Preservation, Promises and Divine Providence

Father in heaven, we ask once again that you would give us grace, that we might have ears to hear and that this poor lisping, stammering tongue would have grace to speak your Word, that we might find challenge and comfort, that you would make sense of what can seem so senseless in our lives and in our world. Thank you for your perfect, infallible, inerrant, inspired Word. Give us ears to hear it, we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

In 586 BC King Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the holiest city and the holiest place among God’s holy people and Israel. He sacked Jerusalem and he razed the temple to the ground. Those Jews who had some special skills, at least as Babylon considered them, the artisans, the craftsman, they were carted off to Babylon in the east. The poorest of the Jews were left behind with nothing but utter devastation. Babylon then appointed a governor, Gedaliah, to rule over Judah and the conquered people. Jeremiah was prophesying at this time, sometimes called the weeping prophet. It’s for good reason that there’s a book there, Lamentation, or that we have our word, Jeremiah. It is someone who gives a weeping lamentation, a sermon of great distress, that was Jeremiah. He was given the unenviable task of prophesying in the time of destruction. He was the realist who was also right when many of the false prophets were saying, don’t worry, God is for you, this is gonna be short, two years at the most. Jeremiah said, well yes, God is for us, He will remember His covenant if we turn and repent, but this is not going to be a short ordeal, this will be seventy years. Jeremiah told that to the exiles who were going, and he told the people who had to stay that they were to accept Babylonian rule. Many of them were still finding some way out, they were looking to the south, to Egypt for help, and so they rebelled against the governor Gedaliah. They murdered him. Some of the Jews fled for Egypt. Things could hardly seem any worse. The promised land looked more and more like a land of broken promises. What happened to all of the good things that God had promised to give us in this place. Meanwhile hundreds of miles away in Babylon, things quickly went downhill there as well. After Nebuchadnezzar died there was infighting among rivals for power and it was not long before Babylon, who had supplanted Assyria as the previous super power that Babylon would be supplanted by someone else. Northeast of Babylon in the mountains of what today is the country of Iran, there was a young Persian King, and he had succeeded in gaining control over the Medes. In 539 Babylon, which was still home to many of the Jewish exiles fell to the kingdom of the Medes and the Persians. This new king calling the shots for this Medo Persian empire was a young man named Cyrus which brings us to Ezra chapter 1.

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, so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and also put it in writing:

We begin this morning in a series on the Book of Ezra, so it’s worth getting oriented. What is this book about? There are two related yet distinct sections in the Book of Ezra. Ezra 1-6 which deals with this time that I just established in the introduction, so roughly 539 BC to 520 BC, so a generation there, this first wave of exiles who returned and were rebuilding Jerusalem. And then in chapter 7, we skip ahead a couple of generations to around 458, so from 520 to 458, another 60 years or so and now we are in the reign of Artaxerxes. He assumed power in 465 and then Ezra comes from Babylonia to Jerusalem in the seventh year or around 458. Remember the BC you’re counting the years down. So, Ezra 1-6 is the first wave of exiles and then there’s a gap of a couple generations and then actually Ezra comes on the scene in chapters 7-10. 

Ezra and Nehemiah go together, they stand next to each other in our Bibles, they were often in earlier years regarded as one book and they are certainly closely related. Nehemiah came 13 years after Ezra, around 445. He was appointed by Artaxerxes to be the governor of Judah. These two books together tell the story of return and rebuilding. You can think of three building projects. Sometimes think about, well why should God’s people be engaged in building? Well, there’s good reason, God’s people engaged in building here in the Old Testament. First the altar, then the temple, then the wall. These two books together, which cover those three building projects, Ezra and Nehemiah were probably finished after the end of Nehemiah’s activity sometime around 430 BC. We are told in the books themselves who wrote these books. Some people think Ezra the scribe wrote Ezra and Nehemiah and Ezra wrote First and Second Chronicles. Others think Ezra wrote Ezra and Nehemiah wrote Nehemiah, that would be convenient, though neither book claims to be Ezra from Ezra and Nehemiah from Nehemiah. Most scholars today think that there was a chronicler, perhaps the same chronicler that put Chronicles together, whomever he was that was responsible for Ezra and Nehemiah that he used their memoirs we might call them, that’s why there is sometimes I language in these books. The chronicler is getting some of the information that was written down firsthand in a kind of memoir and then he put the books together in their final form. You can see if you have your Bible open to Ezra 1 and you look over on the other page, that Second Chronicles ends in pretty much the exact same way that Ezra begins. You look at 2 Chronicles 36:22, “Now in the first year of Cyris king of Persia, in the Word the Lord might be fulfilled. He stirred up the spirit of Cyrus and he made a proclamation.” Verse 23, thus says Cyrus that is pretty much identical with the first three verses of Ezra. 

