men have taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves and their sons, so the holy seed has become mixed with the surrounding peoples.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: What had happened is that over the years they'd seen cute girls who worshipped other gods, pagans, people who are not Israelites, who had come in when they were gone during those seven years, and so they start intermarrying.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: You go, why is that a big deal?
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's a huge deal because if you know the Old Testament, the Abrahamic covenant, you know that God is working through his people Israel, and he has to have a people, Israel, that his son the Messiah is born into and comes to seek and to save those who are lost.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: And and you have all of these promises to Israel.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so this is a huge problem because now you have loads of men, loads of their sons, and so forth, and they're all intermarried with pagans who don't worship the Lord.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so we read the leaders and officials have taken the lead in the same unfaithfulness.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: And when Ezra heard, he says, I tore my tunic and rope, I pulled out some of the hair from my head and beard, try that sometime, and sat down devastated.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: And everyone who trembled at the words of the God of Israel gathered around me because of the unfaithfulness of the exiles, while I sat devastated until the evening offering, when I got up from my humiliation with my tunic and robe, and then fell on my knees and spread out my hands to Yahweh, my God, chapter 9, verse 6.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, My God, I am ashamed and embarrassed to lift my face toward you, my God, because our iniquities are higher than our heads, and our guilt is as high as the heavens.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: And he goes on through this whole chapter to pray this remarkable and tortured prayer.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what to do, God.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: We are in deep trouble.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: Your entire plan is in jeopardy.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: What in the world do we do?
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: Chapter 10.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so while Ezra prayed and confessed, we read, weeping and falling face down before the house of God, an extremely large assembly of Israelite men, women and children gathered around them.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: So they're having a revival.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: The people are weeping bitterly.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: And then some of them said, Ezra, we'll be honest, what has to happen is that we have to put away our foreign wives.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: And they say to him in a remarkable verse 4, Rise up, this matter is in your hands, we will support you.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: So take courage and do it.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: And he does it.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: Verse 10, he stands up, he says, You've been unfaithful by marrying foreign women, adding to Israel's guilt, therefore make a confession.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: Separate yourselves from the surrounding people and your foreign wives.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: And you go, all right, I can get rid of my wife.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: No, here is the deal.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: No longer does this apply because we are not living in a theocracy.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: We're not the land of Israel.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: In 1 Corinthians chapter 7, God says, I've changed the rules.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm no longer, my plan is no longer in jeopardy now that Christ has come.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: And therefore, if you have, if you are married to an unbelieving husband or an unbelieving wife, you need to stay with them because that's an evangelistic opportunity.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: But one thing Ezra does let us know is that there's something more important than marriage and children, and that is your relationship to God.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that is so true that you and I sometimes can find ourselves in danger of the idolatry of the family.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: Someone's called it creeping Mormonism, but the idolatry of the family is where you elevate your family above God Himself.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: And this passage at least tells us to watch out for that.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, the lesson for you and me from this passage is not just that fellowship with God is important, but you and I need to be absolutely certain that we eliminate fellowship blockages.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever it is that drives you away from God, whatever impurity makes it impossible for you to have fellowship with God, you must exercise radical surgery to get rid of it.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: I put the picture here of a guy named Aaron who, I think you heard the story of mountain climber and where the rock fell on his arm and he was bleeding and he was gonna die, and so he takes out his pocket knife and he slices through his arm.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: Man slice, severs his arm to save his life.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: And there are stories like this all around.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: Story of the auto mechanic in Peori, Illinois, who's alone and he gets his arm caught in a lathe.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: And he's he's stuck there and he's bleeding to death.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: He takes out his pocket knife, good rule.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: Always carry a pocket knife, guys, and saws through his arm, saves his life.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: Or the logger up in Pennsylvania, gets his leg caught up caught in a tree, he's all alone, he's bleeding to death.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: And he actually has the courage to saw through his entire leg to save his life.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: Now, those are horrible stories, I'm sorry, but you know the real point is you may need to do radical surgery to eliminate something from your life that is blocking you from having the kind of fellowship with the Lord, which is the only way for you and I to survive in a hostile world.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: Now, a poll came out this last week, the Pew survey.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: It was encouraging.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: Evangelicals stay strong as Christianity crumbles in America.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: And the point, as you know, is that more and more people, now it's slightly over 20% of Americans, say they have no God.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: They are not sure they believe in anything at all, no religion, no church.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: But this survey points out that they are gathering those numbers from people who weren't all that religious anyway, but the evangelical percentage has is staying at 25% of Americans are evangelicals, go to church, believe in being born again, so forth.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: And evangelicals are staying strong.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: And thank God for that, that that's true.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: But I must tell you that it's not enough to be an evangelical.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: You and I in this hostile world must move close to God.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, you won't be able to survive.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: After you move close to God, a lot of other things you can do.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: But first and foremost, the book of Ezra tells us, is you and I must huddle close to God in this world and must exercise radical surgery against anything that would cause us not to have fellowship with Him.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: You simply bow your head this morning, bow your head with me and say to God, I want to be where you are.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we tell you that we agree we live in a tough world, live in a hostile world.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_00: We are so privileged to live in America, but we understand that even our country has turned in many ways away.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: And we know you predicted it in Romans 1 that there would be a moral devolution of mankind.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: Not evolution, but morally, we would go downhill.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so we know that first and foremost, what we have to do is stay close, close, close to you.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: We want to be where you are.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, enter our temple, enter the temple of our hearts today, so that we may fellowship with you and seek you and be where you are in Jesus' name.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.