When God Gives You a Do-Over

Let’s pray. Gracious heavenly Father, we come each Sunday knowing, hopefully remembering, that we stand in need of your grace. And so, we ask that you would feed us. Feed us now with the Word we will hear and receive through our ears. Then after that, feed us with the Word that we will see, taste, touch, handle. May we experience the living Christ, know his power, his truth, his grace in our lives. In his name we pray. Amen.

Our text this morning, continuing with our series in the book of Ezra. Ezra chapter 3. Follow along as I read, Ezra chapter 3, beginning at verse 1.

I’m not very good at many sports. Some may say any sports, but I like to watch almost any sport. If I have someone to root for, I can watch almost anything. Found myself watching US Open tennis this week to see how the Americans did. Do you know how many matches of tennis I’ve played in my life? Exactly zero. Never. Sorry. I know some of you like tennis, but I’m watching it. And in recent years, I don’t know what sort of middle-aged man I have become. I find myself watching more and more golf. It helps. Uh my kids like golf. My oldest son went to NC State, got a turf grass, uh not disease, but degree. He cannot fix your lawn. He works at Quail Hollow. He cannot get you around a golf there either, but he likes golf and golf courses, and we have some beautiful ones around here. And so, I find myself watching golf even though I can count on one hand the number of rounds of golf I have played in my life. And I am extremely, unusually bad at golf. It’s not false humility. The thing that I can’t seem to do is make contact with the club and the ball. And I stand there, and people are waiting, and this has happened many times, honestly. I just, I don’t hit anything and then I just make, like that was a practice shot. I wasn’t trying to and when I hit it, it just hits the top of the ball and it’s a worm burner and it skirts off into the weeds somewhere. I really just need one club. Just a putter would probably just be my best bet because I’m gonna get a 15 or something. I am really bad. I am so bad that on the few occasions when someone cajoles me to golf and I told them I’m bad and they all say, “Oh, well, none of us

are very good.” And then they get out there and they have this look like, “He wasn’t joking. He really was very bad, and this is really slowing us up.” So, here’s the only good thing about being so dramatically terrible at golf is everyone I’ve ever played with, they are happy to give me infinity number of mulligans. A mulligan in golf is a do-over. You get to just, usually if you’re playing competitively, you don’t like a mulligan, but people figure this is going to be a lot faster than you trapesing down into the bog to try to find another golf ball. Just bring boxes of them you can get. You’re not competitive. You get as many mulligans as you want.

Life, unfortunately, is not exactly like that. You don’t get an infinite supply of do-overs with everything in your life. Wouldn’t it be nice? Haven’t you ever wanted sometimes, it might be even something just as simple as you banged your knee on the side of a door and now you’re living with that pain for a week and you said, “Can I just have like a rewind button? Not even to change the world. Just can I just rewind 15 minutes? So that didn’t happen.” All of us wish we could just have with a minute, an hour, a day, a week, some do-overs.

Well, we do not have time travel, and we have to live with the decisions that we make. But here’s the good news. You can, at any moment, right now, have a spiritual do-over in your life. You cannot go back and time travel and undo what has been done. But God offers to you an infinite number of mulligans if you come before him with faith and repentance. He offers to every one of you a spiritual do-over. Now, it may be for some of you, you really need a complete life reset. Maybe you’ve been wandering from the Lord. Or maybe you’re not even really a Christian and you’re at that point. And it’s this morning where the Lord wants to convince you, I’m offering you a chance to put that all behind you and have a spiritual doer. For others, it may not be that catastrophic, but you’ve developed some bad habits. You’ve had some barnacles, maybe like that famous scene from Chronicles of Narnia, and you need the dragon scales to be stripped off of your body. You need a spiritual do-over.

Among other things, this book of Ezra is about a giant national mulligan, a do-over. They blew it. They absolutely shanked the ball and took them 70 years to get that thing out of the lake and now they get to come back. What does it look like when God’s people are graciously given a spiritual do-over? Because that’s what the return from exile means. You’ve been off because God warned them the consequence for their sin. He put this in black and white for years. This wasn’t just you messed up one day, tomorrow you’re gone. This was for centuries the Lord was patient, and they continue to rebel and finally he made good on that promise. Sent them away to Babylon and now they have come back. What does it look like when you finally get a spiritual do-over?

Some of you need to take one. Four things.