So, we are putting these stories together, the history of God’s people through the united monarchy, then the divided monarchy Isreal and Judea and then Judah and then off into exile and hear in Ezra finally with the return. Three building projects throughout these two books alter temple wall and three lessons here in chapter 1. 

Lesson number one. God preserves His people. And you can see actually in the title of the sermon in the bulletin, Preservation, Promises, Divine Providence. Those are the three lessons.

Number one. God preserves His people. You can see there is a deliberate effort in this first chapter to establish continuity with these exiles returning with the Israel that was. Look at verse 5, “Then rose up the heads of the fathers houses, of Judah and Benjamin.” These are the heads of the father’s houses. The same Judah and Benjamin that were there in the southern part of the land. Look at chapter 2:1. “Now these were the people of the province who came up out of captivity, the exiles whom Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon had carried captive to Babylonia. They returned to Jerusalem and Judah, each to his own town.” So very deliberately the author wants us to see that this is the preserving of God’s people. These are yes, some people have died, new people have been born, but it’s the heads of the father’s household and there returning to their own towns God has provided for the remnant. And did you notice, somewhat surprisingly, how lavishly he provided for them. You see in verse 4, let each survivor in whatever place he sojourns to be assistive, he gets silver, gold, goods, and then later down in verse 6 we have another accounting of silver, gold, goods, beasts, costly wares. 

So, two things are happening here. One, we’re seeing how God is deliberately and directly providing for His people so the preservation, the provision, but also if you think of the Old Testament, what does this sound like? What does this sound like when God’s people leave a foreign land where they had been held against their will and then they’re going to go to the promised land. It’s a lot like leaving Egypt. This is again a kind of plundering of the Egyptians. This is a second kind of exodus. So just as when Moses led the people, remember the Egyptians, they left with all sorts of gold and that’s why they had things to offer. They made a golden calf, that was a mistake in the wilderness. Well here similarly, as they take this exodus out of captivity back to the promised land, it is a second plundering this time of the Babylonians or here of the Persian empire and notice, not only are they provided for, but look at the detail in verses 7 through 11. Now those verses were probably maybe the most boring verses of this chapter, in a chapter that seems to have some boring verses. Buckle up next week’s hohoho, yeah, you’re gonna see what we’ve got there with a lot of names and people coming back, but verses 7 through 11 would have been some of the most glorious verses for God’s people. Why? Because you see what they’re receiving, verse 9, “Basins of gold, the basins of silver, the censers, the bowls of gold and silver, other vessels.” What are these things for, these are the holy artifacts and holy utensils for the worship of their holy God. That’s why it’s given a third of this chapter, which seems irrelevant to us, just get on with it, but would have been precious to them. Do you see what this means? They can once again worship God as He wanted to be worshiped. They can do their worship in the place where His Old Testament people were told to worship, in the way that His Old Testament people were told to worship. So, they would have heard this with great delight, you mean all those early Nebuchadnezzar the things he took from us. He kept them and then when he was conquered by the Persians they kept them, and now we’re getting them back? As if it said grab your hymnals, roll out the pulpit, tell Pam the organ is back. You would know the church is opening its doors, but it’s even bigger than that because they were not able to worship God fully as He had commanded, and they hadn’t sacrificed. Remember I said three things they’re going to build. Even before they do the wall, before they do the temple, just as was often the case in the Old Testament, when Abraham was traveling someplace, when Isaac or Jacob and they’d get to a new place, the first thing they would build, what, an altar. What do you do on an altar? You make sacrifices to atone for your sins. First thing they are going to rebuild is the altar. This chapter is telling us that God will not let His people be destroyed. That’s the point of the Book of Revelation. The church is always under attack. Maybe you feel it in your workplace, maybe you feel it depending on who holds political power if not here, and let’s be honest compared to almost everywhere in the world we have such an embarrassment of riches and enviable freedoms. The global church is often under attack and yet protected. God will not let the flame of true worship ever to be snuffed out and wonder of wonders Israel outlived Assyria and Babylon. The church will outlast every dynasty. If you want to be, so I know we’re getting into, well there’s always sports going on, that’s what my wife tells me, I’m always saying no, but this is really important we’ve gotta have this on. You say that every day of the year, how is this golf tournament very important? There’s football, you have your teams and depending on your team or what kind of fan you are, always optimistic, always pessimistic, always wondering, and the thing about sports is there’s really only one winner, suppose you now have 60 bowl games, but most of those don’t count, if you want to be on the winning side in what really matters, be a part of the church, because the church will outlast them all. Now we don’t know what God’s promise is for any particular church or particular denomination, but Jesus promised to build no nation, no other institution except the church. Rome came and went, the Ottoman Empire came and went, the Soviet Union came and went. If the Lord tarries, American perhaps will come and go, but the church will remain. Worship is what matters.

