Frustrations to Joy

Oh Lord, we have just sung these words: “How marvelous, how wonderful, and my song shall ever be. How marvelous, how wonderful is my Savior’s love for me?” May we be impressed once again of your great love for us. May this word now to be preached be the instrument of renewing in us trust and obedience, bringing to faith, perhaps for the first time, those who are far from the Savior – yes, from Ezra 6 of all places – that this would be a day of deliverance. We ask for the powerful working of your word in our midst in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Ezra chapter 6. Turn in your Bibles to Ezra 6. I’m going to say Dar-ee-us. You can say Dar-eye-us. Po-tay-to, po-tah-to, but we’re going with Darius today. Follow along as I read Ezra chapter 6:

“Then Darius the king made a decree. Search was made in Babylonia in the house of the archives where the documents were stored. And in Ecbatana, the citadel that is in the province of Media, a scroll was found to which this was written: A record. In the first year of Cyrus the king, Cyrus the king issued a decree:

“Concerning the house of God at Jerusalem, let the house be rebuilt, the place where sacrifices were offered, and let its foundations be retained. Its height shall be 60 cubits and its breadth 60 cubits. With three layers of great stones and one layer of timber, let the cost be paid from the royal treasury. And also let the gold and silver vessels of the house of God, which Nebuchadnezzar took out of the temple that is in Jerusalem and brought to Babylon, be restored and brought back to the temple that is in Jerusalem, each to its place. You shall put them in the house of God.” Now therefore, Tattenai, governor of the province Beyond the River, Shethar-bozenai and your associates, the governors who are in the province Beyond the River, keep away. Let the work on this house of God alone Let the governor of the Jews and the elders of the Jews rebuild this house of God on its site. Moreover, I make a decree regarding what you shall do for these elders of the Jews for the rebuilding of this house of God. The cost is to be paid to these men in full and without delay from the royal revenue, the tribute of the province from Beyond the River. And whatever is needed – bulls, rams, or sheep, or burnt offerings to the God of heaven, wheat, salt, wine, or oil, as the priests of Jerusalem require – let that be given to them day by day without fail, that they may offer pleasing sacrifices to the God of heaven and pray for the life of the king and his sons. Also, I make a decree that if anyone alters this edict, a beam shall be pulled out of his house, and he shall be impaled on it, and his house shall be made a dunghill. May the God who has caused his name to dwell there overthrow any king or people who shall put out a hand to alter this or to destroy this house of God that is in Jerusalem. I Darius make a decree; let it be done with all diligence.”

Then, according to the word sent by Darius the king, Tattenai, the governor of the province Beyond the River, Shethar-bozenai and their associates did with all diligence what Darius the king had ordered. And the elders of the Jews built and prospered through the prophesying of Haggai the prophet and Zechariah the son of Iddo. Though they finished their building by decree of the God of Israel and by decree of Cyrus and Darius and Artaxerxes, king of Persia. And this house was finished on the third day of the month of Adar, in the sixth year of the reign of Darius the king. The people of Israel, the priests and the Levites and the rest of the returned exiles, celebrated the dedication of this house of God with joy. They offered at the dedication of this house of God 100 bulls, 200 rams, 400 lambs and as a sin offering for all Israel 12 male goats, according to the number of the tribes of Israel. And they set the priests in their divisions and the Levites in their divisions for the service of God at Jerusalem, as it is written in the Book of Moses. On the 14th day of the first month, the returned exiles kept the Passover. For the priests and the Levites had purified themselves together; all of them were clean. So they slaughtered the Passover lamb for all the returned exiles, for their fellow priests, and for themselves. It was eaten by the people of Israel who had returned from exile and also by everyone who had joined them and separated himself from the uncleanness of the peoples of the land to worship the Lord, the God of Israel. And they kept the Feast of Unleavened Bread seven days with joy, for the Lord had made them joyful and had turned the heart of the king of Assyria to them, so that he aided them in the work of the house of God, the God of Israel.”