Number one, it looks like forgiveness. You say, “Where is forgiveness? I don’t see a specific verse here that’s like the Psalms.” Oh Lord, have mercy and forgive me. I don’t see it here. Well, it’s here everywhere so that you don’t see it anywhere. What is the very first thing they build? You can see the headings in the ESV. “Rebuild the Altar.” What do you do on an altar? You make sacrifices. You’ve heard me say before, there’s a reason we’re going to celebrate communion. And we do not call this an altar. Maybe you, maybe from a Catholic background or other backgrounds are used to think of it as an altar. Well, there’s a reason it’s a table. A table is where you gather as a family for a meal to be fed, to eat, to drink. An altar is where sacrifices take place. And the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ is once for all. Doesn’t need to be repeated. Doesn’t need to be represented. But here, they need an altar. They need a sacrifice. And notice in verse three, they’re very particular. “They set the altar in its place.” There was a specific place where the altar needed to be placed according to God’s Word. There are three building projects in Ezra and Nehemiah. Altar, temple, wall. It’s for good reason. The very first thing is this altar. We read in verse three also, “They do it for fear of the peoples of the land.” Maybe these are Canaanite peoples in the land. Maybe these are Samaritans. Maybe these are some of the Jewish people who did not go off into the exile. Whoever they are now, there’s hostility between those who are there and those who have returned. Perhaps the fear is that maybe if it was some Jews who remained, they made a kind of makeshift altar and now they come and say, “No, no, no. We need to do this, right? There’s a specific place where this goes.” And don’t we have a history as God’s people as God gets very and rightfully angry with us when we try to do worship however we want to do it.

2 Chronicles 3:1, “Then Solomon began to build the house of the Lord in Jerusalem on Mount Mariah where the Lord had appeared to David his father at the place that David had appointed on the threshing floor of Orin the Jebusite.”

There was a specific place for the altar and for the temple. And we read here in chapter 3, “they kept the appointed festivals, the morning and evening offerings, the various types of offerings.” Few years ago, we went through Leviticus. Some of you were here. Some of you now you’re thinking you’re glad you weren’t. It really was pretty good, I think. But we learned about all of those sacrifices. There were several different burnt offering, guilt offering, peace offering, sin offering, special holy days, extra days on new moon, on Sabbath. And then the priest, if ever a worshipper was not coming with an offering, was to keep the fire lit on the altar continually because that altar signified first in the tabernacle and then in the temple. Even though you might live a distance from it and couldn’t see it, you knew in faith it was there and was constantly lit. What was that communicating to the people of God? There is never a day and never a moment where you are not in need of an atoning sacrifice. You are a sinful people living in the midst of a holy God. And so, this altar, of course, the first thing they’re going to build is an altar.

And, they’re repeating the steps of their ancestors. When Abraham came into the promised land in Genesis 12, first thing he did, built an altar. Joshua when he comes crosses the Jordan into the promised land, chapter 8, they build an altar. It is not a Christian do-over if it does not start with repentance and forgiveness.

See, there is nothing uniquely Christian about wanting a fresh start. You can go to the bookstore and look on Amazon. There’s a huge self-help section. Sometimes you can learn some common grace insight from those books. I read the book maybe many of you did a few years ago, Atomic Habits, that thing still continue. You read a book like that there’s some good common sense insights here. I can have better habits in my life. Lots of people. You don’t need the Spirit of God to want to have some better habits and to exercise and to better yourself.

But we’re not talking about just re-calibrating your life and trying to get your to-do list done and lose a few pounds and feel better about yourself. A Christian do-over starts with repentance and forgiveness, not merely wanting life improvement. If you’re here and that’s what you want, unfortunately, there are some churches that will just keep you there, and they’ll just keep telling they just tailor their message to people who just want life do-overs. But you don’t need the Spirit of God to want to be a better version of you. You do need the Spirit of God for your do-over to start with faith and repentance.

“Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sins.” Hebrews 9:22.

And think about it. There was no authorized way to deal with their sins for those seven decades in Babylon. No sacrificial system, no appointed temple, no appointed altar. And now finally when they return, yes, out of obedience, we’ll come to that in our second point. But do you think they also had a sense after all those years? Won’t it be good to smell the flesh and see the smoke rise and the fire lit and know that our sins are forgiven?

Some of you may be like those exiles, never really having dealt with your sin and you’re trying. Everyone has sin, of course, and everyone deep down knows that you have sin. You know, there are things about you that aren’t right. You maybe try self-esteem, just positive thinking, maybe therapy, maybe hard work, maybe blame someone else, maybe find meaning and purpose in some transcendent cause, maybe this is very common, you can simply drown out your conscience with life’s many, many distractions. Devil doesn’t have to get you to do one of the quote, “big sins.” They can just give you enough time scrolling to make you forget that you even have a soul, or a conscience. But you have sins and deep down you know that they must be dealt with. Maybe even you’ve been to church a long time, confessed Christ a long time, but it’s been a long time if ever that you have really experienced this forgiveness. You have been living like an exile in Babylon. In fact, here’s the reality. Sometimes you claim to live in Jerusalem, but your heart has an address in Babylon.

