A Scribe to the Lord

Gracious Heavenly Father, we are so glad that you invite us, command us, to knock, seek, ask, and to call on you as our father. And so as your children, we beseech you that you might speak clearly. We’re hard of hearing. You would speak to our hearts, for we are easily wayward, and you will give to us just the encouragement or the rebuke that we need and you would present before us clearly the Lord Jesus Christ. In his name we pray. Amen.

Been working our way through the book of Ezra, and we come this morning to Ezra chapter 7. Encourage you to turn in your Bibles – there’s pew Bibles in front of you if you don’t have your own – to Ezra chapter 7. Before you get to – if you open your Bible halfway and you’re in the Psalms – go back a few books, and you’ll find Ezra, Nehemiah. We are in Ezra chapter 7. There are 10 chapters in the book, and this is the second half. Not evenly divided, but this is clearly part two. Part one dealt with the restoration of worship for the returning exiles. Part two deals with the reformation of community. Restoration of worship; now the reformation of the exiled and now returning community. You’ll see there in verse 1, “Now after this” – which jumps us ahead almost 60 years. So we have gone from Cyrus to Darius to Ahasuerus to Artaxerxes, and we’ll find that we are in the seventh year of his reign, around 538 BC. Ezra, the book, starts around 539 BC, moves ahead, and there’s a gap then – you can do the math of some 57 years between Ezra 6 and Ezra 7. It’s about 60 years from where we started. And now we finally meet Ezra, as he leads another group of exiles on this 900-mile trip – 500 miles as the crow flies, 900 miles by land, would take about four months – back to Judah. And once in Judah, Ezra is going to lead the people in these remaining four chapters in the renewal and the reform of God’s community. So follow along – Ezra chapter 7.

“Now after this, in the reign of Artaxerxes king of Persia, Ezra the son of Seraiah, son of Azariah, son of Hilkiah, son of Shallum, son of Zadok, son of Ahitub, son of Amariah, son of Azariah, son of Meraioth, son of Zerahiah, son of Uzzi, son of Bukki, son of Abishua, son of Phinehas, son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the chief priest – this Ezra went up from Babylonia. He was a scribe skilled in the law of Moses that the Lord, the God of Israel, had given. And the king granted him all that he asked, for the hand of the Lord his God was on him. And there went up also to Jerusalem, in the seventh year of Artaxerxes the king, some of the people of Israel, and some of the priests and Levites, the singers and gatekeepers, and the temple servants. And Ezra came to Jerusalem in the fifth month, which was in the seventh year of the king. For on the first day of the first month he began to go up from Babylonia, and on the first day of the fifth month, he came to Jerusalem, for the good hand of his God was on him. For 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.

This is a copy of the letter that King Artaxerxes gave to Ezra the priest, the scribe, a man learned in matters of the commandments of the Lord and his statutes for Israel: Artaxerxes, king of kings, to Ezra the priest, the scribe of the law of God of heaven. Peace. And now I make a decree that any one of the people of Israel or their priests or Levites in my kingdom who freely offers to go to Jerusalem may go with you. For you are sent by the king and his seven counselors to make inquiries about Judah and Jerusalem according to the law of your God, which is in your hand, and also to carry the silver and gold that the king and his counselors have freely offered to the God of Israel, whose dwelling is in Jerusalem, with all the silver and gold that you shall find in the whole province of Babylonia and with the freewill offerings that the people and the priests, vowed willingly for the house of their God that is in Jerusalem. With this money, then, you shall, with all diligence, buy bulls, rams, and lambs with their grain offerings, and their drink offerings, and you shall offer them on the altar of the house of your God that is in Jerusalem.

Whatever seems good to you and your brothers to do with the rest of the silver and gold, you may do according to the will of your God. The vessels that have been given you for the service of the house of your God, you shall deliver before the God of Jerusalem, and whatever else is required for the house of your God, which it falls to you to provide, you may provide it out of the king’s treasury. And I, Artaxerxes the king, make a decree to all the treasurers in the province Beyond the River. Whatever Ezra the priest, the scribe of the law of the God of heaven, requires of you, let it be done with all diligence, up to 100 talents of silver, 100 cors of wheat, 100 baths of wine, 100 baths of oil, and salt without prescribing how much.