You see verse 5, “Rose up heads of the fathers’ houses of Judah and Benjamin, the priests, and the Levits, everyone whose spirit God had stirred to go up, rebuild the house.” They were comfortable, you think, well wouldn’t they all want to go. Well, no, some of them, that’s the only home they knew, they were comfortable. Just like you and I get comfortable as exiles, comfortable here. You sometimes wonder God said, He just opened the heavens and said, “Right now who wants to go to heaven.” Now some of you are like, yes, immediately, I’ve been praying for it, I’m ready, you don’t know how hard my life is.” I think others would say, “Well.” One of my fears when I was a younger man, I knew it was bad theology, but that Jesus would come back before I got married, before I had a honeymoon. It seemed like a grim prospect. Some of you may think, “Well yes, I want that, but now?” What might God be stirring in you. I hope you feel it stirring. I can’t promise that every single service you ever go to in your whole life is a world beater. Going to church is a lot like eating meals. How many meals do you remember in your whole life? A few, maybe there’s some that were really bad, hope you forget those. You remember some of the, oh wasn’t that a great feast we had. You may mark a few of them, but you know what happened over all those years and all those meals, you got fed and you grew, and you were strong and Church is a little bit like that. If there’s a stirring within you, a desire amidst all the many good blessings we have here to come and to worship, this is not the collapse after Saturday that this is not just the struggling over into the new week, but in a very real way this is the climax, and day of worship and rest. God preserves His people, and He preserves them for worship. 

Lesson number two. God keeps His promises. The Lord had guaranteed a return from Babylon. Isiah 45 predicted that Cyrus would be the Lord’s chosen instrument. Jeremiah for all of the woe that he had to announce also gave people some words of comfort. You know these words I bet from Jeremiah 29, for thus says the Lord when seventy years are completed for Babylon, not two, that was the false prophet, seventy. “I will visit you and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord, plans for welfare, and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope that you will call upon me and come and pray to me and I will hear you, you will seek me and find me. When you seek me with all your heart, I will be found by you, I will restore your fortunes, I will gather you from the nation, I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.” I know many of you, all of us I hope love Jeremiah 29:11. “The plans I have for you declares the Lord.” 

