Hope From the Word

Guest (Male): God is at work in our lives more than we may realize. Pastor Bill says to keep an eye out for his handywork in your life.

Bill Luebkemann: And I wonder how many times we discount the Lord working. We say that was just chance. Would you believe what happened just by chance? Think about the number of times things happen just by chance. We say this was by chance or that's by chance, when really there's a lot less chance and a lot more of God working in our lives. Do we really believe he is able and in fact that he does organize the things in our lives for his purposes?

Guest (Male): Worry is another name for fear. It's been said that fear is the wrong use of our imagination. Why worry? If God is for us, then who can be against us? Often though, we either don't recognize that truth or we simply forget it. God is always working, sometimes in a very visible way and at other times invisible. But he's working nonetheless. We have an example of this in the book of Ezra chapter 5. Welcome to today's Hope from the Word with Bill with a message first presented at his home church, Calvary Chapel of Marlton. Here's Pastor Bill.

Bill Luebkemann: You may wonder, what are all these little prophet books about here? Well, now you know where two of them fit into the whole scheme of things, Haggai and Zechariah. What were they saying? Haggai said this in chapter 1 verse 1. In the second year of King Darius, in the sixth month, on the first day of the month, the word of the Lord came by Haggai the prophet to Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua, the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, Joshua and Jeshua, same guy, saying, thus speaks the Lord of hosts, saying, this people says, the time has not come, the time that the Lord's house should be built.

Then the word of the Lord came by Haggai the prophet saying, is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses and this temple to lie in ruins? Now therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts, consider your ways. You say it's not time to rebuild the temple yet. They've been saying this probably for 16 years now. It's not time. It's not the time to do it. We're going to get to that. It's not the time to do it. The people says, the time has not come to do that yet. And the word the Lord said, wait a minute.

Is it time for you to live in your fancy houses, but allow my temple to lie in ruins? Consider your ways, he says. You have sown much and bring in little. You eat but do not have enough. You drink but you are not filled with drink. You clothe yourselves but no one is warm. And he who earns wages earns wages to put into a bag with holes. In other words, hey, you're just not getting ahead. You're just not making any progress. You sow much, you don't reap. You eat but you're never satisfied. You drink but you're never filled.

You clothe yourself, you're never warm. Thus says the Lord of hosts, consider your ways. Go up to the mountains and bring wood and build the temple that I may take pleasure in it and be glorified, says the Lord. In other words, get up and get working. You looked for much but indeed it came to little and when you brought it home, I blew it away. You thought you were working hard. You thought you were getting ahead but all of a sudden it just went through your fingers and blew away. Why? Says the Lord of hosts, because of my house that is in ruins, while everyone of you runs to his own house.

You're just all fine and dandy taking care of your own place but my house is all run down and beat up here, the Lord said. Therefore the heavens above you withhold the dew and the earth withholds its fruit. For I called for a drought on the land and the mountains on the grain and the new wine and the oil and whatever the ground brings forth on men and livestock and in all the labor of your hands. A real chastisement to these people here. And if you turn the page over to Zechariah, in the eighth month of the second year of Darius, now look, Haggai was written in the second year of King Darius in the sixth month on the first day of the month.

This is in the eighth month. So this is just two months later. These guys were contemporaries living there at the same time. And the word the Lord came to Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, the son of Iddo, the prophet saying, the Lord has been very angry with your father. Therefore say to them, thus says the Lord of hosts, return to me, says the Lord of hosts, and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts. Do not be like your fathers to whom the former prophets preached saying, thus says the Lord of hosts, turn now from your evil ways and your evil deeds, but they did not hear nor heed me, says the Lord.

Don't be like your fathers. I preached to them but they didn't pay any attention, he says. Verse 5, your fathers, where are they? And the prophets, do they live forever? Yet surely my words and my statutes, which I commanded my servants, the prophets, did they not overtake your fathers? So they returned and said, just as the Lord of hosts determined to do to us according to our ways and according to our deeds, so he has dealt with us. Look at what happened to your fathers. They didn't pay attention. They got carried away and then in the end they knew why they had got carried away.