You’re not going to experience the freedom, the good news of a do-over. And here’s the even better news. You don’t have to build an altar. The sacrifice has already been made. You don’t need a temple. The Holy Spirit indwells you as a temple of the living God, dwells in our midst. You don’t have to bring a sacrifice without blemish because it’s already been made, the Lord Jesus Christ. But if you want a spiritual do-over in your life, for the first time or you’re saying just for the thousandth time, if it’s a real Christian do-over, it starts by saying, “God, I need a sacrifice and I can’t do it. I need the Lord Jesus. I need your forgiveness. I’ve messed some things up. I’ve been in some patterns I don’t like. I’ve been looking at some things I wish I didn’t. I’ve been feeling sorry for myself. Would you forgive me?” And he will for Jesus’ sake. He forgave these exiles. That’s what it looks like. Forgiveness.

Here’s the second thing it looks like. It looks like obedience. Now, it’s not obedience to be forgiven. It’s obedience as a forgiven people. Did you notice how many times we read in this chapter that they wanted to do things according to the book? We read in verse two, “to offer burnt offerings as it is written in the law of Moses.” You go down to verse four, “they kept the feast of booths as it is written, number of days according to the rule as each day required.” In verse 10, “the builders laid the foundation of the temple..the priests came forward, the Levites with symbols to praise the Lord according to the directions of David, king of Israel.” So again, our world says, “Yeah, have a have a do-over. Find the best version of you. Look deeper and find that true self that’s in there.”

A true Christian do-over starts with repentance and forgiveness and then says, “Okay, God, here’s what I want to do. Um, I’m not so interested in finding the real me. I’d like to find the real you. And I’d like to do things not so much according to my fallen human heart, but according to your revealed will.” So over and over we see they want to do it by the book. They’re not trying to earn something. They belong to God. They’re given this opportunity. And with this second chance, they want to put the altar where it belongs. They want the burnt offerings morning and evening as prescribed. They want to keep the feast of booths as written in the seventh month as stipulated. They were people of the book. So, if you’re saying, “Okay, I need a I need a fresh start. I need I need a big or medium-sized mulligan in my life. So, Lord, forgive me.” He will. Okay. “Now, I want to do this. What does your Word say?”

There are hard things in life. There are gray areas. Sometimes there are difficult questions. But most of you already know what to do the vast majority of the time. Most of you know the Ten Commandments. If you don’t, stick around. We’ll teach them to you. You know not to commit adultery, not to murder. You know what Jesus said about committing adultery in your heart, about anger. Many of you know the Sermon on the Mount and what Jesus says there. Or you know the fruit of the Spirit that the Spirit’s work in your life is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Or you’ve heard 1 Corinthians 13. You know that love is patient and kind and does not envy, is not irritable, does not boast. You know these things. So, let’s not kid ourselves that it’s just so complicated. True, there are maybe 10% of those times that are so complicated, I just don’t know what to do. And most of life, most of you, already know what God’s Word said. It’s a matter of whether we will be faithful to do it. When you take that spiritual do-over, you say, “Lord, I want to be a man, a woman, a teenager, a retiree after your heart and follow your book.” And notice what else they do. You may not have made this connection, but now you’ll see it. They are absolutely intentionally following the patterns that had already been established in their history.

I don’t have time to take you back and forth to all the passages, but I’ll just mention them to you. 2 Chronicles 2: 8 and 9. This is with Solomon’s temple. Solomon sent for wood from Lebanon. We see the same thing in chapter 3:7. 2 Chronicles 3 was to start in the second year. This project here in Ezra, it starts in the second year. 2 Chronicles 31 mentions the instructions given to Levites 20 years old and older. Same thing here in verse 8. 2 Chronicles 5 talks about the singers. Verse 10, the singers. 2 Chronicles 7 repeats this refrain about the steadfast love of the Lord. We have it here again. Time after time, very deliberately, they know their history. They know the pattern. They’re saying we are going to build this second temple in the same way, the same time, with the same people, the same situation, for a different time, and a different people, to do so here in our return. They’re following the pattern set from Solomon in his temple.

