In the book of Ezra, we observe a people returning from ruin and witness how God works for the benefit of His people to heal and restore them. The whole focus of the book is the restoration of the people through returning to true worship. This is the beginning point of all spiritual renewal and social reformation. Restoration always means a complete surrender to God and doing everything according to the Word of God.

Oh Lord, I praise you for your words that are here delivered to us as a faithful witness of history, of spiritual matters, of the story of redemption, of You, God the Father, and You, God the Son, and You, God the Holy Spirit, to redeem mankind, to wipe every tear from their eyes. Lord, we thank You for sending Ezra, that we might learn more of your name, your nature, your beauty, your holiness. And Lord that you would take these things and burn them into our hearts and show us your glory. Amen. Ezra, turn to Ezra.

What a rich testimony. The message of Ezra is beautiful, it's vast. I'll try to summarize it in this statement. Ezra speaks of how God wipes away every tear from your eyes through the restoration of true worship. This book fulfills the prophecies of Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Micah, and probably others.

The events that take place here in the rebuilding of the temple are spoken of in many places. It pictures over 80 years of history. The focus of Ezra is the way that God activates forces in different places to bring benefit to his people, to heal them, to restore them. The whole book is about the complete restoration of a people and the various things that God uses in order to bring about that restoration. And restoring worship is at the heart of the whole matter and it's the beginning of all spiritual renewal, it's the beginning of the moral revolution that all of our hearts and our societies need, and it's really the beginning of any social reformation.

The reason we're having so many problems in our society today is because the worship of God has been thrown down. It's in a Babylonian captivity and it's something that ought to be restored. One of the things that I want you to recognize as you read through the book of Ezra is the fact of the presence of the Feast of Tabernacles. It was observed in Ezra chapter three, and it's a foretaste of the New Covenant blessings of Christ. And those are celebrated in a number of different ways.

They're celebrated in the Lord's Supper. They are celebrated in the continual celebrations and feastings of the people of God as they gather together to eat together and rejoice in the Lord, and they are finally experienced in heaven. The whole picture of the Feast of Tabernacles, which is restored as a result of restored worship in Judah because of the work of Ezra, is a foretaste, it's a picture of heaven. And this is why in Revelation chapter 7 verse 9 through 17 we read, God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. That is the ultimate result of this Feast of Tabernacles.

It's fulfilled in Jesus Christ and spoken of here in Ezra. This book is about restoration And restoration always means one thing, a complete surrender to God, everything to be according to the Word of God. And This happens when people say, oh Lord, you have every right to tell me what to do. And oh Lord, I delight to do thy will. Reveal yourself to me.

Teach me the way in which I should go. Show me more and more my faults so that I might find all of my hope, all of my forgiveness and mercy in you. Restoration means cleansing from worldliness and turning away from the ways of the Gentiles and you'll see a really, really dramatic example of this in the book of Ezra. And I think that we should, as we read the book of Ezra, to ask a question over and over again. And I would just encourage you to answer this question with each chapter that you read and this is the question, what place does worship occupy in my life?

What is the condition of my worship? What kind of rebuilding needs to take place in my worship of God? Now Ezra is a continuation of 2nd Chronicles. 2nd Chronicles ends in chapter 36 and of course Ezra begins where 2nd Chronicles ends and what we read in 2nd Chronicles chapter 36 is you have this picture of the people of God mocking at God's messengers, mocking at the prophets, rejecting the word of God, and God arises against the people, and then he brings Babylon against them to punish them, and the house of God is plundered. The articles, the treasures of the house of God are taken back to Babylon by King Nebuchadnezzar.

And they burned the temple, they broke down the wall of Jerusalem, and they burned all its palaces with fire and destroyed all of its precious possessions. This is how 2 Chronicles ends. And then in verse 20 of chapter 36, we read about the deportation to Babylon. And we read in verse 20, And those who escaped from the sword, he carried away to Babylon, where they became servants to him and his sons until the rule of the king of Persia." So, this is a prophecy that is declared right at the end of 2 Chronicles, and then we understand why all of this happened in verse 21. To fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah until the land enjoyed her Sabbaths as long as she lay desolate.

She kept Sabbath to fulfill 70 years. And verse 22 reads, Now 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 in writing say thus says Cyrus king of Persia all the kingdoms of the earth the Lord God of heaven has given me and he has commanded me to build him a house at Jerusalem which is in Judah who is among you of all his people. May the Lord his God be with him and let him go up." So this is how 2 Chronicles ends and the very first section in the book of Ezra is a mirror image of this. So in Ezra chapter 1 verse 1 here's what you read, Now 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 the land." So when you think about your Bibles, recognize why Ezra is directly after 2 Chronicles.