I think I probably went through a season, you’re a young Christian and you go, yes Jeremiah 29, loved that, put it on a pillow, put it on a bumper sticker, put it on a coffee mug, and then somewhere along the way you learn, well this is really a promise for God’s exiles and in Babylon and you’re not in exile in Babylon and you’re not having Cyrus and so woe, woe, woe, just hold off here on Jeremiah 29. Shame on us educated folks who get too smart for our own good. Well of course there’s an immediate context, but you don’t think that you’re in exile here, a stranger in a strange land. You don’t think that God calls the worldly system Babylon for a reason. Yes, you can claim Jeremiah 29:11 for yourself if you’re walking with Christ, if you’ll call upon His name that He has plans for you as His people. They are plans for good. Seventy years he said, you’re going to have to wait, seventy is probably counted from the replacement that Jehoahaz with Jehoiakim in 609 to Cyrus’ decree in 539. There’s other options and it wouldn’t have to be exactly seventy years, it could still be an amazing and true biblical prophecy. Seventy is a round number. The point is they had to wait a long time, trusting in God’s promises is not easy. That’s why the Bible is filled with exclamations, “How long O Lord.” That’s why we read that no eye has seen, nor ear has heard what God has prepared for those who love Him. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you already saw it, if you already knew it, if you already experienced it and you have a taste of it. We haven’t seen all of it. That’s why He has to remind us about the second coming. He is not slow in keeping His promise and many of us want to say, “It sure seems like slowness: but a day is like a thousand years to the Lord. You have to believe, you have to trust that God will bring you home. That’s not just a nice sounding euphemism at a funeral, they’re home going. Think about it, if you’ve ever been deployed in the military, or maybe you had to travel a long ways away for school, maybe you were in the hospital for weeks or months or some kind of long trip, even a good one that went astray, but you feel this powerful longing, I just want to be home. Can you get me home and there’s a reason that as good as life it here, this is something that nostalgia teaches us, when you look back the golden years, you know somebody said, would somebody tell me when I’m living in my golden years before they’re gone. That was the golden age for you. Well, there’s a power and a nostalgia that looks back and things can get a rose-colored view and some of that I think is how we operate away from heaven, we’re meant to have this longing, this sweetness and yet you can’t quite reach it. That’s the sadness that parents know, the great joy of seeing your kids grow up and yet there’s a sadness in every step because selfishly we want the 35-year-old and the 30-year-old and, I want the 5-year-old you to just come back and visit us for a day. You want that home that you can’t quite get in this life. That’s what this promise is about. You’ll go home. 

You ever wonder why it’s seventy. It’s a nice seventy, seven times ten, these are biblical numbers, but surely there’s a connection with Psalm 90 where it says that the general span of life, three score years and ten and if by reason of strength even eighty and even today with modern medicine that’s within the ballpark, eighty now is the span of life, but seventy, do you think it dawned on the exiles with that number, seventy, as if God was saying, “All of my promises will come true, you can count on it, and it just may take your lifetime.” That’s hard, I would like two years, I’d like seven weeks maybe, seven days, seven hours, to seventy. May take your whole life but everything, every good thing that I have promised to you in Christ will be yours. The waiting is hard; it will be worth it. His promises will come true. 

And here’s the final lesson. Preservation, promises, and then it does happen to be another P, God works by a mysterious providence. All that had happened and had to happen to get to this point in Ezra chapter 1 is amazing. So, Nebuchadnezzar sends off some of the people to exile. He dies and the son Evil-Merodach, just happens to be that the transliteration is evil, he probably was evil too. He becomes king, he’s a bad son, he’s a bad king and he tries to do the opposite of what his father had done. Nebuchadnezzar had moments of sanity and insanity, of pride and penitence. So, his son gets killed by his brother-in-law, a man named Nergal-sharezer. Then once this guy is killed and another guy named Nabonidus takes over and he has a preference for a different set of Gods. He gets rid of the Babylonian God Marduk and he makes all those priests and they hate the king because he gets rid of them and their Gods and so Nabonidus runs away into the Arabian dessert, he leaves the government in the hands of his son, a man you may have heard of, Belshazzar, yes he’s the one in the Book of Daniel with the handwriting on the wall, that was weighed in the balance and found wanting and sure enough his kingdom Belshazzar is taken away and is given over to the Medes and the Persians and that leads us to Cyrus. All of that happening in the palace intrigue of the Babylonian Empire.

