The sermon, 'A Measure of Revival in Our Bondage,' delivered by Scott Brown, focuses on Ezra 9:8-9. The central theme is the revival and return of God's people from Babylonian captivity, emphasizing God's grace and presence as catalysts for renewal. The book of Ezra is characterized by the return from bondage, restoring worship according to God’s patterns, and rebuilding lives by rooting out paganism. Revival is depicted as a deep awareness of God's presence, leading to repentance and obedience. Throughout the book, there are four significant phases of revival during the reigns of four different kings, highlighting God's sovereignty and role as the prime mover in these events. The sermon outlines applications from each chapter of Ezra, encouraging believers to take radical steps to rebuild their lives around worship, to brace for opposition, and to remain steadfast in repentance and obedience. Ezra is portrayed as a story of hope and redemption, with God as the hero, orchestrating revival through grace, and providing a place for growth and renewal.

The sermon text is Ezra 9 verses 8 and 9. And now for a little while grace has been shown from the Lord our God to leave us a remnant to escape and to give us a peg in his holy place that our God may enlighten our eyes and give us a measure a revival in our bondage. For we were slaves yet our God did not forsake us in our bondage but he extended mercy to us in the sight of the kings of Persia to revive us, to repair the house of our God, to rebuild its ruins, and to give us a wall in Judah and Jerusalem. Let's pray. Thank you for the day Heavenly Father.

Thank you for this time that we could focus on you, on worshiping you, on giving you glory. I pray you give us a mind to understand what is preached. I pray you give us a heart to obey in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, it really is a joy to come and bring this final message in the book of Ezra after many weeks of going going through it.

We're now going to look back you know over 10 chapters of what we've been studying for quite a while. We know that Ezra is a story of the reviving of a sinful people who've been to Babylon. They're back from Babylon and there's really only one hope for them and that is that God would be in their midst, that God would be mighty and lifted up in all of their thinking. This really is a book about revival. It's about the way that God revives the sinful people, how he brings them back from bondage, how they've allowed Babylon to get inside of them and now they need to escape Babylon so that they might experience a measure of revival in their times.

I think the book of Ezra is about revival, and particularly the element of revival that most people who've studied great revivals talk about, and that is that revival really comes when there's a distinct sense of the presence of God, where God is among his people in a way that he wasn't before and because he's because he's among his people he grips their conscience he he takes their hearts by storm and there's there's an actual visible response to his presence. Their hearts are deeply affected, and often many people are saved, and many people return to the Lord, but it's really a sense of awareness of God and then a desire to obey. That's really what revival is. And that's what we see in the book of Ezra. Now you have a big long outline in front of you for a big long, well hopefully it's not going to be too long of a summary, but I want to walk through some of the basics of this book of Ezra at the beginning and then I want to go into each chapter, I want to give you an application from each chapter.

And I really also, with each chapter and each application, I really want to issue a call to action. And so that's where we're headed. So the big picture in Ezra really is defined by the theme, if you're following me in this outline. Ezra is a story of returning home from bondage. It's an example where there's hope in the midst of ruin, because sin ruins you.

And there is hope when there's repentance. There is hope when the presence of God is there in the midst of your hopeless situation. And so it's a story of authentic turning to God and redemption and real reformation and also backsliding and then repentance and and reformation again and there are there are these sub themes that run all throughout the book of Ezra first is returning returning for Babylon Second is a restoring worship according to God's patterns. That is so pivotal. You might say that the whole book of Ezra is about restoring worship.

It's really about worship. Thirdly, the rebuilding of your life by the rooting out of paganism. And we see this particularly when Ezra shows up on the scene in chapter 7. But these are the things that give us a measure of revival in our bondage, that we find ourselves returning, we're restoring worship, and we're rebuilding our lives by turning away from paganism in fidelity to the word of God. Now, You'll notice there are many lists of people in Ezra.

You're tempted to skip them. You know, it's a real narrative with real people. If you were just writing a novel, you wouldn't put all these people's names. You wouldn't just make up 200 names and put them in there. These are real people that return to the Lord.

It's so exciting in that sense. When you read the list of names in Ezra, remember these are families. They're just like your family and my family. And they're people in that family that actually are being healed by Jesus Christ and they've received refreshment. There's living water running in their souls now.

So the list in that sense can really be very exciting. The key verse which we read at the beginning is that I'm really presenting here this evening, this morning, whenever we are, is in 9 verses 8 and 9. And it's really summarized in this prayer. And it's a prayer that acknowledges the grace of God to rescue sinners and how you escape from bondage and how you find a place to grow in His holy place. And He enlightens your eyes and He gives you a measure of revival.

So I'll read it. And now for a little while, verse 9, chapter 9, now for a little while grace has been shown from the Lord our God. The first element of revival as God pours out is grace. Grace has been shown from the Lord our God. All revivals happen exclusively because the work of God.

They often happen in unknown places through unknown people. They happen at times that you can't imagine. They happen through people that you absolutely wouldn't expect every single moment and Ezra proves that very same thing. They happen because God shows up in a very particular way. Why?