It's just a continuation of the story. And so Ezra is describing this time of revival. Theologians have called this the second Exodus. The Exodus out of Babylon and then back to Jerusalem. And this is the experience of the Christian.

He sees God's judgment upon him. He recognizes the sinfulness of sin and he turns to God. And what does he do? He leaves Egypt. He leaves Babylon.

You know, He realizes how abusive and harmful both Pharaoh and Nebuchadnezzar are and how good God is. So that's why this is called the second exodus. And so this whole book is about the complete restoration of God's people, the revitalization of worship, the spiritual renewal, the moral revolution, and the social reconstruction that takes place here as a result of the restoring of worship. And When one restores worship in spirit and in truth, then there's a cleansing from worldliness, a turning away from the ways of the Gentiles. Putting away the filth, to quote Ezra, is required as a result of true conversion.

If you find a person who isn't desiring to put away their filth, you're probably not dealing with a Christian. So this is a fulfillment of Jeremiah 29 14 and many other places of Scripture. Verse 1 says, This happened to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah. God is faithful, God is true, He always tells the truth. Every word of Scripture is true.

Every single word in Jeremiah which was prophesied or spoken about any moral or historical category is absolutely true and that's why we have this language here. You have the same prophecy in Daniel chapter 9 verses 1 and 2. Here's how it reads, In the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus of the lineage of the Medes, who was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans, in the first year of his reign I Daniel understood by the books the number of the years specified by the word of the Lord through Jeremiah the prophet that he would accomplish 70 years in the desolations of Jerusalem." So this is all about fulfilled prophecy. Write this down as well Isaiah chapter 44 verse 24 all the way into the first verse of chapter 45 you'll read about this same thing And there is this remarkable language about Cyrus. Now you know Isaiah is writing you know over a hundred years before the captivity.

You know over a hundred and seventy years before Cyrus issues his decree. He names his name. So Ezra is rebuilding the temple and the people. Now the next time we gather together we're going to deal with Nehemiah. Nehemiah is rebuilding the walls.

So Ezra, the temple, and the people. Nehemiah, the walls for the protection of the city. Now Let's talk about the authorship and the literary features of Ezra. And most believe that Ezra wrote the book of Ezra, and he wrote the book of Nehemiah, and he most likely also wrote 1 and 2 Chronicles. Now, there are a number of interesting features about the book.

First of all, in the Hebrew Bible Ezra and Nehemiah were one book. In the Septuagint, which is the Greek version of the Old Testament, which was translated in the third century BC, these books were called First and Second Ezra. Ezra and Nehemiah were called First and Second Ezra. And today we call them Ezra and Nehemiah as they're divided up. The second thing that I want you to recognize about this, take note of the many official legal declarations and documents that are delivered in this book.

In chapter 1 there's a decree of Cyrus. In chapter 4 there's an accusatory letter that is written to a king in order to defame and accuse the people of God. And in that same chapter there's the injunction of Artaxerxes and then another testimony from Tatani. In chapter 6 there's a memorandum from Cyrus and after that in that same chapter there's a second decree of King Darius. In chapter 10 Ezra himself makes a formal legal proclamation that had national significance.

So notice that the legal, national, political statements that really bear witness to the structure of government and the society at that time. And you'll learn that God has always appointed kings and authority. And the people of God rightly appeal to those kings. It's right for the church to appeal to kings. This happens fairly regularly.

You'll have people going on campaigns to collect signatures in order to speak to a certain matter. They're campaigning according to the proper rules of communication to the government to get government officials to change their ways. It's right to do that. There are protests that are organized. Right now there are protests being organized all over the United States of America in order to cause protests to take place at every Planned Parenthood facility in America.

It's being organized right now. Later on this month is the day that this is supposed to happen, but There are protests, there are letters that are written. There are various ways that Christians have a right to and the ability to speak to the civil government about things. And we should exercise that right and privilege. It is a privilege.

And right now in America, we have such a gift of freedom in order to be able to do that and we should exercise that freedom. But you'll see these official documents and these permissions and all that go back and forth here. Let's talk about the time frame, the third item in your outline. This recounts a story of two departures from Babylon and the events that followed them. And as you read the book of Ezra, recognize that the first story or departure documents the wave of returnees which was led by Zerubbabel and this spans chapters 1 through 6.