Whatever is decreed by the God of heaven, let it be done in full for the house of the God of heaven, lest his wrath be against the realm of the king and his sons. We also notify you that it shall not be lawful to impose tribute, custom, or toll on any one of the priests, the Levites, the singers, the doorkeepers, the temple servants, or other servants of this house of God. And you, Ezra, according to the wisdom of your God that is in your hand, appoint magistrates and judges who may judge all the people in the province Beyond the River. All such as know the laws of your God, and those who do not know them, you shall teach. Whoever will not obey the law of your God and the law of the king, let judgment be strictly executed on him, whether for death or for banishment or for confiscation of his goods, or for imprisonments. Blessed be the Lord, the God of our fathers, who put such a thing as this into the heart of the king, to beautify the house of the Lord that is in Jerusalem and who extended to me his steadfast love before the king and his counselors and before all the king’s mighty officers. I took courage, for the hand of the Lord my God was on me and I gathered leading men from Israel to go up with me.”

When you come upon a famous story, whether you read it in a book, you see it in a movie, there is often a scene where you know you are meeting the hero or the heroine. He or she may arrive with great fanfare, maybe a very triumphant entry, and there is a great parade and a majestic horse and a military uniform and it’s very obvious. Or it may be subtle, may be understated, it may be filled with foreshadowing, and yet the way the story is told or the music or the lighting lets you know that this one is going to do something special. And when you see that man or woman enter the scene, you know the hero is here. Could be a king, a prince, a president, a lawyer, a soldier, a warrior, a lion, a coach, a superhero, a wizard, a Jedi. I want you to notice the hero in this book is a scribe. Now, we – if you know the New Testament, you are used to thinking when you hear “scribe,” you have, you know, Darth Vader music in your head – da, da, da, dun da da, dun da da. Because scribes, you think of Jesus, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees. So often in the New Testament, the scribes, the Pharisees, the experts, the religious professionals are bad guys. Now, if you pay attention, many of them aren’t, but so often they were. But I want you to put that out of your mind, because the scribe in this story is the hero.

Scribes in the ancient world and in the Persian Empire were extremely important. And this is one of the good guys, come to reform God’s people. Let me just say by way of parenthesis, and maybe I’m thinking especially to men and young men, we live in a day where there’s been a somewhat helpful, but not entirely helpful, course correction to say “it’s good to be a man.” That’s true. It is. You don’t have to be ashamed to be a man. Not all masculinity is toxic masculinity. That’s all a very good course correction. But I just want you to notice, there is more than one way to be manly. There is more than one way to be brave. It is not one size fits all. It is not all strapping, William Wallace, slay the British sorts of heroes. Sometimes it’s a scribe. Now you’re saying, Kevin, you like that because that fits you. Yes. I picture Ezra with very thick glasses, graying hair, and he liked to read. There’s more than one way to be brave, more than one way to be manly, more than one kind of hero in life. Probably Ezra had some kind of administrative position in the Persian Empire. They kept written records, the scribes did. Remember, very few people knew how to read and write. If you were one of the few who knew how to read and write, you had your own superpower that we now take for granted. They were scholars. And by virtue of their abilities and these privileges, they wielded a lot of political power, a lot of clout.

So here comes Ezra. I want you to notice four things about Ezra that make him the most important person in the remaining chapters in this book. His name is given to the book, and he is an important example. for us. I want you to notice four things. Number one, pay attention to Ezra’s history. You see the lineage at the beginning of the chapter, which goes by us with a lot of names – our eyes glaze over – and yet, these would have been for many of the Israelites familiar names. Maybe they got familiar to you toward the end. Phineas, Eleazar, Aaron the chief priest. So, Ezra is not only a scribe, he’s a priest. And verse 6 is rather dramatic. After this trumpet volley of names establishing his priestly lineage, we read, “Yes, indeed, this very same Ezra,” – this one who has this great history – “he came from Babylonia back to Judah.” It’s an impressive list. It’s not a complete list. There’s gaps in it, but it’s establishing his priestly bonafides. It’s saying this man has the right pedigree. More than that, it’s not just saying, “Well, look at who his daddy and his granddaddy were.” It’s saying he comes to us with authority. He has authority by virtue of his office as a priest in the line descended from Aaron, the first high priest. He has that authority, and he comes to us also with the authority of an expert in the law. So that’s his history. That’s the first point. We deal with it most quickly.

