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Wednesday Night Study in Ezra
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Wednesday Night Study in Ezra
Well, ezra 7, you know the book of Ezra deals with the rebuilding of the temple and last time we were in the book we kind of read a bunch of letters and such and saw with difficulty the temple was rebuilt there in chapter 6. A little time has gone by since then between chapter 6 and chapter 7. At this point we're talking about almost 60 years has passed in between those two chapters, so you don't really notice that necessarily. It doesn't look like 60 years between there, but it is. And in chapter 7, we actually have Ezra jumping into the story. If we didn't realize it at this point, by this point Ezra has not been in the story at all, even though the book has his name on it and tradition would say it's written by him, makes good sense because you know he puts himself in the story with the pronoun I, I guess, there coming up. But he is finally coming into the story in chapter seven. It's the time of Ezra, also the time of Nehemiah. They're both kind of together in this Ezra a little bit earlier. But then Nehemiah comes around and it's a new generation and the rebuilding of the temple is completed. There is a temple. It's not fancy or anything, but it's there, it works, and we see kind of here well, it's an example of the second law of thermodynamics. What Second law of thermodynamics is that? Entropy, as far as I understand it, that things go from order to disorder, from usefulness to not being so useful. Energy and such Things break down. That's kind of the idea behind that law. Things just kind of fall apart and we see that in our own lives, I see that in my life. Time goes on and I fall apart. Time goes on and although the temple is there, it starts to have issues, and not just the temple so much, but the people and the purity of the people. And that's kind of where Ezra and Nehemiah come into the story. They're still kind of pushing the story forward and they're rebuilding the wall. Nehemiah will rebuild the city and the wall, but there's kind of a lot of falling apart amongst the people in their own purity, and that's a lot of what Ezra and Nehemiah deal with in their time. So it's a new generation here as we get into chapter 7. And Ezra is in the story. So let's look at verse 1. We've got some names here we'll have lots of fun with Now after these things.
Speaker 1:In the reign of Artaxerxes, king of Persia, ezra, the son of Sariah, the son of Azariah they're not bad names the son of Hilkiah, the son of Shalom, the son of Zadok, the son of Ahitab, the son of Amariah, the son of Azariah, the son of Meriach, the son of Zariah, the son of Uzi, the son of I think he made a gun, maybe but the son of Buki, the son of Abishua, the son of Phineas there's a name we maybe recognize the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, the chief priest. This Ezra came up from Babylon and he was a skilled scribe in the law of Moses which the Lord, god of Israel, had given. So Ezra jumps into the story with a genealogy Aren't those fun, right? A genealogy here? This is the ancestry of Ezra we see in verse five. He is a descendant of Aaron, right? So you remember, aaron and Moses, that Aaron of the tribe of Levi? Ezra is a descendant of Aaron, so that makes him in line to be a priest. He's part of the priesthood there. It's possible he could have qualified to be a high priest there in that line. But at any rate Aaron is in his list of descendants here. But then in verse 5, we also see Aaron had a son, eleazar, and Eleazar had a son, phineas. So in his descendants is this Phineas. That's an interesting name because we have some history on this guy. Phineas, this grandson of Aaron. We see him in the book of Numbers, chapter 25. Numbers interesting book. There's a lot of numbers involved in the book of Numbers. The first few chapters are rough, but then as you get into it, you see the wilderness, wanderings and you see Balaam.
Speaker 1:Balaam is a trip right For a lot of reasons. You remember Balak, the king there of Midian, of Midian. He brings Balaam a message and says hey, come and curse the people of Israel for me. They're coming for me. I want you to come and curse them. And Balaam, he's going to do it, but he's told not to. And you remember the whole story.
Speaker 1:He goes and as he's on his way, the donkey veers off the road. You know, and this happens like three times. He crushes his leg against a wall and at the end there the donkey turns around as Balaam is like why are you doing this to me? Why are you going off the road? Why are you bumping into a rock with me? The donkey turns around to Balaam and says hey, why are you beating me? And we all go wait, the donkey said that. Yeah, the donkey said that. And the worst part about it is Balaam responds to the donkey. Right, you have problems when a donkey talks to you, but when you talk back to the donkey then you're really off the deep end. But Balaam does, and we know that the donkey there.
Speaker 1:You go read the story. It's better just to read it. The donkey sees this angel in the road he's trying to save, or she I think actually it's a she is trying to save Balaam's life and that gets his attention right. Well, he goes through all these different things and kind of persists and God says you're not going to curse my people, you're only going to say what I say. And he goes through the whole thing. You know, balak offers them all this money. I'm not doing justice to the story, but Balak offers them all this money and he can't take it, he can't curse God's people.
Speaker 1:Well, the story kind of ends there in Numbers 24, but in 25, numbers, chapter 25, something kind of interesting happens, kind of horrible happens. The people of Balak send their women into the camp, the Israelite camp, and they come in and they go. Oh, hey, you know, you can worship with us. You can worship with us. You know all sorts of things that go along with that. Worship our gods with us. And they come in and they tempt the people of Israel to worship their idols. And the people of Israel some of them do, they get married and all these different things. They hook up with these pagan people.
