Take your Bibles with me and turn to Ezra chapter 1. Ezra chapter 1. We are going to spend some time in Haggai tonight too, so if you want to find that and put something there, that will help.
We have been following the people of Judah into captivity. We have seen Daniel and his friends serving God in Babylon. But God had told his people that Babylon wasn't going to be the end of their story. He had promised through Jeremiah that they would come home.
Tonight we get to that part of the story. Babylon has fallen. Cyrus, the king of Persia, is in charge. And look at what happens in Ezra 1. Let's read the first five verses:
1. Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying, 2. Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia, The LORD God of heaven hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth; and he hath charged me to build him an house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. 3. Who is there among you of all his people? his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the house of the LORD God of Israel, (he is the God,) which is in Jerusalem. 4. And whosoever remaineth in any place where he sojourneth, let the men of his place help him with silver, and with gold, and with goods, and with beasts, beside the freewill offering for the house of God that is in Jerusalem. 5. Then rose up the chief of the fathers of Judah and Benjamin, and the priests, and the Levites, with all them whose spirit God had raised, to go up to build the house of the LORD which is in Jerusalem.
Did you catch who is behind all of this? The Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus. Then, in verse 5, the people who go are the people whose spirits God had raised.
God is working on both ends. He is moving the king, and he is moving his people. This is God keeping his word.
Cyrus also returns the temple vessels that Nebuchadnezzar had taken. People give money and supplies. Chapter 2 gives us the list of those who return. They come back under the leadership of Zerubbabel, a civic leader, kind of the first Nehemiah and Jeshua - a high preist, and they start putting things back together.
Now look at Ezra 3. Let's read verses 1 through 3:
1. And when the seventh month was come, and the children of Israel were in the cities, the people gathered themselves together as one man to Jerusalem. 2. Then stood up Jeshua the son of Jozadak, and his brethren the priests, and Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and his brethren, and builded the altar of the God of Israel, to offer burnt offerings thereon, as it is written in the law of Moses the man of God. 3. And they set the altar upon his bases; for fear was upon them because of the people of those countries: and they offered burnt offerings thereon unto the LORD, even burnt offerings morning and evening.
They start with the altar. They don't have a finished temple yet, but they begin offering the sacrifices God had commanded. Notice that they are afraid of the people around them. They are worshipping God while they are still afraid.
Then they gather materials, organize the workers, and begin laying the foundation. Look down at verse 10. Let's read through verse 13:
10. And when the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the LORD, they set the priests in their apparel with trumpets, and the Levites the sons of Asaph with cymbals, to praise the LORD, after the ordinance of David king of Israel. 11. And they sang together by course in praising and giving thanks unto the LORD; because he is good, for his mercy endureth for ever toward Israel. And all the people shouted with a great shout, when they praised the LORD, because the foundation of the house of the LORD was laid. 12. But many of the priests and Levites and chief of the fathers, who were ancient men, that had seen the first house, when the foundation of this house was laid before their eyes, wept with a loud voice; and many shouted aloud for joy: 13. So that the people could not discern the noise of the shout of joy from the noise of the weeping of the people: for the people shouted with a loud shout, and the noise was heard afar off.
Can you imagine that service? The priests are there. The music is playing. The people are praising God because he has brought them home and let them begin again. Some of the older people remember the first temple, and they are weeping. The sounds all mix together.
But the foundation is there. The work has begun. They have come home to do this very thing.
And then it stops.
So here is the question: how do you go from that service, from all of that praise and thanksgiving, to years of unfinished work? What happened?
1. Why did the work stop?
There was opposition outside them
Look at Ezra 4. Let's read the first five verses:
1. Now when the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the children of the captivity builded the temple unto the LORD God of Israel; 2. Then they came to Zerubbabel, and to the chief of the fathers, and said unto them, Let us build with you: for we seek your God, as ye do; and we do sacrifice unto him since the days of Esar-haddon king of Assur, which brought us up hither. 3. But Zerubbabel, and Jeshua, and the rest of the chief of the fathers of Israel, said unto them, Ye have nothing to do with us to build an house unto our God; but we ourselves together will build unto the LORD God of Israel, as king Cyrus the king of Persia hath commanded us. 4. Then the people of the land weakened the hands of the people of Judah, and troubled them in building, 5. And hired counsellors against them, to frustrate their purpose, all the days of Cyrus king of Persia, even until the reign of Darius king of Persia.
There were adversaries. Of course there were adversaries. These people were obeying God, but that didn't mean everyone around them was happy about it.
Notice how the opposition starts. They offer to help. That sounds positive, doesn't it? But verse 1 has already told us these are adversaries. Their claim to seek God did not make this a partnership the leaders could accept.