Second, Ezra was impressive not only because of his history, but because of his head. Look at verse 6: “He was a scribe skilled in the law of Moses that the Lord, the God of Israel, had given.” So he’s skilled. Look at verse 11: “The scribe, Ezra the priest, a man learned in matters of the commandments of the Lord and his statutes for Israel.” You don’t always have to be the smartest person in the room. Most of us don’t know what that’s like. I don’t know what that’s like. But isn’t it good if you’re ever in one of those situations and the smartest guy in the room is one of the good guys? Well, that’s Ezra. He’s learned in the book. He’s skillful in the commandments of God. He was very good at what he did. He worked hard. He had all the best education he could get, and he was an expert. Go back up to verse 6. Now, we’ll come in the third point to talk more about his expertise in the word of God. But I want you to notice verse 6: “And the king granted him all that he asked.” Ezra was smart, skilled, shrewd – not only with the word of God, which we’ll come to, but at being a scribe in the Persian Empire. We don’t know exactly what he asked, except that we read “the king gave him everything he asked.” In fact, some scholars speculate that this decree – and the official decree is written in Aramaic and then it goes over to Hebrew – but this decree may have been written by Ezra himself. Makes sense. President doesn’t write the legislation. Probably doesn’t sit and write the executive orders. And so maybe Ezra the priest, the scribe, writes this up and says, “Would you sign this?” Well, wherever it came from, he got everything that he asked for. And he gets to go back. People get to go with him freely. You get to bring provisions, offerings, animals, foodstuffs, gold, and silver vessels in the house of God. And he has this letter with the royal insignia. And he can show it around to the various imperial treasuries, and he says “here, a message from King Artaxerxes – you’re to give me gold or silver or wheat.” This document in his hand was worth everything. Notice also verse 25. “And you Ezra, according to the wisdom of your God that is in your hand, appoint magistrates and judges who may judge all the people in the province Beyond the River.” So that’s this province here of Judah. All such as know the laws of your God.

Let me just make a little important side note here. When we talk about what sort of political theology should we have? What sort of view of the civil magistrate should we have? There’s lots of conversations about that. I’ve weighed in to it here or there. And this sermon is not about that in particular, but there can be a tendency to go back to the Old Testament and assume there is our blueprint for every nation around the world at all times and in all places. And there are certainly principles that can be drawn from every part of the Bible. It’s all instructive for us. And yet, we have to remember that it was given to a particular people, the nation of Israel, in a promised land where they had kings and priests and direct revelation. And to be fair, many of our reformed forefathers in the faith often looked explicitly to Old Testament Israel for their examples of what a godly society should look like. And there are good principles. And yet, I’m just pointing out to you, verse 25 is one that I never hear people talk about. No one ever says, “And you know what God’s word says? The pastor gets to pick the magistrates. The pastor gets to pick the judges.” Well, you know, that was a rather popular opinion during much of medieval Christendom, and there was constantly a back and forth between the pope and the king and who had authority, and the pope and the Roman Curia should have the authority to appoint kings and kingdoms and tear them down. And the reformers rightly said, well, that’s not the best way to understand these passages.

All of that is to say, let us be cautious, lest we make an immediate jump from the Old Testament in how God was arranging things for his people, whether in the land or here returning to the land. I doubt very much we think that it is the seminary professors who get to appoint the magistrates and judges. Now, I know about five or six people in this room who like that idea, but it’s probably not what God has in mind with verse 25. It is what he had in mind for Ezra. Also, look at verse 24: “We notify you: it is not lawful to impose tribute, custom, or toll on any one of the priests or any of the people who work in the house of God.” Interesting that all the way back in the Persian Empire, we have tax exemption for pastors. Now, you say, “Now, pastor, careful. You just said you can’t go one to one from the Old Testament.” That’s true. Simply point out that there is a long practice of this, and it doesn’t come, first of all, from God’s people. It was a practice in ancient Egypt, in Samaria, in Babylon, in Persia. Why? Well, because there was often a tug of war between the political authorities and the religious authorities. And often they were one and the same, but sometimes they weren’t. And so, it was often a practice in the ancient world that the priests and the people who attended to the religious affairs should not be taxed. It was a way of giving them some measure of authority and sometimes something even of a bone. Okay, there you go. Let us rule the place, but we won’t impose tribute on you.