And I hope this is a fair application. You have probably in your own history and certainly in the history of the church, you have good patterns to follow. Some of you have been given the great blessing of Christian parents, grandparents. Maybe there was a mentor in your life. If not, you can read books. You can read the Bible. The Apostle Paul said, “Follow me as I follow Christ.” So don’t think that to be a person of the book means just you and Jesus in the Bible. Just, I don’t, I don’t need anything else. Just I got me and Jesus in the Bible and I’m going to do it. That’s not what they did. They looked – what did Solomon do? What did the, what happened with the first temple? We’re going to follow that same pattern. You need good examples in your life. You need good patterns. You need mentors. You need heroes if you’re going to be obedient.

Here’s the third thing. So, it looks like forgiveness, obedience, and this is interesting. It comes in the second half of the chapter. When you get a spiritual do-over, it looks like a mix of emotions. This is not the most famous chapter in the Bible, but I find this to be one of the most emotionally palpable sections in all the Old Testament, this dramatic scene. They’re laying the foundation of the temple. Now, the work is going to be put on hold, and it won’t be for many years later before they get the temple off the ground and finally squared off and built. But here they are in the second year they’re starting it. And it’s instructive for us to see the mix of emotions when they lay the temple. God will give you all of the second, third, millionth chances that you genuinely ask him for. At the same time, those new starts do not erase every decision you’ve made, and they cannot remove every grief or pain from your past. Would that it were so, but we live on this side of heaven. There are consequences. There are griefs and pains. Sometimes mistakes we know we made. Sometimes things that happened to us that we had no control over. Notice here this mingling of joy and sadness. So on the one hand, verse 11, “great shouts.” Of course, finally, our temple that was destroyed. We’re getting it started. We got the shovels and the hard hats, and we dug it and we’re laying down the cinder blocks and the foundation. It’s going to be a long time, but we are getting started on our new life back in Israel and in Jerusalem.

But then we have this very arresting verse 12. “But many of the priests, the Levites, the heads of the father’s houses, old men who had seen the first house,” they can’t help but remember what it was like. It’s one of the joys and sorrows of getting older. You look back with that nostalgia and that can bring a sense of joy and then sometimes without even realizing it, you’re in a place of weeping. You can understand these men. They had lived through the exile. They had heard stories and some of them had seen it with their own eyes, the first house. And so, while the young folks are, “What a day, Grandpa. Why are you crying?” “I saw the first one. I remembered how grand it was, how glorious it was, and we ruined it. Our sin brought this judgment upon ourselves.” It would be a lie to tell you that you don’t live with any regret. Now, we’re getting to the forgetting what is behind. But it’s just reality. Someone says, “I would not have done anything in my life over.” Really? You didn’t ever sin? You wouldn’t have not done that sin. So, they are weeping to think of the glory and the grander and they looked up and they saw that temple sitting high on the holy mount of the holy city back when they were somebody. Back when they could boast of something and some national pride and they remembered it and now it’s a hole in the ground and some bricks and stone and they remember what was lost. They remember what had happened and they weep small beginnings in front of them. They loved that temple. They loved what it represented, and they remembered what they had lost. That’s some of you. You can’t help but think there are griefs in life. We walk with a limp as Jacob, Israel learned to walk with a limp. There are some sadnesses that the Lord heals and he uses time to heal, and they don’t finally get their resolution until heaven.

But notice there’s also joy. The old men right to remember what was gone just as those next to them were right to celebrate what was coming. See, a spiritual do-over is a reordering of your affections as much as anything. Or you might say adding a new layer of affection and putting that old layer in its place. They were not wrong to miss the temple. They were not wrong to want to recount stories of the glory days gone by. But they would have been wrong if that’s all they wanted to do. Ff they just wanted to weep for the past that was gone and they could not return to because God was doing something else in their midst. Not that, but this, this was their life. This was what God was doing. And what he was doing in this day was good. They didn’t have to remove all that sense of sadness of what had come before, but they needed to have eyes to see that God was yet faithful to them in this day. And so, there was much rejoicing, and the sound was heard far away we read at the end of the chapter, which leads to one final thing.

So, this do-over, forgiveness, obedience, there’s a mix of emotions and then ultimately a spiritual do-over is about worship. Worship was a priority. It was an absolute investment, a financial investment. They give of their gifts, an investment of time, and energy, of resources. They have free will offerings. They gave, just like they gave, money for the temple in days gone by for the tabernacle before that. Now they give for the second temple. There was a sacrifice of people involved the priests, the Levites, the servants, the musicians. We see how many people were necessary for the ordering of God’s worship. There was a sacrifice of time and effort, building, training, recruiting, artisans, craftsmen, carpenters. They had come back not just to come home, but to worship. Remember that with the story of the Exodus, it wasn’t just Moses standing before Pharaoh and saying, “Let my people go.” It was that. But don’t forget the rest of it. Let my people go into the wilderness that they might worship me. It was never merely a horizontal liberation. It was that. Praise God. It was to send them into the wilderness for the thing that their life was most missing to worship God to receive from his hand the Ten Commandments and the laws and then to build the tabernacle and later the temple. It was to come now for the second time to return from exile. Not just to say, “Wow, celebration. You’re going to get to go home, and you’re going to have a party and build some houses. It’s going to be the good old days.” They were coming first of all to worship.