We left off two weeks ago at the end of chapter 4 with the good guys losing, the bad guys winning, at least for a time. Then in chapter 5, the building of the temple began anew, but there was a legal dispute. Some of the people, the Persian officials, weren’t sure they should be doing this. And so the elders said, well, go look. Go look in the archives. Go ask Darius, your king. And they continued to work as they waited for the courts to hand down their verdict. And here in chapter 6, we have the results. And at the end of chapter 6, therefore, we have moved from frustration to joy. And we encounter a scene of great celebration. How many times in these last verses do we have the word joy? Just there at the end in verse 20. They kept the Feast of Unleavened Bread with joy for the Lord had made them joyful. This is a great scene of celebration. And notice in moving from the seeming defeat of chapter 4 – they built the foundation, and then the work stopped – to the completion in chapter 6, we did not have any temples falling from the sky. This is not the Wizard of Oz and a house just dropped down from the sky. That’s not how the Lord usually works. The Lord works through means. Now, he can work contrary to means or without means. We call those miracles. But he usually works according to means, which means that God uses the normal, ordinary – though he works in extraordinary ways – efforts and activities and rulings and brains and personalities to get his work done.

Now, there was a time in Israel’s history, a remarkable time, he fed them with manna from heaven. They got up every morning and there they had their food to eat. It just appeared on the ground. Or quail fell from the sky, and they had meat to eat, more than they could possibly eat. And it’s possible God could feed us that way. And he very, very rarely, not for a long time, in fact, has chosen to feed his people with manna from heaven. I bet none of you had manna for breakfast this morning. Think about what you had for breakfast. It came to you by means of some farmers, some packaging company, some, you know, my food maybe synthetic conveyor belt somewhere. Hopefully, you had some fruits. If you had vegetables, I don’t know why you did that so early, but if you had someone grew those fruits and brought them for you. If you had some cereal, maybe it was some cereal that was manufactured in good ol’ Battle Creek, Michigan, where many of the cereal companies are. Kellogg’s first invented the cornflake because they were Seventh Day Adventists, and they wanted something that would meet their dietary restrictions. And there’s a Seventh Day Adventist community, that part of Michigan. There you go, a little history. Maybe you had a glass of milk. Some farmer had to milk that cow. Milk those almonds, perhaps, to get you that milk. Bacon and eggs maybe – if you’ve already had bacon, your day is already blessed. Or eggs. We have, you’ve heard this before, for some reason, we have six chickens. They do give us eggs. We are practically off the grid, there in Mint Hill. We get six eggs, maybe, a day. So, we see the means. God uses means. Animals and farmers and packaging – you ate something, you drank something, and God provided it through means.

And so we have here this great scene of completion – celebration with the temple rebuilt, the second temple, and it didn’t drop out of the sky. God used means to move his people from frustration to joy. So I want us to look at three things the Lord used. We’ll deal with the first two most quickly, more time on the third, and then we’ll end by looking at the occasion of joy itself. So three things. First, and this is what we talked about last week, he uses prophets, teachers. Look at chapter 5, verse 1 – the prophets of Haggai, “The prophets Haggai and Zechariah prophesied to the Jews who were in Judah and Jerusalem in the name of the God of Israel.” Verse 2, “Then Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, Jeshua the son of Jozadak arose and began to rebuild the house, and the prophets of God were with them, supporting them.” We saw that last week and looked in depth in particular at what Haggai was prophesying, both a message of comfort – the Lord is with you – and a message of rebuke – you need to repent, you need to turn, you need to get back to work. Look later, chapter 6 verse 14, we see the same theme: “And the elders of the Jews built and prospered through the prophesying of Haggai the prophet and Zechariah the son of Iddo.” Good teachers were critical to the rebuilding of the temple.

Now that’s what we talked about last week. So only going to dwell here for a couple of minutes. I just want to make this point – as you think about the importance of good teachers, of people to speak to you the word of the Lord, you notice here they prospered under the teaching of Haggai and Zechariah. Some of you will be here for a few years, maybe a few months. Maybe you’re a college student, maybe you’re a teenager, and you’ll grow up and you’ll go off somewhere, and you’ll move somewhere else. Or maybe you’re passing through. Or maybe you’re new to this area, and you’re looking for a church. Praise God, we are not at all the only good church in town. There are lots of them. But whether you’re looking for a church, or someday you leave here and you have to go find a church, would you put uppermost in your mind finding a place where the people can prosper with the faithful, robust, heartfelt, Christ-exalting preaching of the Bible? Would that young people and people of all ages would make their job decisions, their retirement decisions, their housing decisions based on whether they can be near a church that is going to teach the Bible. Go somewhere where God speaks on Sunday morning with clarity, authority, grace – Lord willing, also on Sunday night through the preaching of God’s word. Preachers are not the most important people. That would be a self-serving message. God can do and uses many other people in the church, and he can do a lot of other things, and must, in the church. But it is to say that there is very little of lasting significance and spiritual prosperity that God will do without the faithful teaching and preaching of his word. If you’re tempted to say, “Well, you just need the Holy Spirit, or just read the Bible for yourself” – of course, you should read the Bible for yourself – but the record of church history and the record of the Bible demonstrate that God almost always accomplishes his great work in the world through faithful gospel preaching – not the only thing, but one of the indispensable things. Make that a priority for you in your life, and where you have it and find it, thank God for it. Pray for your pastors here, for the word that comes from this pulpit. Maybe you subtly pass along this message to some of your kids and grandkids and just say, “Preacher was given a good word to make sure you find a good church.”