When Henry VIII broke ties with the Roman church in the 16th century, founded the Anglican Church, he levied vast taxes on the church’s land holdings. Oliver Cromwell did the same thing in the following century. Part of the reason for the separation of church and state in America – let me say, separation of church and state is not the same as separation of Christianity and the public square, or Christians in government. But one of the reasons for the separation of church and state in the American experiment – one was to avoid the volatility of the next government picking the religious winners and losers that you would always be one election or, for most of history they didn’t have elections, you would be one birth away or one coup away from someone else picking a new religious winner or losers. Protestants, Catholics, you go back and forth. The other reason was to help negotiate this constant tug of war for power between these two institutions that had existed in Europe in a perpetual tug of war for 1500 years – the church and the state. One of the reasons that in American history they’ve had tax exemption on religious institutions and housing allowance for pastors – one of the justifications for it was not to give special privileges to religious institutions, but it was to say that the government ought not to have a mechanism to crush the church or religious institutions, lest a new government come into power, and they say, “Well, our means of persecuting this religion we don’t like or this denomination we don’t like or this church we don’t like is to crush them with taxes.” That’s one of the reasons that ever since there was an income tax, the religious institutions have been exempt. We see something of the same instinct here in the Persian Empire. Ezra asked for these things, and the king Artaxerxes gave all of these to him, as he was a smart, shrewd, skillful scribe.

Third point, so we’re moving from all of them are important, but we’re moving to subsequently more important. So his history, his head, and I want you to notice now his heart. Look at verse 10: “For 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.” Notice his heart was set to do three things. To study it, but not simply to study it, that he would just be a scholar and some sort of antiquarian – that was the problem with many of the scribes by Jesus’ days – they were experts in all of the “rabbi so and so said this” versus “rabbi so and so.” But not just that they would study it, but that they would do it. They were obedient, not just hearers, but doers of the word. And then that they would teach it.

If you keep your finger there in Ezra, would you flip over to the next book, Nehemiah 8. We have in Nehemiah 8 the example where Ezra comes with scribes and priests and there’s a whole list of them, and he gathers the people at the water gate, as Nehemiah 8:1 he brings the book of the law of Moses. And I want you to see at the end of this opening section, Nehemiah 8:8, maybe you’ve heard it before – this is, I think if there’s a one-sentence definition of preaching, this is it. Now, this isn’t everything that should be said about preaching. This is the floor, not the ceiling. You see what Nehemiah 8:8 says? They, meaning Ezra and these various priests and scribes, “they read from the book, from the law of God.” Clearly, ESV footnote says it may mean paragraph by paragraph, just like we do here – verse by verse, line by line. “And they gave the sense so that the people understood the reading.” As I said last week, some of you will be at this church for a few years. You’ll move away, or you’ll graduate, and you’ll go somewhere else. Maybe some of you are new to town, and you’re looking for a church – we’re not the only Bible-believing church in town. Praise God. Look for a church that will do Nehemiah 8:8, where the minister gets up each week, he reads from the book, clearly, line by line, and he gives the sense of it. He explains it so people can understand what’s in the book. Obviously, there’s a way to do that that’s boring as dirt. That’s not what we want. You want it applied. You want it to preach Christ. Get to the heart. So, this is not the ceiling, but this is the floor. This is the bare minimum. This is what preaching is. Line by line, reading the book, explaining it to you, so you can understand what’s in it. Nehemiah had a heart to do just that. Not a bare intellectualism, but a passion to know the word, to obey the word, and to pass on the word.

We know that priests in the Old Testament – you think of them as butchers. They’re constantly doing sacrifices. But you may overlook all the times they are told to be teachers. Deuteronomy 17, Ezekiel 44, Malachi 2 says, “the lips of the priest should give knowledge; people seek instruction from his mouth.” 2 Chronicles 15:3 says the plight of the people is that they were without a teaching priest. So the priest was also to be a teacher. And it’s clear, going back to Ezra 7, that his skill, his primary influence, came from his ability to handle the word of God. Remember they didn’t have small group Bible studies. Most of them could not read. They didn’t have plenty of Bibles sitting on their shelf. They couldn’t pull out a phone and have access to more information than even existed in the world. They needed people to teach them. And here was a man who came to teach to others. This was the consuming work of his life. Just like Paul told Timothy, “Study to show yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.” That’s what the pastor is to do. That’s what the preacher is to be.