And the events during this part of Ezra take place at 538 to 516 BC. This is a 22-year period where almost 50, 000 people came, literally exactly 49, 897 people came in that first wave and they're returning to the Promised Land. And the second wave was led by Ezra. Ezra was there in Babylon And so immediately after the first wave arrives in Jerusalem, there's a rebuilding of the altar and the laying of the temple foundations. And then trouble comes and they stop.

So in the second wave Ezra comes and then Haggai prophesies. You remember Haggai prophesies and the work had been laid down for almost two decades And so it's during this second wave that Ezra comes, and then there's a third wave in 586 BC where Nehemiah comes and he finishes the wall. So just to get this straight, 605 BC the first wave comes and that is the wave where they began to rebuild the altar and then in 597 BC the second wave where Ezra came and then thirdly in 586 The final wave was when Nehemiah came to rebuild the walls. The second wave came under the oversight of Ezra. His focus was on rebuilding the temple, which would be a critical part of rebuilding and restoring the people.

You can't restore a people until you restore their worship. And so this part comes in chapters 7 through 10. And during this return with Ezra, this second return, only 1, 754 people make their way back. Almost 50, 000 people in the first wave and then in the second wave it was much smaller. So Ezra is traveling with these 1754 people and this section only spans one year from 458 to 457 BC.

Now between the two events of the first and then the second wave, there's a 60-year period and during this 60-year period Esther becomes Queen of Persia. So what that means is that Ezra is a contemporary of King Artaxerxes and Esther. And the kings that you'll encounter here are Cyrus, Darius, Ahasuerus, Artaxerxes, and Darius II. Let's talk about contemporaries of Ezra. Ezra is a contemporary of Nehemiah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, and I just added a few others.

How about Gautama, Buddha, Confucius, and Socrates? Same time frame. Let's talk about Ezra the man. He was born in Babylon. Think about that for a minute.

I don't know when he was born in Babylon, but most everyone believes that he was actually born there in Babylon. So he's growing up in an environment where the worship of God has been interrupted. You know, they're treated as slaves. They're treated very poorly. And His name means Jehovah helps.

And this is the heart of everything about Ezra. Everything in his life was about teaching the Word of God, to understand it, and to call people to holiness. He was a scribe. You learn that in chapter 7, verse 6. And you also learn that he was skilled in the law of Moses.

Chapter 7, verse 10 reads, For Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord. Isn't that beautiful? He prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord and to do it." In other words, not just to gain intellectual knowledge, not just to become a scholar, but to learn it, have it in his heart, and then to do it. You see the sequence? And then to teach the statutes and ordinances in Israel.

So this is the proper way of anyone who's going to teach the Word of God. It begins with love for God in the heart and internalizing it, loving it in the heart, and then doing it, seeking to do it, and then finally to teach it. That's the right progression. And if you get that out of order, you have trouble. Ezra means Jehovah helps, and the Hebrew word for helps is edzer, edzer.

And it's the same word that you encounter in Genesis where you read that the woman is the helper, the edzer kenegdo, the helper complementary. So a wife is an edzer kenegdo. Ezra is the one whom Jehovah helps. It's a beautiful picture of his life and you can see God's help and the great success that God brought to him. By the way, when you get to chapter 7 verse 28, it's all written in the first person from Ezra's perspective.

Ezra was a Levite. He descended from Aaron through Eleazar and Phinehas and Zadok the priest. And when he left Babylon, it took him six months to get all the way to Judah. Now I don't know if you've ever traveled with over 1, 700 people, but you know what it's like to travel, you know, with a full vehicle. Imagine over 1, 700 people.

I don't know how many bathroom stops you have to make when you have that many people there. You know, it must have been a tremendous challenge with such a large entourage. And when he gets back to Jerusalem, he finds that his countrymen had been profoundly affected by the Samaritans to the north, to the Northern Kingdom, the most corrupt of the two, comparing the northern and the southern kingdom. Pagan ideas, pagan lifestyles had taken root. They had become like the Gentiles.

You know the whole heart of the Northern Kingdom was apostasy and idolatry and those people had affected the people who were in Judah. The people in Judah didn't affect the people in the Northern Kingdom. The Northern Kingdom affected the Southern Kingdom. And it happened through a number of things. One was the intermarrying with unbelievers.

And so you have a situation where the younger generation is growing up without the knowledge of God. The younger generation didn't have the benefit chastisement of God in Babylon. They didn't have the experience of arriving in Babylon and saying, by the waters of Babylon we lay down and wept. How shall we worship God in a foreign land? Their longing to worship God was not improved by their persecution.