When the leaders refuse, you see what happens. They weaken the hands of the people. They annoy them as they try to build. They lawyer up and try lawsuits. They are doing everything they can to oppose what God is doing.
Now, the rest of this chapter gives some later examples of opposition under other kings, including opposition to rebuilding the city. It's like a big parenthesis in the story. Verse 24 brings us back to the earlier temple project. Look at that verse:
24. Then ceased the work of the house of God which is at Jerusalem. So it ceased unto the second year of the reign of Darius king of Persia.
The work stopped. And it stayed stopped for fourteen years.
Listen, when God opened the way for them to come home, he hadn't promised that no one would oppose them once they got there. Opposition didn't mean they had misunderstood what God wanted.
We need to remember that. You can set out to obey God and find out that it is hard. People can misunderstand you. You can face resistance. That doesn't automatically mean you are doing the wrong thing.
But there was something else going on here. To see it, turn over to Haggai chapter 1.
There were misplaced priorities inside them
Haggai is preaching during this same period. Notice the same names: Zerubbabel and Joshua. Joshua here is the Jeshua we have been reading about in Ezra. Let's read the first four verses:
1. In the second year of Darius the king, in the sixth month, in the first day of the month, came the word of the LORD by Haggai the prophet unto Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Josedech, the high priest, saying, 2. Thus speaketh the LORD of hosts, saying, This people say, The time is not come, the time that the LORD’S house should be built. 3. Then came the word of the LORD by Haggai the prophet, saying, 4. Is it time for you, O ye, to dwell in your cieled houses, and this house lie waste?
What were the people saying? The time hasn't come. Now isn't a good time to build the Lord's house.
They couldn't oppose the idea of building the temple. That was why they had come back. But they could question the timing. And that sounds reasonable, doesn't it? "With all of this opposition, with all of these problems, you know, now just isn't a good time."
So God asks them another question. If it isn't time to build my house, is it time for you to live in your finished houses?
That word “cieled” has the idea of being covered or paneled. They had given attention to their own houses while God's house remained unfinished. Their priorities were showing.
Church, we can do the same thing. We can agree with everything God says and still keep putting off what he says to do.
We know we ought to serve. We know we ought to give. We know there is someone we need to forgive, someone we need to talk to, something we need to make right. But now isn't a good time.
And somehow there is time for the other things we want to do. Those things get a place. Obedience keeps getting moved to later.
There really was opposition outside them. But God wasn't going to let them point outside forever without looking at what was happening in their own hearts.
Let me point out one more part of the internal opposition they faced, because the Bible talks about this - they faced the opposition of nostalgia. The older people (and they had to be very old) didn't rejoice that God was returning people to the land and building a new temple, they cried and said "this is nothing like the great Temple I remember."
This was a massive discouragement to God's people and I believe, a hindrance to the work God was doing then.
Church, we tend to give religious nostalgia a pass. We tend to think it is always a good thing for people to look back and remember "the good old days" but this story shows us a few things about religious nostalgia:
First, religious nostalgia often has a skewed view of the past. Yes, the old Temple was grand. But God destroyed it for a reason. That old temple for all its grandeur still housed idols and prostitutes and all kinds of wickedness.
When people look back and say "why can't we have the good old days" they are often forgetting all the problems that there were in the good old days - they are viewing the good old days with rose colored glasses.
The second problem with religious nostalgia is that religious nostalgia tends to discourage what God is doing today. God was at work in Zechariah and Jeshua. God was rebuilding the Temple that hadn't been there for 70 years. This was obviously the work of God. Yet these old timers couldn't rejoice, they could only cry.
How encouraging do you think that was to the people who had left their home - the only one they knew in Babylon and travelled for months and months to go rebuild the Temple? These men were risking their lives to build the new Temple? Yet they had to deal with the crying.
Let me be very blunt and pointed. Some of the most discouraging things I have faced as a pastor have come on our biggest days, when God is doing great things. I hear the grumble of older people wishing they could have the past back. And it's like a wet blanket on what God is doing now.
Do you know that it's possible? It's possible to rejoice in what God did in your life many years ago, and to rejoice in what God is doing today, without comparing them unfavorably. They're both the work of the Lord.
2. What got them working again?
God confronted them with the results of their priorities
Let's keep reading in Haggai 1. Read verses 5 through 11:
5. Now therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts; Consider your ways. 6. Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes. 7. Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Consider your ways. 8. Go up to the mountain, and bring wood, and build the house; and I will take pleasure in it, and I will be glorified, saith the LORD. 9. Ye looked for much, and, lo, it came to little; and when ye brought it home, I did blow upon it. Why? saith the LORD of hosts. Because of mine house that is waste, and ye run every man unto his own house. 10. Therefore the heaven over you is stayed from dew, and the earth is stayed from her fruit. 11. And I called for a drought upon the land, and upon the mountains, and upon the corn, and upon the new wine, and upon the oil, and upon that which the ground bringeth forth, and upon men, and upon cattle, and upon all the labour of the hands.