And so it seems like the Jews here were living in their own houses, just having a fine old time, worrying about the three most important people in the world, me, myself and I. They were going to work every day. They were plowing their fields but they really weren't being successful. They weren't getting ahead and God saying to them here, you're focusing on the wrong area, guys. And you say, well, it's not time to do the temple. We'll do that later. We'll get to it eventually. And it took these prophets to come, Haggai and Zechariah, took these prophets to come and whip these people into shape here.

And these people may have been discouraged. They were discouraged because they weren't getting ahead because in life things just weren't going their way. And whatever little they could get, it would sift through their fingers. And they were discouraged when they looked at the rubble of the temple of God, the house of God there, but it was such a monumental job to put it back together. They thought, how could we ever do that? But anytime you build a building, you have to start with the first shovel of dirt. You can build a building as big as the Empire State Building or the World Trade Center but on one day somebody drives in there with a bulldozer and starts moving dirt around.

As big as any building is, somebody started somewhere by beginning in some small way. And that's what these people needed to do and they were discouraged, it seems. And so here we have the word of God being proclaimed to them. The word of God has the power to get things done. And they were told what the word of God was and you guys are not following God and you got to get with the program here and they did. Zerubbabel, we see um over in Haggai in chapter 2 it points out Zerubbabel was the son of Shealtiel, who was the son of King Jehoiachin.

Remember he was the king that was carried away to Babylon at the beginning of the captivity and he was he was imprisoned in Babylon for many years but eventually he was freed. And he ate at the king's table in Babylon. Well, he had a son named Shealtiel and Shealtiel had a son named Zerubbabel. So Zerubbabel is descended from the king and he's the governor of the region. He's in the line of the kings here. And he's he's the governor Jeshua, also called Joshua, the son of Jehozadak. Uh he was referred to in Haggai as the high priest.

So these guys are the leaders in the religious and civil affairs and the religious leader, you have the high priest, civil leader, you have the governor descended of the king. They're representing both areas which always had to be two separate people, never the same. At the same time Tattenai, the governor of the region beyond the river, and Shethar-boznai and their companions came to them and spoke thus to them, who has commanded you to build this temple and finish this wall? Then accordingly we told them the names of the men who were constructing this building. But the eye of their God was upon the elders of the Jews, so that they could not make them cease till the report could go to Darius.

Then a written answer was returned concerning this matter. Now look, the beginning of Darius's reign, we already said this, there were numerous revolts. These folks here were just doing their job and checking this out. They were you know, they were the government workers of the day. They they came by and basically said, hey, what are you what are you guys doing here? You you guys got a building permit or something? You know, what's going on here? Who who's who's in charge? Who's letting you do all this stuff? This was a big project here. It wasn't just building some little tiny hut for somebody to live in.

So the governor of the region and his companions went to them and says, you know, who told you to do this? And remember the king's very concerned because of rebellion and stuff because it was going on at the beginning of Darius's reign as well. So they explained to the government officials who they were and what they were doing and we're going to see that explanation in a minute here as we get into this letter here. And the writer of Ezra tells us that God's providence was in effect here but the eye of their God was upon the elders of the Jews.

These guys could have stopped the work. He was the governor of the land. He had the power of punishment. He could have come in and said, what are you guys doing here? No more work is going to get done till I see the building permit. Where is it? Shut this job site down. But God seemed to be guiding the whole affair here. Even though these guys were pagan unbelievers, God seemed to be guiding their mind to allow the work to continue. And I wonder how many times we discount the Lord working. We say that was just chance.

Would you believe what happened just by chance? Think about the number of times things happen just by chance. We say this was by chance or that's by chance when really there's a lot less chance and a lot more of God working in our lives. Do we really believe he is able and in fact that he does organize the things in our lives for his purposes? You have the prophets preaching here and because of their preaching you have the leaders leading the people and because of their preaching and the leading you have the community of believers that are participating in this project to build this.