You see God’s consistent call to His people in the Bible actually has very little to do with developing world changing strategies, and it has everything to do with obeying His Word and trusting His promises. Who knew that all of this intrigue with these Babylonian Gods and these rulers that this had anything to do with God’s people, that all of that infighting paved the way for Cyrus to take over and he was, as you can see, a more tolerant ruler. He took the opposite course with the conquered people, he did not destroy their homes like the Babylonians did, he believed it was in his best interest to make the people content and so his policy was, ya know what, I probably want you to pay tribute and I’m still the top dog, but why don’t you go back to your homes and we’ll give you some things. I have unfathomable wealth, go rebuild your sanctuaries. He wasn’t a true believer. Yes, you notice here he uses the covenant name, Yahweh. There are other artifacts in the ancient world where He will use the Babylonian God and credit that God with giving Him the kingdoms of the world, so He was very happy to just cast all of His lots before whatever Gods and Goddesses were out there, He didn’t have to be choosey and He figured that these conquered people, sure they can go worship their God of Yahweh. He was perfectly happy to acknowledge anyone’s God if it meant that they were happy subjects and that they might pray to this God and as far as He was concerned their God might just help Him. Who knew in all of this warfare and politicking that God was up to something. It certainly wasn’t plain. No one could have known at this time, no one was tracking it all, somewhere God’s people would whisper to each other, hey this guy Nabonidus is king now and he likes the Mesopotamian Gods instead of the Babylonian Gods, you tracking with me? No, I’m not tracking with you. Well obviously, this means give it a few more years, we’re going home. Nobody saw that. It was a big mess of nothing and behind it all God was at work. 

The decree in verses 2 through 4 mentions God five times. Even when Cyrus might have interpreted the events differently, certainly the Persians interpreted it differently, the Lord was doing something even when they didn’t know what He was doing and even more than that, God does things with people who think they’re doing one thing and God is doing with them another thing. Did you notice twice in this passage we have that active phrase, he stirred up. So, the first year of Cyrus the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus and in verse 5 he stirred up the people that they might go and rebuild the house of the Lord. You see who is the active agent in this story, it’s God, He’s the one who stirs up Cyrus to this and He stirs up the people. I want you to look back at verse 1 because this is not just an introduction to this chapter, but to the whole book. It is a book about the Lord keeping His Word. And I want you to see the divine interpretation of what was going on in the world and what is going on in the world today. In the first year of Cyrus, King of Persia, that the Word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled. That’s what was happening, that’s what was going on in the world. God was going to fulfill the Word of Jeremiah. I know some of you avoid the news because it’s stressful and it makes you upset, can’t understand it. Some of you are news junkies, you watch the news, and you read the news, and you get podcast news, and you get a Christian interpretation of the news and all of that can have a good place in the life of a Christian. Let me just say this, does anyone give you this Christian commentary on the news, sometimes it can all be right here right before our face and it’s good, we need some intelligent commentary on what’s happening and people to put it into a biblical perspective, but let’s not miss the forest for the trees. We can be so narrow focused on what’s happening and this act and this vote and this election and this person and this conflict, and we miss you know what’s really happening in the world, nothing that you’re gonna hear on CNN or Fox. This is what’s happening in the world, God is working all things according to His Word. When they thought it’s about Assyria, it’s about Babylon, it’s about Persia, it’s about Ukraine, it’s about Russia, it’s about America, it’s about Iran, here’s what it’s about, that the Word of the Lord might be fulfilled. This whole book is an example of the Lord keeping His Word. Make sure you and I get our stories straight. God is not scrambling to respond to the problems around us, his providence if a tuning fork for the world and everyone and everything must ultimately reverberate according to that divine pitch. “God moves in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform. He plants His footstep in the sea and rides upon the storm.” Don’t ever wonder if God is up to something in the supreme court or in the congress or in Iran, in Russia, in the Matthew city council, in your school, in your family, in your job, in this church, He works through His own people, He works through kings of foreign people, He providentially acts through the good guys, through the bad guys. He uses His people and as we read from the confession, in a special way His providence is for the benefit and the blessing of His people. That’s what He’s up to. 