Twice God says, “Consider your ways.” Look at what you are doing. Look at where it is taking you.
They plant, but the harvest is small. They work, but it never seems to be enough. Haggai pictures a man earning money and putting it into a bag with holes. He keeps putting it in, but it keeps disappearing.
And God tells them why. He had called for the drought. They had neglected his house while running to their own houses. God was disciplining his people.
Now, that doesn't mean we can look at every person with financial trouble and say they must be disobeying God. Here, God tells us exactly what he is doing and why.
But we do need to hear the command to consider our ways. We can stay busy for a long time without stopping to ask whether we are giving our lives to the things God wants.
What keeps getting your attention? What keeps getting postponed? Those are fair questions for all of us, including the preacher.
God gave them a clear next act of obedience
Look back at verse 8. Go up to the mountain. Bring wood. Build the house.
They knew what God wanted. Now they needed to go and do it. And notice why: God would take pleasure in it and be glorified.
That makes the question pretty practical. What does obedience look like? If there is someone you need to forgive, who is it? If there is something you need to confess, what is it? If you need to help, what are you going to do?
We can talk about getting our priorities right without ever changing anything. These people needed to go get wood and start building.
But look at what God does as they respond.
God supplied his word, his presence, and willing hearts
Let's read verses 12 through 15:
12. Then Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Joshua the son of Josedech, the high priest, with all the remnant of the people, obeyed the voice of the LORD their God, and the words of Haggai the prophet, as the LORD their God had sent him, and the people did fear before the LORD. 13. Then spake Haggai the LORD’S messenger in the LORD’S message unto the people, saying, I am with you, saith the LORD. 14. And the LORD stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua the son of Josedech, the high priest, and the spirit of all the remnant of the people; and they came and did work in the house of the LORD of hosts, their God, 15. In the four and twentieth day of the sixth month, in the second year of Darius the king.
They listened. The leaders listened, and the people listened. They obeyed the voice of the Lord.
Then God sent them this message: “I am with you.” And he stirred up their spirits, and they came and worked.
I love that. God confronts their sin, but then he helps them get back to work. The same God who stirred Cyrus at the beginning of the story is stirring his people again.
Here is how Ezra tells it. Keep your place in Haggai and look at Ezra 5:1–2:
1. Then the prophets, Haggai the prophet, and Zechariah the son of Iddo, prophesied unto the Jews that were in Judah and Jerusalem in the name of the God of Israel, even unto them. 2. Then rose up Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Jeshua the son of Jozadak, and began to build the house of God which is at Jerusalem: and with them were the prophets of God helping them.
The prophets were helping them. God's word was doing something among these people. The leaders got up, the people got up, and the work started again.
Maybe you need that tonight. You know you have let something go. Hear what God says, confess what needs confessing, and begin obeying him. Ask him to help you. The God who calls his people to obedience is able to give them willing hearts.
3. What would keep them working when it still looked disappointing?
Go back to Haggai chapter 2. The next message comes less than a month after the work resumes. Let's read verses 1 through 9:
1. In the seventh month, in the one and twentieth day of the month, came the word of the LORD by the prophet Haggai, saying, 2. Speak now to Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Josedech, the high priest, and to the residue of the people, saying, 3. Who is left among you that saw this house in her first glory? and how do ye see it now? is it not in your eyes in comparison of it as nothing? 4. Yet now be strong, O Zerubbabel, saith the LORD; and be strong, O Joshua, son of Josedech, the high priest; and be strong, all ye people of the land, saith the LORD, and work: for I am with you, saith the LORD of hosts: 5. According to the word that I covenanted with you when ye came out of Egypt, so my spirit remaineth among you: fear ye not. 6. For thus saith the LORD of hosts; Yet once, it is a little while, and I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land; 7. And I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall come: and I will fill this house with glory, saith the LORD of hosts. 8. The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, saith the LORD of hosts. 9. The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former, saith the LORD of hosts: and in this place will I give peace, saith the LORD of hosts.
What is the problem now? Comparison. Some of them remember the former temple, and this one looks like nothing beside it.
God doesn't pretend they can't see a difference. He asks them about it. Then he tells Zerubbabel to be strong. He tells Joshua to be strong. He tells the people to be strong and work. Why? Because he is with them. His Spirit remains among them.
Some of you may remember when we worked through this a couple of years ago. We talked about the danger of religious nostalgia. We can remember the past in a way that makes us miss what God is doing right in front of us.