Speaker 1:Well, phineas, this is why we're in this story. Phineas says this isn't right, this isn't right. You're worshiping idols, you're marrying these idolatrous people of the land. And he comes in and he takes some serious action. You go read about it in Numbers 25. He's aggressive with sin and with a javelin, no less. And so, phineas, he is kind of held up in honor as one who is serious with sin. Read the story, I'll let you do that. And so this is a descendant or an ancestor of Ezra Phineas, the guy who took sin seriously when everybody else fell for it. I think it comes in handy to realize that, because this is kind of who Ezra ends up having to be. As we read on in the story, some of the same things start to happen. They start to intermarry with the people of the land, and Nehemiah and Ezra are going to have to make some hard decisions by the end of this book.
Speaker 1:But it's kind of interesting to see the ancestry of Ezra, that this guy, phineas, is there in his family tree and maybe kind of shows you what a difference you can make to generations in the future, because Ezra definitely has that heart to be pure in a world that really didn't care. So Ezra came up from Babylon and was a skilled scribe in the law of Moses. So here we see a little bit more about Ezra. He's got a great family tree in that sense, um, but oh yeah, he's got a great family tree, but he's also got the law. He's a skilled scribe.
Speaker 1:This would be the lawyers that we read about in the New Testament. You see that sometimes where Jesus faces off with the lawyers, it wasn't necessarily that they were lawyers like we think of lawyers, like going in your honor. I believe they're guilty. It was someone who took the law of Moses and knew it backwards and forward. The scribes are all the same kind of person. And Ezra here. He knows the law of Moses backwards and forwards. He knew what it meant.
Speaker 1:In verse 11, we read the same thing about Ezra. There's a copy our exorcist gave Ezra, the priest, the scribe expert, in the words of the commandments of the Lord and of his statutes to Israel. So this is kind of who Ezra was. He took time to study the word. He knew what it meant. Now that's also going to come in handy as he's going to come. He took time to study the word. He knew what it meant. Now that's also going to come in handy as he's going to come and he's going to teach the people God's truth. He's going to, you know, come closest to what we would think of a Bible study in the open square there and teach the people he really knew God's word.
Speaker 1:Now, obviously, we don't need to remind ourselves so much that knowing God's word be excellent in what's. Don't need to remind ourselves so much that knowing God's word be excellent in what's good and innocent to evil, as Romans 16, 19 says. Just got to know what God has to say about things, as the world kind of does their own thing and makes their own rules. We want to know what God says. Verse let's. Let's move on here.
Speaker 1:So he's a scribe in the law of Moses which the Lord, god of Israel, had given. The king granted him all his requests according to the hand of the Lord, his God, upon him. Now check it out. Ezra's writing this book, so he puts this in. The king gave him everything that he asked for. That's good right. So he asked for supplies and he'll ask for some help and such things, some letters of support. The king gave him everything he asked for.
Speaker 1:But notice what Ezra himself puts about this. It was granted to him according to hand of the Lord, his God, upon him. A little later there it's going to say that these things happened because the good hand of God was upon him. And I think you know that's the way Ezra saw this thing in his life. All the good stuff in his life Now check it out. All the good stuff in his life. He said the reason why all this good stuff is in my life is because of God. The good hand of God upon me, god's hand upon me. That's why these things went well. You know, it wasn't just luck, it wasn't just because, well, I'm a really crafty person. I just really know how to do things. That's why things went well.
Speaker 1:He looked at his life and he said the reason why everything went well was the good hand of God upon me, that every good and perfect gift comes from above, as James says in 1.17, james 1.17, that everything good in our life is from God, kind of what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15.10,. But by the grace of God, I am what I am and that's how Paul looked at his own life. If I'm anything in life, if I accomplish anything, it's because God did it. And that wasn't just something that Ezra thought, you know, it was his whole life. If anything good's going to happen in my life, it's because God did it. And it becomes kind of a trend in the book of Nehemiah and Ezra. It's kind of a catchphrase. In that day they would say by the good hand of God upon me. And that's not a bad way to look at life. You know, we don't make ourselves. God's the one who brings a good in our life and we can be thankful for it. Ezra realized God's grace.
Speaker 1:Notice Ezra is going to move on towards Jerusalem. Notice verse seven. Some of the children of Israel, the priests, the Levites, the singers, the gatekeepers, the Nethanim those are the temple servants came up to Jerusalem in the seventh year of King Artaxerxes. And Ezra came to Jerusalem in the fifth month, which was in the seventh year of the king. On the first day of the first month he began his journey from Babylon. So Ezra travels right, and I think I didn't Google it it was like 900 miles, I think is what it was 900 miles with about 2,000 people, families and such.