I went to John MacArthur’s funeral yesterday in California. I landed at 5 a.m. so you shouldn’t be falling asleep in my sermon if I’m not. Really glad that I went, it was well worth going to and the whole thing is online, you can find clips of it on YouTube and watch it. It was almost three hours, and you had to get there an hour early, so it was four hours, but it was worth it. Alistair Begg gave a prayer, and John Piper gave a eulogy, and Joni Eareckson Tada gave a eulogy and sang a hymn and Sinclair Ferguson preached, you’ve gotta get the Presbyterian to preach. It was well worth seeing. I found myself in a car ride with Wayne Grudem and John Piper, I think I was in the front because I am, to be fair, a lot taller than the two of them, and this is not probably the conversation I usually have in my car, but it was with them. John said to us, we were heading to the funeral, “Do you think the saints in heaven can see, do they have a window, can they see what we’re doing here on earth, do they see what’s happening, he said give me some verses”, so Wayne Grudem said “Well Hebrews 12, a great cloud of witnesses.” John said, “Yeah maybe though that might just be a metaphorical bearing witness”, he said, “No, no I think it’s looking down witnesses okay.” He said, “How about the martyrs under the throne Revelation, they cry out how long, they must have some awareness.” I said, “What about the passages about the saints reining and I take it that they’re already beginning to rein.” I was actually slipping in there an a-millennial understanding of Revelation 20, but I didn’t let that be known. So John said, “Yeah, I think you’re right”, then he said, “We must get some sanctified senses even though we don’t have bodies yet, we haven’t had the resurrection, we must have some sanctified view of seeing things, some sanctified imagination, some glorified understanding he said because if I look down at the way the world is now, boy I could get discouraged and there’s no discouragement in heaven.” I think that’s right, we must get some new way of seeing things. We must get some new way of seeing things, he said there must be some way that we get some spiritual eyes and not fully divine, but some glorified ways to see something of what’s happening in the world in the way that Christ sees things and if we only had those eyes we could smile. 

Now there’s still suffering here on earth, we know that. We could see the providence unfolding and how no way in our intellect could we understand A leading to Q through all of those steps, but it does. We couldn’t help but rejoice and see. They don’t even know, those bad guys over there don’t even know how they’re working to fulfill God’s purposes for the good of His church. Do you have that comfort, I know we can’t get the eyes fully, but you see with the eyes of faith. Do you remember what Jesus says in Matthew 10, “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny and yet not one of them falls to the ground apart from the will of your father who is in heaven.” You think about that, at first it sounds a little cruel, almost sadistic as if Jesus is saying, hey look God strikes all the sparrows dead. But we know that’s not the point because over and over in that paragraph Jesus says, “Fear not, do not be afraid.” If you’re the one that can throw the body and soul into hell but not your heavenly father. That’s the point, don’t be afraid. He might say to us, Jesus, don’t you go and buy a cup of worms for fishing at the gas station for $2 bucks near the lake. Nothing happens to those worms that God doesn’t superintend and aren’t you much more valuable than a cup of worms. That’s what Jesus is saying with the sparrows. 

You don’t think that your heavenly Father has His eye on you, you don’t think if everyone of those little worms that’s going to be tossed into the lake is bait for a fish that God oversees their lives, that He is overseeing yours, and not as worms and sparrows but as His people for your good. Hebrews 1, “The son of God upholds the universe by the Word of His power.” Everything, these beams they hold their molecular structure, everything in your life because of the Word of Jesus. Hebrews 12, “The author and perfecter of our faith.” That’s good news, He wrote the story, He started the story, He is writing the story, He finishes the story in your life. He superintends all these things; this is what’s happening in the world right now. The Word of the Lord Jesus Christ for His people is being fulfilled. Do you have eyes to see it, you can see it with the heart of faith in three score years and ten we will see it face to face. Let’s pray.

Father in heaven, we give thanks for your many great and precious promises, for this providence which works all things for our good. We thank you as though we are often fearful saints we can take fresh courage to know that the clouds which we so much dread are big with mercy and shall break in blessings on our head for all of those who belong to Jesus. In His name we pray. Amen.