It is good to thank God for what he did in the past. But if those memories make us despise present obedience, something has gone wrong.
Maybe you are teaching a class and there are only a few people there. Maybe you have been trying to help someone, and you aren't seeing much change. Maybe you look at what someone else is doing and think your part doesn't amount to anything.
If God has called you to do it, keep doing it. Be faithful with the people he has given you to help.
These builders couldn't see everything God intended for this temple. God had purposes that reached far beyond their own lives. They needed to trust his promise and keep working.
Finish the story — God restores their worship and joy
Now, let's go back to Ezra and see how it ends. Look at chapter 5, verses 3 through 5:
3. At the same time came to them Tatnai, governor on this side the river, and Shethar-boznai, and their companions, and said thus unto them, Who hath commanded you to build this house, and to make up this wall? 4. Then said we unto them after this manner, What are the names of the men that make this building? 5. But the eye of their God was upon the elders of the Jews, that they could not cause them to cease, till the matter came to Darius: and then they returned answer by letter concerning this matter.
Another official comes asking questions. Who gave you permission? What are your names?
But notice verse 5. The eye of their God was upon them. They keep working while the matter goes to Darius.
The officials send their report. The builders have said Cyrus authorized the work, so Darius orders a search. And they find the decree. Look at his answer in Ezra 6:6–8:
6. Now therefore, Tatnai, governor beyond the river, Shethar-boznai, and your companions the Apharsachites, which are beyond the river, be ye far from thence: 7. Let the work of this house of God alone; let the governor of the Jews and the elders of the Jews build this house of God in his place. 8. Moreover I make a decree what ye shall do to the elders of these Jews for the building of this house of God: that of the king’s goods, even of the tribute beyond the river, forthwith expenses be given unto these men, that they be not hindered.
Leave them alone, and provide the money for them to finish. God uses the king to provide for his people again.
Darius also orders supplies for the sacrifices and penalties for interference. The officials carry out his command. Then look down at verses 14 through 16:
14. And the elders of the Jews builded, and they prospered through the prophesying of Haggai the prophet and Zechariah the son of Iddo. And they builded, and finished it, according to the commandment of the God of Israel, and according to the commandment of Cyrus, and Darius, and Artaxerxes king of Persia. 15. And this house was finished on the third day of the month Adar, which was in the sixth year of the reign of Darius the king. 16. And the children of Israel, the priests, and the Levites, and the rest of the children of the captivity, kept the dedication of this house of God with joy,
They finished it. In Darius's sixth year, the house was finished. God's word had kept helping them as they worked.
Then they offer sacrifices, put the priests and Levites in their places, and keep the Passover. Let's read verses 19 through 22:
19. And the children of the captivity kept the passover upon the fourteenth day of the first month. 20. For the priests and the Levites were purified together, all of them were pure, and killed the passover for all the children of the captivity, and for their brethren the priests, and for themselves. 21. And the children of Israel, which were come again out of captivity, and all such as had separated themselves unto them from the filthiness of the heathen of the land, to seek the LORD God of Israel, did eat, 22. And kept the feast of unleavened bread seven days with joy: for the LORD had made them joyful, and turned the heart of the king of Assyria unto them, to strengthen their hands in the work of the house of God, the God of Israel.
Notice the joy. The Lord had made them joyful. God had brought these people home, corrected their priorities, helped them work, and restored their worship.
Now, we need to follow this forward to Christ. Turn to John 2. Let's read verses 19 through 21:
19. Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. 20. Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days? 21. But he spake of the temple of his body.
Jesus was talking about his body. He would die, and he would rise again. Through him, sinful people can come to God. The hope of this story reaches beyond the people standing around that rebuilt temple.
And look at what Paul says about believers in Ephesians 2:19–22:
19. Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God; 20. And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone; 21. In whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord: 22. In whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.
Through Christ we belong to God's household. He is building his people together as a dwelling for his Spirit. That gives real importance to worshipping together, serving one another, and helping people come to know Christ.
So let me ask you a few questions as we close.
Have you let opposition become an excuse to stop obeying? Have you found room for what you want while what God wants keeps waiting? Is there something you know you need to do, and you have been saying “later” for a long time?
Consider your ways. Bring that to the Lord and obey him.
Or maybe you are working. You are trying to be faithful, but you are discouraged. It looks small. You wonder whether it matters.
Remember the God you are serving. He sees what you cannot see. He has not forgotten his people, and he has not run out of power to help them. Keep your eyes on him and keep doing what he has given you to do.
God brought these people home because he kept his promise. He helped them finish because he was faithful. We can trust that same God tonight.
Let's stand together and pray.