And God's working this all together even to the point that the pagan officials come out and they make decisions to support the work of God. The Jews kept working even with the threat of a government shutdown hanging over their head. They just kept right on working because the eye of their God was upon them. So they could not make them cease. They probably thought about it. For whatever reason they didn't do it because God was there. This was not chance. It wasn't because they were just having a great day and they wanted to help them out.

It was because of God's will and God's providence was upon this thing. Verse 6, this is a copy of the letter that Tattenai sent. So Tattenai got this information together and he sent a letter and here it is. The governor of the region beyond the river and Shethar-boznai and his companions, the Persians who were in the region beyond the river to Darius the king. They sent a letter to him in which was written thus, to Darius the king, all peace. Let it be known to the king that we went into the province of Judea to the temple of the great God, which is being built with heavy stones and and timber is being laid in the walls and and this work goes on diligently and prospers in their hands.

Then we asked those elders and spoke thus to them, who commanded you to build this temple and to finish these walls? We also asked them their name to inform you that we might write the names of the men who were chief among them. We see there were various government officials involved back in verse 6 and we saw also that they probably had the ability to punish. And what we're looking at here is an official government report. These guys were just doing their job. They described their inspection of this project. They described the questions they asked.

They described the answers that the Jews gave them and they are asking for further instructions. You know, the police today spend a lot of time writing reports. Whenever they do anything they write a report. If there's an accident, the police come out and write up a report. You need the report for your insurance company. If they pull you over for speeding, they no doubt they write up a report. They have computers in their cars now. They probably write them up on those things and and they go by email to wherever. I'm not sure today's reports are any better than these reports.

They sure are longer nowadays but these guys wrote a concise report of what they found out. Here's what we found out. Here's what was going on. We checked it out. Here's the answers we got. What do you want us to do, king? You're the king. What do you want us to do? Let it be known to the king that we went into the province of Judea. This is what we did. And we went to the temple of the great God. Now by the way, you might look at that and say, wow, they they believe in God too.

But it was their practice to quote the religious language of the Jews or to quote anybody else's religious language when they were dealing with them. So they may have just been quoting the religious language of the Jews. I'm not sure this really means they believed in the great God and by the way you could also translate this line, the great house of God. Here it says the temple of the great God but you could legitimately translate it to say the great house of God. So they may have been referring more to the fact that this God in Jerusalem, man, he's getting this big deluxe house.

But notice that they state the magnitude of the work, the great the temple of the great God or the great house of God which is being built with heavy stones and timber is being laid in the walls and this work goes on diligently and prospers in their hands. They're doing it diligently, little by little, one shovel at a time, one rock at a time, one timber at a time, one piece of wood at a time. Notice, look, the magnitude of the work. I think the important thing here to realize is the size and scope of this project.

This was not a small project. This was a big project for them. Wasn't like I said somebody putting on a spare bedroom on the back of their house. And they have serious questions here. And they get what seem to be courteous answers from the Jews, their government officials. Hey guys, can we see your building permit here? Then we asked those elders and spoke thus to them, who commanded you to build this temple and to finish these walls? Well, who's behind this? We also asked them their names to inform you that we might write the names of the men who were chief among them and thus they returned to us and answered saying, we are the servants of the God of heaven and earth.

Look, we asked them their names. They were subjects of the kingdom. They seemed to want to cooperate. The Jews did. I have no doubt the prophets were helpful in encouraging them. Hey, stick with the work. Don't be overly concerned about this nuisance that's come in here. Just stick with the work, focus on the work, trust in God. He's going to complete this. God didn't tell you to complete his house if he's now going to stop it by having the building inspector come in and shut it down. It's like the apostles that were on the boat with Jesus and they said, we're going to drown.