And you know we should never despise trouble, hardship, persecution because it always drives us to God. It always reminds us that we really only have one thing ultimately in this world, God and his presence. Everything in this world is transitory, and God in his kindness will very often take something away from you in order that you would not trust in it anymore, that you would trust in Him. But the people in Jerusalem hadn't had this exact same experience, although they did experience quite a bit of destruction of the city. But when Ezra gets back, he's stunned at the worldliness of the people there.

And you know this often happens in our own day. In fact it just happened in our home a couple of days ago. We had a pastor from a foreign country in our house for a couple of days and they had not been to America for two years. Two years. And they said it's amazing how America has slipped in two years.

It's pretty shocking. So leaving the country can give you perspective and that's the kind of experience that Ezra is having. He's coming back, he's expecting to see something, and he doesn't see it. And it's the jaws of the devil. Well let's begin to work our way through the book and find yourself in chapter 1 and again just to remind the book divides easily into two sections.

You have them on your outlines in front of you. First of all the restoration of the temple chapters 1 through 6 through Zerubbabel and then the reformation of the people, chapters 7 through 10, through the ministry of Ezra himself. Okay, so Ezra begins with this decree from Cyrus. You'll see this in verses 1 through 4. And again, just notice that these verses are almost identical to the last verses in 2 Chronicles chapter 36.

Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled. And then there's this issue of this declaration of Cyrus. Here are a few things I think we can learn from just these first verses. First of all, the Lord is always moving. When you're in captivity, know that God is still moving, even though you can't see it.

And here God is moving in the heart of a distant King and you can always know that God is working. He never stops working. The Lord Jesus Christ said, I am working and my Father is always working. And you may not see what you want to see, but you will always see what God wants you to see. The second thing is that God has a fixed end to our trials.

So there was an end, and there was this open door blessing that was presented in Jerusalem. Another thing that I think we should always recognize at any time in history is that God knows the names of the pagans and He'll stir them up and you shouldn't worry too much about them Because here you're going to see three pagan kings acting for the benefit of the people of God. And these were pagan with a capital P. If you study Cyrus and Darius and Artaxerxes and Nebuchadnezzar. You know, these men were pagans.

But God governs the world through His influence on all men. And God is no respecter of your religion or your paganism. He's directing everything in the world for his own glory and he brings thoughts to people's minds. He can do what none of you can do. He changes the minds of anyone he wants.

I've said this many times, God controls the synapse of every brain in the world and you can count on that. You can count on that. So don't worry. Don't worry about what other people are thinking or doing. Consider that God is the great governor of the world and He will have His glory.

Everything will glorify Him. He'll sum all things up in Jesus Christ, even your troubles, even the things that you think people are doing against you. So God is raising up this King. You know, as Daniel said in chapter 2 verse 21, he changes the times and seasons. He removes kings and raises up kings.

Or Proverbs 21, 1, the king's heart is in the hand of the Lord like rivers of water. He turns it wherever he wishes. So the first four verses remind us of all these things and let them soak in when you read it. Think of God's marvelous mastery over all kings of the earth. Everyone in authority is under God's authority.

And you think about all the authorities in your life, you can count on this one thing. God and God alone is the one who sets up all authorities. Your parents, your boss, your pastors, your presidents, your local leaders. This is God. He's done it all for His own glory.

We should rejoice. We should be the happiest people on the planet and the freest. So then, after these first four verses, hearts begin to move. And there's a beautiful phrase in this section, particularly in verse 5. Then the heads of the fathers houses of Judah and Benjamin and the priests and the Levites with all whose spirits God had moved arose to go up and build the house of the Lord, which is in Jerusalem.

God moved their hearts and they rose up and they went to build. And now remember this is the wave of Zerubbabel, Okay, they were moved to do that. And then they get gifts from Cyrus in verses 6 through 11. Articles of silver and gold, verse 6, with goods and livestock and with precious things besides all that was willingly offered. So you'll see how this whole move was financed and this is what happens when God is restoring worship.

He moves the hearts of people. Worship isn't restored except by an act of divine Providence where he moves people's hearts. You know, I don't think there's ever been a time in my life where I didn't cry out to God for the power of the Holy Spirit to overcome the people in the land where I live. But I know that only God can do it. You can't do it by antics and shenanigans and manipulation.

Only by God. Only by the preaching of the word of God. By repeating the words of God. That is the only way that revival happens. And this is why God has given preaching to the church.

And this is what you need to restore worship to its proper place. Your heart needs to be moved. You know, if your heart is cool at this time, pray that God would give you a hot heart, that he would move your heart to restore the worship of God. You know, all of us, No matter what point in our lives we find ourselves, there's more that we can experience in our worship of God. There's more focus on God.