And what did we find from the prophets last week? Haggai was doing exactly what 2 Timothy 3:16-17 tells us the word of God does. It’s profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness. That is, God’s people prosper when they have people to tell them sound doctrine – yes, to confront you in your sin. You don’t want to just find a place that somebody says every week, everything’s okay with all of us. That’s not realistic. But then points you towards grace, equips you for a life of faith and obedience. That’s what you need. The people prospered under that ministry. And be careful – because there’s lots of teachers out there – be careful what you regularly put into your head and your heart. You’re discerning people – isn’t to say you only listen to Christian music, you only listen to Christian books or Christian speakers or Christian podcasts – but it is to say that you will be, we are all shaped by what we pay attention to. If this is the only occasion where you pay attention to God’s word, and then you have every other voice pouring into your life the rest of the week, well, that’s hardly going to yield good fruit. Pray for your pastors. Give thanks for good teaching where you can find it, and fill up your head and your heart with the word of God. That’s point number one. He uses prophets, or we would say teachers, the Bible.

Second, he uses persistence. Look back at chapter 5:8. I mentioned this briefly last week. Verse 8: “Be it known to the king that we went to the province of Judah, to the house of the great God. It is being built with huge stones.” That means rolling stones, so big you had to roll them, you couldn’t carry them. “And timber is laid in the walls. This work goes on diligently and prospers in their hands.” There would be no temple at the end of chapter 6 without a lot of people working really hard in chapter 5. This is part of what the prophets called them to do. Remember, Haggai was saying, “Look, you’ve got your nice houses. You’ve got your paneling.” My parents listen to the sermons every week – hi, mom – and she texted and said, “Well, you talked about paneling. Do you think – we were thinking of replacing our paneling in the house.” I said, “Well, that’s been around about as long as I have, so I think it’s okay by now.” But the point that Haggai was making was you are so focused on your own life, your own house, you have no time to commit to the Lord. And he stirred them up, and they got busy, and they got to work. And you know this in life. It’s especially true in your spiritual life. Can you get rich without hard work? Well, yes, you could inherit it. You could just be in the right place at the right time, invest in the right thing, comes back. Can you be famous without hard work? Well, you certainly can. You can be famous for being famous. Can you be popular without hard work? Yep. But no Christian has made real progress in holiness, or been truly fruitful in ministry, or learned to love their spouse or their friends without a lot of hard work. If God is to rescue you from whatever plight you feel you’re in right now – financial, emotional, marital, spiritual – it is almost certain, not the only thing, but one of the things, he will use is diligence. That’s not all. This is not just pull yourselves up, but it’s one of the things. You say, can you give me the Christianity that doesn’t require hard work? Nope, it’s not there. Even, remember in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul just got done celebrating the gospel, and it’s about Jesus and the resurrection and dying for our sins, and then he says, “I praise God, I work harder than all of you. Yet, not I, but the grace of God that is within me.”