We're going to drown. We're going to Jesus said, let's get in the boat and go to the other side. He didn't say, let's get in the boat. We're going to drowns. Said we're going to go to the other side. You know, you when God says we're going to do something, you need to take him at his word and that's what they were doing here. God said we are going to do it and we're going to do it. So we asked their names. They told us their names and thus they returned us an answer saying, we are the servants of the God of heaven and earth.

And we are rebuilding the temple that was built many years ago, which a great king of Israel built and completed. But because our fathers provoked the God of heaven to wrath, he gave them into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, the Chaldean, who destroyed this temple and carried the people away to Babylon. Nothing hidden here. They're not ashamed of their faith. They're not ashamed of their God. They're not ashamed of their history. They understand why they're in a mess. They know the promises of God. They know how the nation of Israel failed to keep the promises of God.

They failed to keep the commandments of God and so they failed to continue to receive the promises of God. Actually they did continue to receive the promises of God. God said, if you don't follow me, I promise I'm going to do these things to you. So they got God's promises the whole way through. They got his promises of blessings when they were doing the right thing and his promise of cursings when they weren't. They have a grasp here for the hand of God in the affairs of men. Oh, I wish that we would have a a grasp here in America that.

They they have an understanding that there's no history and no future and no politics apart from God. George Washington, you know, all these guys that fought for our country in the Revolution were they knew the power of God. They prayed that God would be with them and that they would be successful if God was with them. When you read the founding fathers of our country, half the guys are that signed the Declaration of Independence went to seminary, had degrees from seminary, half of them. You won't see that on the news channels or in the history books but they were well aware of the hand of God upon our nation.

And now it seems like we've lost that all together. These people here the same way, they were well aware of the hand of God. They knew how they got themselves into the mess they were in. America, we used to know how we got ourselves into the great position that we're in of being the greatest country on the earth, the most powerful, with the most stuff, the most blessed. We used to give credit to God for that. Now we don't. And these people here understood and knew the the hand of God in their affairs. They read, they understood the prophecies, what would happen.

They looked back and said, wow, look at this. God said if we follow him, we'll be blessed. If we don't follow him, we're going to be cursed. How about that? They read the prophecy prophecies of Jeremiah and Ezekiel. And as these things were happening, Jeremiah and Ezekiel were were prophesying. They weren't reluctant to to say what happened to them. They were determined I think not to make the same mistake again. That's why they said, hey, we're servants of the God of heaven and we're rebuilding this temple which a great king built a long time ago.

But it was our fathers who who provoked the God of heaven to wrath and he he gave them away into captivity. However, verse 13, in the first year of Cyrus, king of Babylon, King Cyrus issued a decree to build this house of God. Also the gold and silver articles of the house of God which Nebuchadnezzar had taken from the temple that was in Jerusalem and carried into the temple of Babylon, those King Cyrus took from the temple of Babylon and they were given to one named Sheshbazzar, whom he had made governor. And he said to him, take these articles, go, carry them to the temple site that is in Jerusalem and let the house of God be rebuilt on its former site.

This was the first year after Cyrus conquered Babylon. You know, they said in verse 13, in the first year of Cyrus, king of Babylon, well, he was king of Persia for a long time before that and he was king of something else even before that. So this is the first year after he conquered Babylon and expanded his kingdom into Babylon. You know, there was an inscription that was found on the clay barrel that says this, I am Cyrus, king of the world, great king, legitimate king, king of Babylon, king of Sumer and Akkad. So he he was a real hot shot guy.

He just thought the world of himself. He's king of everything. He didn't even know how big the world was. But when it says here in the first year of Cyrus, king of Babylon, I just want you to understand it was the first year that he was the king of Babylon also that he had conquered Babylon and he issued this decree and this was a great thing for the Jews because they had legal backing here. That they they had backup to the whole thing. Cyrus was the founder of the whole empire. And he was still admired and he was respected and Darius, who followed him, he tried to follow in the footsteps of Cyrus.