There's more awareness of God that you can have. I don't think I've ever lived a day where I thought that I had enough awareness of God and worshiping Him in the day. And to long for that and to see God increase it is such a blessing. And this is what was happening right here. But it's not something that you just manufacture.

It's not like, you know, going to a motivational program and get your thoughts all excited. It happens by work of God. And then we get to chapter 2 And we find there's a census that is taken of the returnees. Now notice, this is the census of the first returnees. This is how you get to 49, 000 people.

About, you know, the exact number of people that returned are listed here. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine the counting of 49, 000 people getting ready to go on a journey? It must have been quite an administrative trick to get all the names right and figure, you know, because They're, you know, husbands and wives and children and all kinds of stuff and guess what they're bringing? They're bringing their livestock and stuff like that, you know.

But these are the people that are counted. First of all, they count the people of known descent in verses 1 through 58. And then, in verse 59 through 63, they count the people of unknown descent and then there's this documentation of the gifts that were given in verses 64 through 70 And it's such a beautiful picture. Look at verse 68. The heads of the fathers' households, when they came to the house of the Lord, which is in Jerusalem, offered freely for the house of God, to erect it in its place according to their ability they gave to the Treasury.

And here we find unfolded before us again just one of the great principles of giving and that is that God requires us to give according to our ability and to give freely and to give joyfully as they did here. You get to chapter 3, the altar is being built, the foundation of the temple is laid, there's this rejoicing that's going on, So that's documented here in verse two. It says, they arose and built the altar of the God of Israel to offer burnt offerings on it as it is written in the law of Moses. Now, this is the first step in restoring your worship and that is to build an altar to establish your heart as an altar before God. And then there's just more explanation of this.

It explains the details of it. Verse 4, they also kept the Feast of Tabernacles as it is written and offered the daily burnt offerings and the number required by the ordinance for each day. Afterwards they offered the regular burnt offering. Now you notice the regularity. There's the preparation of the altar and then there's just this regularity.

If you want to restore worship properly in your life there must be a pattern of regularity to your worship and God gives us these visions of regularity all through the Bible, particularly in the old covenant ceremonial law. They are done regularly and it's a picture for us that we regularly go to the throne of grace. When your worship is irregular, your heartbeat becomes irregular and you become weak. It gets regular and your heartbeat is restored for God. So you'll read it all about that.

There's such rejoicing that takes place, there are trumpets, there's symbols, there's praising of God according to what? According to the ordinance of David the king of Israel. And they sang responsibly, praising and giving thanks to the Lord. For He is good, for His mercy endures forever. Then all the people shouted with a great shout, and they praised the Lord because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid.

You can find that in verses 10 through 11. But then something happened. There were people there that weren't rejoicing, they were weeping. Who were the ones that were weeping? Well, it was the old men.

It was the men who saw the old temple in its all of its glory before it was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar. The young men and women are so happy the old men are weeping because they remembered the glory of Solomon's temple And this temple wasn't quite as beautiful and well-appointed. And so this is just a reality that they experienced there. And it says that those who rejoicing you could hear the shout from far off. So when you're rebuilding your life, when you're rebuilding your worship, you've got to start with the altar and the foundation of the temple and You've got to engage in regular practices.

And these are the things that will reshape your heart, that will revitalize all of your worship. Now, this Feast of Tabernacles that you see them celebrating in chapter 3 is figurative of the Feast of Jesus Christ that we experience every week in our church through the Lord's Supper, which also reminds us of the marriage supper of the Lamb, that feast in heaven that will go on and on and on. We get to chapter 4, there's opposition to the restoration. The work is interrupted. And now you have almost a century of sustained spiritual opposition from Cyrus to Artaxerxes and their reigns.

In verses 1 through 5 there's the opposition under King Darius. In this opposition the adversaries were the Samaritans, the ones who'd built a competing temple in the north, those that were destroyed in 722 by the Assyrians, and their refusal was due to their rebellion, And it was just an acknowledgement that they did not want worship to be conducted in God's way. And so they were resisting. And then notice in verses 4 and 5 they offer friendship, but the friendship turns to hatred because they did not love God. And then there's opposition under King Ahasuerus in chapter three, verse six.

And then in verses seven through 23, you read about the opposition under Artaxerxes. There's a lot of opposition over a long period of time under these three kings. And so it just continued on. And then there is a letter that's written against Jerusalem beginning in verse 9. And it's slanderous and it's a letter written to the king that basically says, these people are going to rebel against you, they're not going to pay their taxes, they're rotten to the core.