A century ago, J. Gresham Machen said, “The purpose of the seminary is to produce specialists in the word of God.” It’s worth quoting a few sentences here. He writes, “Please do not forget it. Please do not call on us for a product that we are not endeavoring to provide. If you want specialists in social science, or in hygiene, or even in religion in a vague modern sense, you must go elsewhere for what you want. But if you want men who know the Bible and know it in something more than a layman’s sort of way, then call on us. If we can give you such men, we have succeeded. If we cannot give them to you, we have failed. It is a large contract indeed, a contract far too great for human strength. At least by God’s grace, we shall do our best.” So grateful to have Reformed Theological Seminary right in our backyard and so many connections, with Blair now as the president, and professors here, and students and interns, and many of you give. Let’s be praying for Reformed Theological Seminary, right here in Charlotte, to produce this sort of man, this kind of Ezra – skilled, with a heart to study the word, to do it, to teach it to others.

Of course, pastoral ministry is not reserved for the smartest people. God has used preachers of all temperaments, all kinds of intellectual abilities. But to truly shepherd God’s people week in and week out, to renew a church, to reform God’s people, there must be teachers who are skilled and discerning and careful with the word of God. You do not, first of all, really want your pastor to be an expert in all things political. You can’t help but saying some things that will be construed as political. If you quarantine everything that’s called political, you won’t talk about the issues of our day. And yet, I hope you realize, if that’s what you think you want, it’s not what you really need. We need men pastoring our churches who have a heart like Ezra, to be specialists in the word of God, to come to you week after week and read line upon line, to give you this book, and through this book, to proclaim to you the riches of Christ. The Jews considered Ezra a second Moses. He did so much to shape this second temple community, the Jewish nation, and to reinforce that they were to be a people of the book.

Now, most of you are used to this. It is not a surprise that you would be at a church like this and get a sermon about the Bible and studying the Bible and that preaching is important and giving you the verse by verse from the Bible is important. But think about it for a moment. It is unique that we have such a bookish religion. Not unique that there’s a holy book. Almost every religion has some kind of sacred text or texts. But not many of them are focused on that book, and so prize that the leaders of their religious community would be experts in the words and sentences of that book. And so many religious communities, in fact in many strains of Christianity, merely want someone to perform a ritual or to be a non-offensive presence or to be with people in life’s significant moments, which is good and important. But it tells us here that we are to be a bookish people. Now whether you say I love to read or not, you love the Bible, and you love to hear what God says to you in the Bible. Many churches – though they would put on their website all the right things about the Bible – what they’re primarily into is something else. Maybe it’s ritual, maybe it’s an ecstatic experience, maybe it’s a shared ethnic background or political flavor. Or maybe it’s a worship service that is geared, first of all, for its emotional effect, or a grand production that is meant to entertain and bring all of the best clips and skits and entertainment that the world has to offer. Ezra gave to the people of Israel something far different. You are going to be a community, and the people who lead you will be experts in a book. And our worship will be gathered around the reading and the teaching of this book. Why? Because we want something dry and overly intellectual? No. Because we know that God speaks to us in this book. And this is the word of God. And from the word of God, God will guide, save, reform, shape, preserve his people. We are unapologetically people of the book. It’s why we care about truth. It’s why we care about doctrine. It’s why we want men to preach to us.

And finally, we’ve looked at his history, his head, his heart. And finally, I want you to consider the hand – history, head, heart, and the hand that was upon him. Look at all the examples. Did you notice them? Verse 6: “The king granted Ezra all that he asked, for the hand of the Lord was on him.” Verse 9: “For the good hand of his God was on him.” Verse 25: “according to the wisdom of God that is in your hand.” In verse 28, “the hand of the Lord was on me.” We’ll see the same thing in chapter 8, verses 19, 22, 31. It is obviously the big idea of these two chapters. One big idea is this expert in the word, and the other big idea – see that’s not enough, that he would just be a smart guy and really good at handling things and teaching things, unless at the same time the hand of the Lord was upon him and upon the community of God’s people. The most important thing about Ezra was not his history or his head or even his heart. It was the fact that the Lord’s hand was upon him. And what do we do with these several occurrences of that language? The Lord’s hand was upon him.

And in fact, it’s the very first thing that Ezra says. Look down at the last paragraph. You may not have noticed verse 27 and 28. This is Ezra. We’ve had this big introduction of Ezra. We’ve had the decree from Artaxerxes that he carries. The first time we hear from him, here’s what he wants to say: “Blessed be the Lord, the God of our fathers, who put such a thing as this into the heart of the king, to beautify the house of the Lord that is in Jerusalem and who extended to me his steadfast love before the king and his counselors and before all the king’s mighty officers. I took courage, for the hand of the Lord my God was on me.” You notice it’s his trust in the providence of God that enables him to be courageous. “I took courage.” Why? For the hand of the Lord was upon me. And you think of what Ezra says, and there’s – I thought this week how to end this sermon, because there’s several ways you could apply this. I could talk now about providence, how God orchestrates things. And we’ve hit that theme in previous chapters. That would be appropriate. I could talk about prayer, that we look to God in the future, what we need from him. Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain. We need the blessing of God. We need to look to him. That would be appropriate. But I want you to notice something else.