Remember what Zechariah was preaching to them. I think I mentioned this briefly last week. Zechariah 4:10. You don’t have to turn there. You’ve probably heard this before. Absolutely one of my favorite verses in the Bible, and I learned it in the NIV, a little different than the ESV renders it. Zechariah 4:10. And it’s absolutely foundational. It’s one of my life verses. It’s one of my foundational planks in my philosophy of ministry. There you have, in Zechariah 4, the temple’s completed. And the workmen, they’re bringing the plum line, like the level. They’re squaring off the last corner. We’ve done it. The temple is completed. They’re looking forward to that day, and they say – when they square off the last corner, when they measure it out, they put the last finishing touches, and you stand back and you see the completion of that glorious temple – Zechariah 4:10 says, you will learn, do not neglect the days of small things. That temple wasn’t built in a day. Small things. Maybe some of you are feeling, in particular with the volatility in our country and upheaval that we sense and certain cultural dynamics, maybe you’re sensing in a really powerful way, how can I make a difference with my life? How can I serve Christ most effectively? Maybe you’re saying, I will do whatever it takes, I just want my life to count. And if you’re asking that question, first of all, good that the Lord is stirring in you to ask that question. Selfish ambition is bad. But Jesus said, “Zeal for thine house hath eaten me up.” There’s a good thing, to be zealous for the Lord. Paul says in Romans 12, “Never be lacking in zeal.” So if you have that zeal – you say, I want my life to count – well, here’s one of the first and last things you need to know: do not neglect the days and weeks and months and years of small things. We might like to think that the answer is how do I make – today I go, and the next week and the next month, and my life makes a massive difference for Jesus. That’s not usually how it works. The temple didn’t drop out of the sky. So when that’s done, you’re going to look back and say I’m glad we didn’t despise the days of small things. If you want to make a better marriage, if you want to make a difference for Christ, if you want to – even just simple, worldly goals of financial security – all of them require little by little, small things after small things. That’s how you make a difference in life. It’s how you make a difference for Jesus. You read your Bible. You go to the meeting. You pray. You say you’re sorry. You learn what you can. You serve wherever God has you. You ask some big dreams and some of them God delivers, and others he doesn’t, and you keep going.

Richard Baxter, the Puritan who knew what it was to face many sufferings in life, once wrote, “Oh, what a life might men live if they were but willing and diligent. I dare say that God would have our joys be far more than our sorrows. Yea, he would have to us all of our sorrows turned to joy.” Willing and diligent – don’t underestimate what you can do. Whether you think you have one talent or two or five, whether you have great experience or very little, great gifts or very meager, to simply say, “I’m humble, I’m willing, and I will work hard.” The Lord used their diligence. He uses prophets. He uses persistence.

And here’s the third point, which we’ll spend a little more time before we land on the joy. He uses providence. Ultimately, have you noticed in chapter 5 and 6, God is the hero of this story? He’s the hero of every story. He stands behind all these events as the one moving, acting, stirring, putting down, raising up for the deliverance of his people. Notice again, look at chapter 5:1. “The prophets prophesied to the Jews in Judah and Jerusalem in the name of the God of Israel, who was over them.” Go to verse 5: “But the eye of their God was on the elders of the Jews.” Look at chapter 6:12 – “May the God who caused his name to dwell there” and then at the end, verse 22, “They kept the feast, seven days with joy, for the Lord” – he did two things here – “He made them joyful,” and two, “he had turned the heart of the king of Assyria” (they’re using the old name, this would sometimes happen as one nation or one empire conquered another empire, they might go by the old empire’s name, so this is the king of Babylon, the kings of the Persians and the Medes, the king of Assyria) – “He turned his heart to them so that he aided them in the work.” God almost always uses good teaching, good leaders, hard work. But here in this third point, we see something a little different, because God can work in the midst of governmental oppression, persecution. In fact, it’s the assumption in many parts of the New Testament that the powers that be will be hostile to the Christian faith. So, we shouldn’t think that a good government is a necessary means in order for God’s work to go forward. We see in history, it often isn’t.

And yet, and yet, it does not negate the fact that good government is very often one of the means God employs to vindicate his people and further the cause of justice. And what I mean by good in this passage, it’s not like the Persian king here became a Yahwehist. It’s not like he said, you know what, I’m going to become a Jew. He wasn’t converted. He simply was fair, just, a man of his word, patient, informed. So the elders of the Jews, when they’re opposed in chapter 5 say, “Wait a minute, wait a minute. We’re not going to stop building, because when we were sent back here by Cyrus, go check it out. If you can find the meeting minutes – praise God someone kept the minutes, and praise God for archivists, somebody kept it in the archive – go look for it and find it, and you’ll say – you’ll find out – we have a legal right to do this. In fact, Cyrus sent us here to rebuild this temple.” And sure enough, the Persian government looks into the matter. They had good records. Now, this won’t mean much to us, but chapter 6, verse 2, in Ecbatana – this is 280 miles away. This was another royal residence where they kept the archive. So, they had to – that took a while. Dale Ralph Davis says this is the first example of interlibrary loan to go and go check that out. Can we go find the records there? And then they judged justly. We read in verse 4, in fact, “Let those costs be paid from the royal treasury.” They look at it, and they say, “Sure enough, you’re right. There was a decree from Cyrus. You do have permission to do this.” And then, even above and beyond that, Persia gives their full support. And quite the irony here, it was Tattenai the governor of the province Beyond the River that is on the other side of the Euphrates, and Shethar-bozenai and his associates back in chapter 5:6 – they were the ones who kind of first folded their arms and sort of “tut-tut what are you doing,” and now Darius says um, yeah Tattenai, you go ahead, give these Jews the good news that they can build the temple, and oh by the way, go pay for it out of your royal revenue. Tattenai must not have felt very good about that. And above that, Darius says, “And if you don’t let this work continue, if anybody gets in the way, let them be impaled.” There are records of this sort of cruel punishment happening in that part of the world – be impaled upon a beam of your house. Do you see the eye for an eye mentality? If anyone disturbs the house of the God of the Jews, let his house be disturbed, and let him be killed by a plank in his own house.