And there's something very interesting that they say. They say this, they are harmful to kings and provinces. They are harmful. This is always the great argument of the pagans. The unbelievers say that the Christians are harmful, that they're a bad influence.

This was the basis of the persecution of Christians in Rome and the many thousands that died there. And this is always the basis of violent persecution. The people of God are determined to be enemies of society. Back in the days of the Romans, the Christians were accused of cannibalism because they quoted Jesus who said, Eat my flesh and drink my blood. They'll use any thread they can get their hands on in order to slander the people of God.

And you'll find this as a common pattern when there is hatred of God. You'll find the haters of God to take the thinnest shred to mangle its meaning, to change it to mean what nobody thought it meant, and to use it against you. And they'll use all your words against you. And that's exactly what's happening in this letter that is sent. Notice the slanderous accusations that are made.

When you read this chapter, Think about your own times and think about different ways that unbelievers slanderously defame the Church of Jesus Christ. It's what they always do. They do it today, they've been doing it forever. Then in verse 24, the work ceased. And you know, these letters, this opposition was just the beginning because it stopped the work for the next 16 years.

Their plan worked And then God sent two prophets. Remember who they are? Haggai and Zechariah. And God sends those two prophets to speak to the people, to shake them out of their sleep and their discouragement, and to encourage them to resume the work. You know, just because you've laid off the work of God doesn't mean that it can never be recovered.

This happens. There are ways that we get discouraged by different things that take place, and here you have a pattern for it, and what's important is that you hear the Word of God, the prophets of God, the people who are speaking the truth to you, and wake up and get back in the game and forget the slanderers and recognize that God is sovereign. And then in chapter 5 the building begins after this long season and they've restarted the temple and there's a letter to Darius that is written in chapter 5. And when you read chapter 5 in the first two verses, you're going to read about people you've already read about. You've already read about Haggai and Zechariah and Joshua and Josadak, the priests.

You've already read about them, but these are the same people who are involved here. There's opposition to the construction in verses 3 through 17. I'm tempted to read all of these letters but you'll have to read them. They're fascinating because they speak of so many important things for us to understand about how we relate to the government and how unbelievers relate to us. Chapter 6, a search is made to find the letter that Cyrus originally wrote to authorize the building, because there was a contradiction, and Darius makes a search, and they finally find the letter.

You know, they're going through the archives. Yeah, imagine that. Now today you would just have a hard drive and you just do a search. But think about it, you know, now they're going through cuneiform tablets and probably scrolls of various kinds, you know, rifling through this depository of the letters of the kings. So then finally the temple is dedicated.

You can read about that in verses 13 through 15. There's this beautiful picture of the celebration that took place. The joy is documented in verses 16 through 18 and then they celebrate the Passover. You're going to read in this chapter and in some of the forward-going sections of the whole matter of separation, because those who rejoicing had a particular quality about their life. It says in verse 21, they had separated themselves from the filth of the nations of the land in order to seek the Lord God.

This is the critical matter, to reject and separate yourself from the filth of the nations. And in modern times you can imagine the different ways that people end up embracing the filth of the nations. I think one of the primary ways that people do that is through the entertainments of our day. There's so much filth in it. There's so much diversion and wickedness in it.

And if you have people who are not separating themselves from the filth of the nations, here's what they get. They don't get this kind of joy. They're going to get perfunctory worship. I remember many years ago I heard something by John Piper. He was actually chastising his congregation and he was chastising them for the deadness of their worship.

And he used some of the most graphic, dramatic language in correcting the congregation. And he said, you are stickmen. You are dead. You come in here because you have been watching what you should have been watching last night and you've been going around playing around and not caring about me on your Saturday night and so you're here today but you're a stick man amazing well that's kind of what happens If you don't separate yourself from the filth of this world, you're not going to have the joy in worship. You're not going to have that sense of happiness in his arms when you're with the gathered people of God and hearing the word of God, you just won't have any joy in it at all because you've not separated yourself from the filth of this world.

It's right for pastors to urgently appeal to their people to eliminate all filth out of their lives. To do what David did, I will set no unclean thing before my eyes. He said that in Psalm 101 verses 1 and 2. So separation from filth is a requirement for worship And it's one aspect of worshiping in spirit and in truth. And so this just leads us again back to the whole doctrine of repentance where we learn that worship that does not include repentance from sin is not true worship.