I want you to notice how Ezra is interpreting his life theologically. He says two things in this speech at the end of the chapter. One, blessed be the Lord God who’s put this into the heart of the king. So he thinks, why did the king look favorably upon my request? He doesn’t say lucky break. He doesn’t say we gamed the system. He doesn’t even say what a great king. He says I know why this happened. Praise be to God. God made this happen. Proverbs 21:1, “The Lord directs the heart of the king as he moves the water courses.” It’s not a hard thing for God to direct the political affairs of a nation. So, he interprets this not as a stroke of good luck, but as the Lord’s hand. And then second, he understands that God, verse 28, has extended to me his steadfast love. Who am I, this great man with this great pedigree with this great skill, and yet he’s humble of heart to say who am I, that I should be given such a noble task? Who am I, that I should be an instrument of God’s grace? And so he took courage. God’s goodness increases our valor. So I want you to see – part of understanding the providence of God is not just confidence in the present or looking with hope to the future. It’s how to interpret everything that’s happened to you in the past. The hard things God was directing. The good things was from the Lord’s good providence. This church, this building, which a few of you gave. Most of us didn’t give a penny to be sitting here in this building. All of the people that played a role in your life, maybe parents or pastors or books, all of the things that got you, the job that you have or the relationships that you’re in or the opportunities that you enjoy, the food that will be on your table this afternoon. Do you see all of this? The good hand of the Lord was upon me.

Surely Christ Covenant has thousands of reasons to say, and you individually have just as many to say, the good hand of the Lord our God is upon us. Any gift to the church from the hand of men, whether it be a pastor preaching a sermon or benefactors giving generously or the government looking favorably or volunteers, all of those are ultimately a gift from the hand of God. Every gift in the offering plate, every good sermon, every volunteer, every staff member, every officer, every good thing in the church is a gift from God. Ezra – his name is short for Azariah, which means “the Lord had helped.” It’s very easy for us to see the ways we need help. Good. God wants you to call out to him. Do you also have eyes, brothers and sisters, to recognize all the many, many ways God has helped you? Azariah – the Lord helps. He helps.

I want you to think about another name. It means more than “the Lord helps.” It means “the Lord saves.” That’s Jesus. Another name for Jehoshua or Joshua – the Lord saves. He’s a helper. But he does what Ezra doesn’t do. He’s not a savior. Jesus comes not only with authority. You remember what they say after he preaches the Sermon on the Mount: “he spoke to us not like the scribes.” For they had become intellectual elite, antiquarians, quoting rabbis versus rabbis, but they had lost sight of a word from the Lord. Jesus came preaching to them as one who had authority. Consider Christ’s history – the seed of the woman, the child of Abraham, the son of David. Consider his head. Scripture tells us he grew in wisdom and stature among men. They marveled at his authority. They said, “Never spoke a man like this before.” Consider the heart of Christ, who knew the word, who perfectly obeyed the word, who taught the word to others. And consider the hand of his heavenly father upon him, the power of the Holy Spirit overshadowing him. So, as we remember that we are a people of the book, a people of the word – yes, it is wonderfully all of these jots and tittles and paragraphs and sentences of this inscripturated word – and we are people of the word made flesh, the one who came down from heaven that he might dwell among us, that he might not only teach us the truth but be the way, the truth, and the life, and can say that you, in obeying this word, ought now also to obey me and the word that comes from my lips. Ezra came to help. We need helpers. We need good pastors, servants, teachers. Jesus came to save. And all of the helpers and all of the teachers are merely to point the way to Christ, who will save us to the uttermost. Let’s pray.

Father in heaven, we give thanks for your holy word. And as we come now to this table, we pray that Christ might feed us here by his death, resurrection, ascension, his session, his exaltation, his coming again. We look upon the one who was crucified, risen for our sakes, that we might know the words of everlasting life, and through him live forever. Feed us now, we pray, in Jesus’ name. Amen.