God likes to do more than we could ask or imagine. They were saying, “Can we just get a legal ruling that lets the work continue?” Lo and behold, they come back and they say, “Yes, you can continue, and we’re going to pay for all of it, and we’re going to pay – we’re going to bring back the gold and silver vessels that Nebuchadnezzar took away, and you got to worship to your God, right? So, we’re going to provide some goat, sheep. We’re going to do the sacrifices, whatever you need.” Behind a frowning providence, he hides a smiling face. The decree of Darius called for everything to be provided – payment, vessels of gold and silver, animals for sacrifice. Now, keep in mind this was the empire-wide policy. There are probably two reasons why the Medo-Persian Empire did this. Reason number one, happy subjects are less likely to rebel, and happy subjects get to worship the god that they want to worship. So that’s number one. That was their empire-wide policy. Let people worship the god that they want to worship, because if we – a persecuting regime usually makes ruling even worse. So we’re going to give some – now, it wasn’t quite the first amendment, let’s not get carried away – but they said, “You go back, worship your God.” Happy subjects are good subjects.

Reason number two, and this is where you see their polytheistic way of looking at the world: we want you to seek the blessing of your God. They likely believe that all of these regions that they had conquered, they had their own gods and goddesses. They had their own deities. They didn’t need to be in competition with one another. So, sure, the Jews have a god. Jerusalem has a god. That god needs a temple. And you pray to that god that he might bless the king, might be able to exercise some influence. So, it wasn’t that they were incredibly enlightened and had some modern idea of freedom or liberty or conscience. They just thought, well, this is good policy. This is a long way away. How are we going to keep these people in tow? Let them worship the god that they want. And sure, we’ll pay for it. Small pittance for everything that the empire can do. We’ll pay for you to have your temple. We’ll pay for you to have your sacrifices. You know what? Sacrifice to your God. Say a prayer for me. It’ll make things better. It was absolutely a self-serving policy, but it was a smart policy, and it was a better policy than many other superpowers in the region had fostered before: we’re going to mandate what everyone does. That is simply hard to keep under wraps. The same thing would happen with the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire became so far-flung, as they were relatively tolerant as long as you would say prayers to the emperor – that became a sticking point. The Jews were grandfathered into that. They didn’t quite know what to do with the Christians.

Now, Ezra 6 is not meaning to give us a full-fledged political philosophy. At the same time, this is a good model for what a quote unquote “good king,” a good magistrate, might look like when God’s people don’t have their own earthly king. The Jews were back in Jerusalem. So, the exile was over, but kind of the exile continued. They didn’t have a son of David to sit on the throne. They were under the thumb of another empire, like they would for most of the rest of their history into the New Testament. But yet, this gives an example of the sort of ruler over them that God might be pleased with. Now, still were idolators. And yet this god allowed God’s people to worship as they wanted to worship. They were able to pursue life and obedience to their God. We read Romans 13 earlier. The basic function of a civil magistrate is a servant for the good, to protect those who are doing good, and an avenger of God’s wrath on the wrongdoer. That’s sort of the bare minimum. Do you punish evil, and do you protect the innocent? Think about 1 Timothy 2:2. Here is a very important plank, I think, in anyone’s political philosophy. 1 Timothy 2:2, “Pray for kings and all those in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.” Now, it’s true, they’re in first century Roman Empire. It’s different than being in 21st century America, which has a long Christian tradition and history, and has more Christians than any other religion. So, it’s not a one-to-one comparison. And yet, it’s instructive in what Paul tells them to pray. What are they praying for? Well, they’re praying as, baseline, here’s what we want. We want a king and all those in high positions to let us live a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. Now, is it best if we can have Christians close to people of influence or Christians in high positions? Well, yes. Is it wonderful when Christianity has a kind of public truth about it? Is it wonderful when people give voice to Christian truth? Of course, all of those things can be very good. And yet we see from Paul’s prayer here in 1 Timothy 2 that it wasn’t necessarily that he was saying pray that the Roman Empire become Christendom. The prayer was, “Can we have freedom to worship as we know we ought to worship and live godly, dignified lives.”