So that ends chapter 6. Let's go to chapter 7 and now we enter the testimony of Ezra's qualifications. Chapters 1 through 6 speak of the rebuilding of the temple in Zerubbabel. Now we're talking about Ezra and the rebuilding of people's lives. You have got to rebuild your worship before you can rebuild your life and they are very very connected.

So in the first 10 verses of chapter 7 you can read about Ezra's qualifications particularly look at verse 6. 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, you learn something about this man. He was skilled. How did he become skilled? He gave his whole heart to the work.

And then, you'll see in verse 10, it says, 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. And here you have this progression that takes place in the heart of a godly man. A heart is prepared, number one. Number two, the law of God is sought. And number three, the law of God is practiced.

And number four, the law of God is taught. This is what Christians ought to do with one another. Each one of those is necessary. If you take out the preparation of the heart or the rejection of the law of God, The ability to teach what is true is broken down. So these four elements of Ezra's life teach us about how we ought to think about our lives as well.

Then there's the letter of Artaxerxes to Ezra. It's such a remarkable letter. When you read some of these letters from the kings, you'll encounter this phrase, and so forth and so forth. Okay? It just made me laugh when I read that.

You'll see what I mean when you get there. But So this is a letter from Artaxerxes. You look at verse 24 in chapter 7. One of the things that Artaxerxes commands is that the priests will not be taxed, and they won't have to pay any tribute or any custom. And this applies to the priests, the Levites, the singers, and the gatekeepers and the Nethenim or the servants in the house of God.

They were not taxed. Now this is why today in America pastors can receive income tax free And it goes right back to this. It's a principle of the law that was incorporated in US tax law. And you can find it right here in this book. Someone was reading Ezra when the tax code was being developed and remembered this principle and it's something that has been in Christian societies for hundreds of years.

And then Ezra responds to this letter in verses 27 and 28. He praises God. It says this, blessed be the Lord God of our fathers, who has put such a thing in this King as this in the heart of the King to beautify the house of the Lord. He just acknowledges it was God that did it. Chapter 8, The focus is the restoration of the people.

There's a census that is taken. Now remember, this is Ezra's time, and now the census reveals that there are a little over 1, 700 people. And so there's this second census that's taken. You can read about that in verses 1 through 14. And Ezra gathers those who are with him by the river Ahava in verse 15 and when he does that he recognizes that there are no Levites there in that gathering and of course that's a great concern.

No Levites, no restoration of worship. Remember this is the Old Covenant, This is the ceremonial law and you need priests and you need Levites and you need, you know, you need bulls and goats and you need an altar and you need a whole sacrificial system. So we don't need that today, but there was something missing in the worship. And why is this important? It's important that we ask what's missing in my worship.

What is missing in my worship? Because God has ways that we worship Him in spirit and in truth. So he issues a command and he brings in priests and then he establishes those priests and then as he's doing this there's just a phrase I just can't help it reading in verse 21. Then I proclaimed a fast there at the river of Ahava, that we might humble ourselves before God, to seek from Him the right way for us, and our little ones, and all our possessions. I just wanted to read the part about the little ones.

You know these were families that were making their way back and they were together there by the river Ahava and they were brought together to worship God. So then the return is completed in verses 24 through 36. And as they're returning in verse 28, we read, He says to them, You are holy to the Lord, and this is to the priests. And so this was part of the whole restoration of the worship of God. So they're offering offerings.

Then you get to chapter 9. When you get to chapter 9, you realize that Ezra has identified the problem in Judah, and that is that the people had not separated themselves from the ways of the Gentiles. And he is told of intermarriages, and he plucks out his hair and his beard, and he prays. Praise a prayer of repentance. But the people had not separated themselves because they had intermarried.

And so he deals with that, and he calls for a change of society. I mean, imagine how difficult it would be to ask the people to put away their wives, and that's exactly what he did. It was very radical. You'll see Ezra's brokenness and his intercession in verses 5 through 7. You'll see how God was faithful in verses 8 and 9.

You'll see how they confess their unfaithfulness in verses 10 through 15 and he says they say that God has punished them less than their iniquities deserve. This is what true Christians end up saying. God has been kinder than they ever thought He could be. And then in chapter 10 the people weep and they repent. They take responsibility for it.

They say, we have trespassed against our God and have taken pagan wives from the peoples of the land. And now, yet now, there is hope in Israel in spite of this. Isn't that wonderful? Yet now there's hope. There's still hope.

Even though you have done something that is so defining and so harmful in your life, there still is hope as these people have declared. God is so kind. He brings people back from the brink and through some of the most critical difficulties that they experience. And then Ezra arises and he calls for an oath in chapter 10 verses 5 and 6 and then he requires that they gather together and if they don't gather together their property is going to get confiscated and won't go all that well And you'll read about that in verses 7 through 8. So the people gather together and they turn to God.