Speaker 1:They went from Babylon to Jerusalem and if you do the math here, it's pretty easy. It took them four months, right, to do that trip. Four months. Now, it's easy to say that isn't it, you know? And we look at a five hour trip to San Antonio or something and we're like five hours, oh my goodness, you know. Half a day traveling to California by plane, oh my goodness, I'm going to die. And they're like four months. How about four months? You know, you're going to stop and think about that here in Texas especially, you know, with the pioneers and stuff, people moving west and no AC and you go, man, that was rough with a family, you know, in a wagon walking at times. You know, and you know, simple, simple thing we see here with Ezra, I think I would say the guy's got some perseverance right If you're going to travel from Babylon to Jerusalem. Four months of travel with families, perseverance, and that would come in handy for him as well.
Speaker 1:But the last thing we're going to notice here in verse 10 about Ezra, because so much about Ezra here and just his character. Verse 10 is one of those verses I think you could just sit and think about for a long time, for Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord and to do it, and to teach statutes and ordinances in Israel. Ezra prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord and to do it and to teach statutes and ordinances in Israel. Ezra prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord and to do it and to teach statutes and ordinances in Israel. So to seek the law of the Lord, to do it and to teach it right. Ezra prepared his heart. And this is just one of those things you can just sit and think about.
Speaker 1:When it comes to God's word, we want to prepare our hearts and and you know the heart Jesus compares the heart to ground soil in Matthew, chapter 13,. Right, the parable of the sowers. Our hearts are like good ground or bad ground. They're like ground. It's like ground. God's word is like a seed. You know, ground has to be prepared in order to be worth anything. That's why our poor garden over there is sitting without anything, because we didn't take the time to prepare it this year. There was just other things going on. You guys know, and that's our excuse, but, and I'm lazy, um, but you know, you gotta, you gotta prepare it. You gotta pull out the weeds, you gotta maybe put in some good soil, got to till it up, you got to plant it. Then you got, you know, you just got to get it ready and and that ground being like our hearts and God's word being like the seed that's planted, um, we got to prepare our hearts and God's word being like the seed that's planted, we got to prepare our hearts all the time.
Speaker 1:You know, you could look real easily at that parable and say, you know, our hearts could be hard through pride and just, I don't really care. Our hearts can be hard and we need to kind of till them up and realize how much we need God. Our hearts could be, you know, like rocky ground and sometimes you got to, you know, pull things out to make sure that God's word can get deep in our heart Like the sin that so easily ensnares us. You know, we got to cast those things off. Sometimes our hearts can be filled with weeds, the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches. You know just, other distractions come in and choke out God's word and sometimes to prepare our hearts, we need to say God. You know how distracted I am, god, you know the sin that I've been struggling with and how it's just. It's your words not getting into my heart because of my own sinfulness and you deal with them. You prepare your heart to hear God's word.
Speaker 1:So that's what Ezra did. He prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord and to do it. That's important. When we look at God's word right, real, simple like when we hear what God says we have to do it. If God tells us to tell the truth, we've got to stop telling lies. If God tells us to get rid of something, we've got to go the other direction. We've got to repent. We've got to act on what God tells us, because faith without works is dead. It's pointless. So check it out.
Speaker 1:Ezra prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord. Maybe he had to deal with some issues in his own life, focus his attention on the Lord and his word, but then do it, and the whole reason, the end result, was he would go on to teach. Teach the things that he learned to other people and he's going to do that in the book. That was kind of. His calling was to teach the law of the Lord, and that's a good, healthy thing to do. When God teaches you something is to take it and teach it to someone else. But check it out. Come back for a second.
Speaker 1:If we don't do the law of the Lord and then go on to teach the law of the Lord none of us are perfect, of course, but, man, that's hypocrisy, isn't it? If God tells us, stop lying and we just keep lying but we tell other people this is what God says, stop lying Well then we're just a hypocrite, right, and that doesn't help anybody. We're all messed up. But that's kind of why, all three of those things, preparing our hearts to seek the law of the Lord, but definitely to do it. Faith without works is dead. Definitely doing the law of the Lord, but then to pass it on and teach it to other people. To pass it on and teach it to other people, paul would tell his little friend Timothy 2, timothy 2, 1 and 2, you therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and the things which you heard from me among many witnesses commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. And so Paul kind of gives us this pattern and says well, the things you saw me doing, pass it on to other people, and then they can pass it on to other people and then it'll be a healthy church, right? So this is kind of like the whole pattern, and Ezra is just about getting ready to get into it here. But he lets us know in the past he prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord and to do it and to teach it to other people. So he's getting there.
Speaker 1:Chapter 7 ends with a letter which I think we'll just start with next time. But good example here of Ezra preparing his heart to seek the law of the Lord and to do it and to teach it. God, I know you want us to pass truth on to others. Each one of us, no matter how old we are, we can pass what you're doing in our life, what you've done in our life, on to someone else that maybe doesn't know you so well, maybe has never heard of you before, doesn't know the hope that there is in you. God, you want us to pass these things on, but you also want to work it in our hearts, god, as we just hear your word, we pray that our hearts would receive it. God, we'd let it change our lives from the inside out, god, and then we would also pass that on to others. God, just a healthy work that you would do in our lives and through our lives. So, god, take these simple things in our lives and use them. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.