And we see that here, as the Lord turned Darius to the people of Israel. What did Darius do? He was just, fair. A good government sticks to its own sphere, protects the rights of its citizens, and punishes those who do evil. And so the Jewish leaders, their hard work was rewarded in God’s providence. They sent this up the chain of command, and it came back down, and the decision was rendered, and it was to their benefit. Now notice, before I make this next statement, let me just put all the necessary caveats here. I’m not arguing that God’s people should ever be passive. We’ve already seen that about diligence, nor quietistic – just, we can’t do anything, we don’t get involved in politics – no, surely we do. And it’s good that Christians do so. And yet, there is a point to be made here that ultimately most of life’s hardest problems and society’s most intractable problems cannot actually be fixed just by hard work. If they could, and it just took some human ingenuity and the right plan and a little bit of money, they would have been fixed. What we see here is God needs to be at work. God needs to be doing something. Again, this is not an excuse for quietism and dismissal or withdrawal from any sort of public square. It is to remind you – what you may need to be reminded of, and I need to be reminded of – when I see problems, my first instinct is “how can I fix it?” My first instinct is often not “I can’t wait to see what God will do,” because ultimately God is the one who has to act. God is the only truly indispensable person in this project. And so it is not doing nothing to trust, to look, to turn, and to pray.

Only God could have orchestrated every part of Ezra 5 and 6. There was no master plan that put it all together to get the temple. The prophets were being faithful with their part. The elders and the leaders were faithful with their part. They kept working hard. They applied the legal system of the day, and God stirred in the heart of the king. Look at verse 14 again. Did you notice this? Second sentence: “They finished their building by decree of the god of Israel and by decree of Cyrus and Darius and Artaxerxes.” Artaxerxes is looking to the next king who will be there when they rebuild the walls of the city. Did you see there – two decrees? How did the temple get built? Well, we know it was by the decree of Darius – Cyrus and then Darius – without that, but verse 14, here is the sovereign hand, writing all of our stories. Two decrees. First, it was built by the decree of the God of Israel. You know, when you’re flying, and you land, and you have turbulence. Now it’s not turbulence, it’s rough air. It’s gonna have some rough air. And you go through, and you can be flying up there all sunny, clear, beautiful, smooth. You don’t even know what it’s – then you move through all the clouds – and the rough air. That’s where we live life. But there is an above the clouds. It’s always sunny, always clear, always smooth. That’s God’s decree. God is writing the story. The most important part of any plan you can ever make is the part where you turn your eye to look upon the Lord, what he will do. This section, chapter 1 through chapter 6 – because next week, Lord willing, chapter 7, we fast forward another generation and Ezra comes and we’re in a different time period. So, chapter 1 through 6 is its own unit. Did you notice how this unit begins and ends? Go back, chapter 1:1, “In the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, that the word of the Lord might be fulfilled. The Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus.” And this section ends – exact bookends – verse 22: “He had turned the heart of the king of Assyria.”

The Lord could not have made it more plain – of all the lessons that we’ve learned in these six chapters, right there – here is the lesson God wants you to learn. He wanted the returning exiles to hear, he wants us to hear – beginning and the end – this was God. He stirred in the heart of Cyrus. He moved King Darius toward his people. It was as if to say to them and to us, “Don’t you ever, ever think for one second that I’ve forgotten you, that there isn’t sunshine above the clouds. Don’t you ever think that I’m not in control. Don’t you ever imagine that I don’t have a decree that stands behind all of this. Your story and the story of the world, God says, is the story that I am writing. He uses providence.