And there's true repentance. They agree with God, which is one of the critical elements of repentance. There's renunciation of the sin, and there's turning, and then there's separation. These are the ways that repentance is verified and known. So the people moved in obedience, their pagan wives were put away.

You'll read about that in verses 18 through 44. And God blesses the whole effort. You know, Ezra is a man sent from God. Now, let's just close with a few lessons. First of all, Let's remember that God raises up leaders to bless and lead his people, even though those leaders might be wicked.

There are godly leaders and wicked leaders in this story. The godly are Zerubbabel, Yeshua, Haggai, Zechariah, Ezra, Nehemiah. Then you have Cyrus and Darius, Artaxerxes. And God moves in the hearts of kings and scribes and priests and travelers. God moves in hearts.

To me, that's the most encouraging thing about the entire testimony of the Bible, is that God can change your heart. The second thing is that God takes initiative and no one makes his way back without a work of the power of God, which should just teach us to always cry out to God, That He would continue to restore our worship, to continue to beautify the house of God. And then there's a lot in here about restoring worship, the laying of the foundations of worship, the altar, the temple, the joyful, heartfelt celebrations, and the obedience that makes them so. Also remember this, that the work of God will always be opposed. You'll read about various forms of opposition in Ezra.

Every one of those is designed to teach you about your own day and your own life and the challenges that we have. There will always be opposition to the work of God, and the devil doesn't do it really all that differently from one era to another. He uses slander and threats and all kinds of stuff like that. And so Christians should never worry about the slander that they receive. They should rejoice for their reward in heaven is great.

Also, I think we should recognize that Ezra experienced something that we're experiencing now, the decline of godliness among his people. Ezra witnessed this decline and you should always ask what kind of decline do you see around you and what will you do about it? How will it shape your life? Because God puts people in the world in order to meet the decline and to cry out to the people for restoration. And this is why God has put us in the world, to observe the decline and to speak to it.

And there are many ways that we do that. When you're with your friends and you see the decline, you know, recognize you have a responsibility with your friend. When you're in the church and you see foolish young men and silly women reverse the decline, come and speak to it, and recognize that it's the worship of God that is the heart of the problem. And we shouldn't just let one another in the church continue to syllify ourselves or continue to become more and more foolish. And the godly in a church are responsible in order to create that culture of holiness and beauty and the happiness that comes from it.

To be a people so enjoying the grace and the mercy of Jesus Christ, to hang on every word of every song, to savor the words of God that are read and preached and prayed. God puts his people in the world in order to observe the decline and to speak to it. So be bold, don't be afraid. So God raised up a king and a priest in the days of Ezra And this is how all restoration begins. These matters are just figurative of the King of Kings and the Lord of the Lords and our great high priest who has taken action to restore our souls.

And what do they do? They celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles, and it was a foretaste of the New Covenant blessings in Christ as the people of God gather together in all of their feasts. You know, in our church we try to do a lot of feasting. Just saying that, I'm thinking, we need to do more. Why?

Because we so desire to see the people of God sitting together, eating, enjoying, having this marvelous food and fellowship together to enjoy the bounty of God. And it'll only be a few days when we'll do it again. And secondly, to remember the continual celebrations that the people of God will experience in heaven. You know, you might be playing harps, but boy it is gonna be a whole lot of happiness in that harp playing. Revelation 7 verses 9 through 17 speak of it, and I'll close with this because I do believe that everything in Ezra points to this situation.

After these things I looked and behold a great multitude which no one could number of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues standing before the throne and before the lamb clothed with white robes with palm branches in their hands and crying out with a loud voice, saying, Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb. All the angels stood around the throne and the elders and the four living creatures and fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God saying, Amen. Blessing and glory and wisdom, thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever. Amen. Then one of the elders answered saying to me, who are these arrayed in white robes and where did they come from?

And I said to him, sir, you know. So he said to me, these are the ones who come out of the Great Tribulation and washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore they are before the throne of God and serve Him day and night in the temple and he who sits on the throne will dwell among them, and they shall neither hunger anymore nor thirst anymore. The sun shall not strike them nor any heat for the lamb who is in the midst of the throne will shepherd them and lead them to living fountains of waters and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes." And this is the whole message of the book of Ezra, for the complete restoration of God's people and the power of the worship of God in the temple of God that is restored back to its original order of genuineness and beauty. Okay, there it is.