He didn't come in like politicians today and say, the guy before me, he didn't do anything good. We're going to throw all that out and start all over again. Darius came along and continue and implement the same policies. So they had backup here. Hey, the guy who founded this whole kingdom told us to do this and not only that, he gave back what was taken in verse 14, the gold and silver articles that were carried away, he gave them back. Look, that's really important. It shows that the king really meant to reestablish this temple. He wasn't just this wasn't just idle words.

Yeah, go do whatever you want to do. He actually gave them back the things that were carried to Babylon, the articles that belonged in the temple. So they have the authority of the king, Cyrus, who who sent them there and as proof of that they have all these implements that he sent back with them. And he told them, take these things, carry them back to the temple site that is in Jerusalem and let the house of God be rebuilt on its former site. It was important that it be built on the same site. And they weren't going to be able to put the articles in the temple.

They brought the articles back. They couldn't put them in the temple until there was a temple because there wasn't a temple there yet. Verse 16. Then the same Sheshbazzar came and laid the foundation of the house of God which is in Jerusalem but from that time even until now it has been under construction and it is not finished. Now therefore, if it seems good to the king, let a search be made in the king's treasure house, which is there in Babylon, whether it is so. That a decree was issued by King Cyrus to build this house of God at Jerusalem and let the king send us his pleasure concerning this matter.

Now remember what I said. The work began in 536 BC. Now it was 520 BC. It wasn't done so only a small amount of work had been done. The prophets were needed to encourage the people to get going again. That's what they say here. It's been under construction all along. Not that we were working on it all along but it's been under construction. There was a sign there, you know, temporary traffic pattern change. But you know, it's been under construction. It's kind of like the Marlton Circle. It's under construction. But if you go out there, you don't really like see anybody doing anything but it's under construction.

And if you go down 73 towards Maple Shade, it's under construction. You can't really figure out exactly what they're doing there but they're doing something and and you it just it backs up every day. And as you drive through the barriers and everything where it's backed up and you look at all the work, you don't see anybody doing anything but it's under construction. And that's what this temple project was. It was like a highway project here. It hadn't been making much progress and they tell these government guys, look, it's been under construction until today. And so here we have the governor of the land Tattenai and his friends asking the king saying, hey, what should we do here, king?

We'd like to ask you if it seems good to you. If you if you you're the king, you can do whatever you want but if it seems good to you, we think why don't you look around and see if you can find this decree. The Jews don't seem to have a copy of it. They ask that a search be made in Babylon. Since Cyrus conquered Babylon, you'd really think the records would have been in the capital where Cyrus was, which was called Susa. That's Cyrus's capital. He conquered Babylon. He didn't move his palace over to Babylon.

He stayed where he was. You'd think the records would have been found in Susa. We're going to see in the next chapter, chapter 6, you can just look down in the second verse of chapter 6 which we'll get to next time. They were actually found at Achmetha. That was his summer capital.

Guest (Male): You've been listening to Hope from the Word. We're currently in a study of Ezra. You can hear this message or more Hope from the Word with Pastor Bill by going to ccmarlton.org. Pastor Bill's messages can also be found by downloading the Hope FM app on your smartphone or tablet. Or if you prefer to listen via podcast, you can find Hope from the Word wherever you find your podcasts. We'd love to have you join us at Calvary Chapel of Marlton either in person or online. Our Sunday service begins at 10 a.m. And there's a Wednesday evening service at 7.

To catch us online, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel at Calvary Chapel of Marlton or just go to our website for the link at ccmarlton.org. And if you'd take a moment to write to Pastor Bill, it would be such a blessing to us. We're thankful each and every time we hear what God is doing in our listeners' lives and we want to pray for you too. Either email us through the website at ccmarlton.org or call 856 983 1662. RAIL We'll continue our study in Ezra next time on Hope from the Word with Pastor Bill a presentation of Calvary Chapel of Marlton.