Where is worship in your list of priorities? I know that it’s definitely a New Testament sense that worship is all of life. He presents your bodies as a living sacrifice. But we also see the importance of the weekly gathering of God’s people for worship. Doesn’t mean that the pastor preaching is the most important person to say that this gathering ought to be the most important part of your week. What can you do to build a better foundation to make worship a priority? Maybe preparing the night before. Maybe spending some extra time in the morning or in the afternoon. Maybe making it a point though it hasn’t been yet to worship the Lord Sunday morning and Sunday evening. Maybe simply trying to get more sleep that you come prepared, eager, attentive. Or those are practical suggestions. They’re important. They have spiritual components. But the issues may go deeper. It may be that worship is not a priority because you are content to live in Babylon, and you want to do what people do and going to church is what people do. But to really enter and worship, you have to set aside the disobedience. You have to make God the object of your worship and not yourself. And above all, you have to come ready to look and love Jesus because Jesus obeyed. Jesus was the sacrifice. Jesus now is the object of our worship. And Jesus as the author and perfector of our faith offers to you a spiritual do-over. And more than that, he promises if you will take him up on the offer and really do it. I mean, forgiveness, obedience, joy, sorrow, worship. You say, “Yes, my affections are reordered. This is what I want.” He promises to be with you to the end. He promises that it will be worth it.

 Look at verse 11. That’s the most familiar verse and it’s the most important verse. Notice it says they sang responsively. We see this even more obviously in Psalm 136. You say, “Why do, why do you Presbyterians, you got to do responsive readings and things. It’s kind of old school.” It is old school. Like this old school. They did it. They sang responsively. And it’s not hard to imagine how they might have had choirs or people and choir or leader and people go back and forth. Let’s just try it. I’ll say the first line. You say the second line. “For he is good.” You. “For his steadfast love endures forever toward Israel.” Not all the Psalms say toward Israel. It makes it longer to say, but let’s say it one more time. “For he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever toward Israel.”

That’s right. They would have done it, and they would have sang it. And what you may not have realized is this was the very song the Lord told them. It was not an accident. 1 Chronicles 16:34, David brings the ark into Jerusalem. No temple yet, but he brings the ark into Jerusalem. And we read, “Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.” 2 Chronicles 5:13. Now Solomon, his son, brings the ark not just into Jerusalem, but into the temple, and it says, “A song was raised and filled the house of the Lord. For he is good, his steadfast love endures forever.”

David saying it, Solomon saying it, and then this is best of all, Jeremiah 33, the prophet, the weeping prophet, the lamentation prophet, “thus says the Lord, in the place of which you say, it is a waste”, talking about their land, the promised land, some promise, God, “a waste without man or beast in the cities of Judah, in the streets of Jerusalem that are desolate, without man or inhabitant or beast.” There’s no people there. There not even a squirrel there. There’s nothing. “There shall be heard again the voice of mirth, the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom, the voice of the bride, the voices of those who sing as they bring thank offerings to the house of the Lord.” Jeremiah said, “There’s nobody there now. It looks desolate. I’m telling you on God’s Word, there’s going to be singing in these streets again.” And here’s what we read in Jeremiah 33. Here’s what they sing. He predicted it. “Give thanks to the Lord of Hosts, for the Lord is good. For his steadfast love endures forever. For when he restores the fortunes of the land at first they will sing, says the Lord.”

David, Solomon, Jeremiah says there’s coming a day. This is not the end of the story. This is an end. And you need to believe that if you’re willing to take up Jesus on the offer he extends to you, another mulligan. Forget about where that ball went. You got another shot. Who cares if everybody’s looking? Jesus says, “Just look at me. This is what matters. You get another shot. You get another shot. Sins forgiven. Another shot to walk out in obedience. And when you fail again, there’ll be more forgiveness. Another shot with all those emotions to worship the living God. And here’s the song you’re going to sing. He is good. His steadfast love endures forever.” Let’s pray.

Father in heaven, we thank you for your many blessings, it is true that your steadfast love endures forever and is good to us. And you extend to us once again your grace, and we come with empty hands that you might fill it. You have fed us with your Word. Feed us now with the Word at the table that we may be nurtured and nourished and strengthened in Jesus name. Amen.