I want you to notice as we close – we would be remiss if we didn’t see what all of this results in. The prophets and the persistence and the providence, the joy of this final celebration. This 20-year ordeal comes to an end – there’s actually two celebrations. First, the temple is finished and dedicated. It’s not as grand as Solomon’s dedication, but there are many sacrifices, and verse 18 tells us it is all done according to the book of Moses. And then, short time later, they celebrate Passover – a sin offering, now a purification. The Passover would remind them of God’s deliverance and the Exodus, that just as he had delivered God’s people out of Egypt, now he has brought them back, and they celebrated the Passover once again, reconstituting the nation of Israel back in Judah. I want you to see, however, one other spot of joy. So, we got those two celebrations. One other spot that’s easy to miss. This is one of these great verses that’s just hidden there that has a whole deep ocean of truth. Look at verse 21: “The Passover was eaten by the people of Israel who had returned from exile and also by everyone who had joined them and separated himself from the uncleanness of the peoples of the land to worship Yahweh, the God of Israel.”

Remember the policy from 2 Kings 17 that went back a long time is they left some people, and they resettled this population. The people that were there when they came back were engaged in a syncretistic religion. There were people there, and then the ruling king of the empire said, “Well, they need the God of Israel, so bring a priest there and tell them to do the sacrifices. Otherwise, we’re going to get eaten by lions.” And they mixed the whole thing up with their own pagan religions and with the religion of Israel. They were syncretistic. That’s why, recall in chapter 4, when they come – the people of the land, they’re called – and they say, “Hey, golly, we’d like to help you build the temple.” Now, they weren’t being mean. These were people who maybe had bad motives, but certainly they were compromised. They were not on the same team. And so, they said, “No, you cannot build the temple with us.” In Ezra 4:4, then the people of the land discouraged them, made them afraid, bribed counselors against them, frustrated their purpose all the days of Cyrus. Those are the people of the land. So, isn’t this a spot of good news, a joyful surprise? Also, everyone who had joined them separated himself from the uncleanness of the peoples of the land. It wasn’t just the exiles who returned who joined in this joyous celebration. There were some prodigals who had been saved. God’s grace is never, was never, limited to just one nation. Even in the Old Testament, it was never circumscribed within just one ethnic people. These would have been lapsed Jews, and these would have been outright gentile pagans. And some of them say, “Hey, wait a minute. I’d like to get in on that.” And maybe you’re thinking that maybe you feel like you’re that lapsed Christian. You haven’t been taking this very seriously. Or you’ve been stirred up by recent events, and you find yourself back in church. Or maybe you think, I’m a gentile-come-lately, and I don’t know anything about – I don’t know any of these songs that you’re doing, and let alone what Presbyterians are all about – I don’t know any of this stuff, but I’m here. This community is open to you. If – this isn’t my if, this is the Lord’s if – if you turn. You notice they separated themselves. Separated themselves from the impurity of the people of the land. It’s a reminder for us, too, that true worship was never just about a nice building or doing the sacrifices. Jeremiah preached against that with all of his heart. He said, “Stop going around saying, ‘The temple, the temple.’ Don’t be going around town and saying, ‘Have you seen Christ Covenant? We got a great building.’ He said, ‘No, no, what’s the building if you don’t have a heart of faith? What are these sacrifices if you – if you haven’t turned from your sin?” So, this was a word for them as well.

But we see here the great joyous occasion to welcome people in. God’s grace never shuts the door on those who genuinely repent. If you say this morning, “But I’m late.” You’re not too late. “But I’m unclean.” You can turn from your uncleanness. “But I’m not familiar with all of this that you do.” We’ll teach you. Because now we know that there is a new Jerusalem coming, a heavenly Jerusalem. And the picture that Revelation gives us is the gates never shut. They’re always open, happily welcoming all nations who will confess the name of Jesus – every individual, man, woman or child, whatever age, 3 to 103, you would turn from your uncleanness, you would turn to the God of the Bible, and you would join with rejoicing to this heavenly Savior. Jesus Christ said, “And I will tear down the temple, and in three days I will build it up again.” He didn’t mean that temple. He meant himself. He said, I’m the new temple. Your worship now centers around me. And Jesus said, I won’t cast you away. Anyone you want to come to the temple that is Jesus, you don’t have to move to Israel. You don’t have to ever visit Jerusalem. You can come to Jesus by faith through the Spirit. And he welcomes you in. All those who had returned from exile and everyone who had separated himself from the uncleanness of the people of the land, they came to worship the Lord, the God of Israel. with great joy. Let’s pray.

Father in heaven, thank you for your word, your many precious providences in our lives, for bringing us here. Cause us to repent and believe and to worship. We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.