To leave us a remnant to escape. Escape what? Escape bondage in Babylon. And to give us a peg. To give us a peg in His holy place.

In other words, a peg, a place you can hang on. It's like a place to grow. He gives you a place to grow. That, by the way, is the Church of Jesus Christ. He grants you a peg.

People who will come together, they'll worship God with you together, they'll speak the truth and love with you, you'll hear the word of God, you'll worship the word of God, you'll come together, and you'll have a place to grow. That's what he does. In his holy place, that our God may enlighten our eyes and give us a measure of revival in our bondage. So that's what's happening in the book of Ezra. Everything that we've read about is jammed into those two verses.

And how did it happen? God did not forsake us in our bondage. That's in chapter 9 verse 9. But He extended mercy to us in the sight of the kings of Persia to repair the house of our God, to rebuild its ruins, and to give us a wall in Judah and Jerusalem." So this is a story of authentic redemption in people's lives. And again, there's this returning home, There's restoring worship, and then there's ongoing Rebeating obedience and removal of idolatry and the filth of the nations in your life And what all this means is that that restoration always?

Means a complete surrender to God Everything must be reordered according to the word of God. And it happens when people say, yes, Lord. Yes, Lord. That's what we see in chapter 10. They said yes.

They said yes. And God revived them. And they believe that God had every right to tell them what to do. And that means that they cleanse themselves from their worldliness and they put away the filth of the Gentiles. This is always required for true conversion.

If you don't want to put away the the filth of the Gentiles, just know this, you haven't been converted yet, okay? There has to be that desire. The book of 1st John completely explains how that works. It means surrender. It means bringing every thought captive to Jesus Christ.

And this is the reformation that took place in the days of Ezra and Zerubbabel. And it's the Reformation that we need today here, right here in Wake Forest. It was a long journey though, wasn't it? It was 117 years. And the rooting out of idolatry and pride and formalism and superstition and worldliness is the whole process of sanctification that you see in the book of Ezra.

It's their story and it's my story and it's your story. God is always rooting out remaining sin And he's bringing us further and further from honoring Him with our lips, but our hearts being far from Him. He's taking us further and further through different means. But the danger that there is for us was the danger that they experienced. And that is to establish true worship, to establish the forms of true worship, which they did.

They came back and they rebuilt the altar and they rebuilt the temple according to the specifications that God had ordained in the law, but that's not the end of it all. Because you can bring a form of godliness and not be being sanctified on the inside. That's exactly what happened to them. They set that in order. I mean, you can get your doctrine straight, you can get the order of your worship straight, but don't think that you're done and don't think that you've arrived because you haven't.

And they hadn't either. We learned in Isaiah chapter one and two that as the people really embraced the regulator principle of worship, their worship was a stinking noxious smell to him because their hearts weren't in it. Their lives weren't being reordered by him because they didn't love him. But these are the things that give us a measure of revival in our bondage, that there's a true turning to God. Then there are four, I'm just going to say there are four phases of revival and rebuilding the people of God over the reigns of four kings.

You see that in your outline. Each one of these phases are really revivals. And there may be others that you could identify in here, But I think that we're looking at a 117 year period where there are four seasons of revival. I don't know if you look back in your life and say, I saw a season of revival here and there. I've seen a few.

I've seen a couple of seasons of revival happen in this church, particularly with young people. But there are seasons of revival where God is so real to people, He just grabs them. And everything is on the table, open before God. They want God to deal with those things. So the first was the revival under the days of Zerubbabel and Jeshua, 50, 000 of them were activated in their hearts.

Their hearts were stirred up by the Lord. Then they came back, they walked for four months to get back to Jerusalem to restore worship. Then the second revival took place 16 years after they had stopped rebuilding. They came back, they were very excited, they rebuilt the altar, they put the foundation of the temple in place and they had a bunch of opposition. They got discouraged and they just said, hey, revival's too much trouble.

We're just going to go back and rebuild our panel houses. And God revived them at the end of that 16-year period of indolence. And he sent two prophets. He sent Haggai, and he sent Zechariah. You need to know why Zechariah and Haggai were speaking.

They were speaking to revive a people out of their selfishness, their discouragement. They just got sick and tired of all the opposition. And God sent two prophets to revive them. And it was a wonderful thing. Then the third revival took place 76 years later when Ezra came to rebuild the people.

God activated his heart and probably 7, 000 others and they came out of the Babylon too and And They they revived the people at that time through the preaching of the Word of God Ezra brought the Word of God Because Because in his heart he sought the law of God, he sought to obey it, and he sought to teach it. That's what he did. And when he started teaching, there was even more trouble. But there was a revival at the same time. And then I think the fourth revival took place when Nehemiah came to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem to protect the people of God.

These were four revivals that happened in a 117 year period. And God is the one who brings revival. He's always the one. If you read, well we'll get to this in a minute, but you notice all these revivals were activated by one single source. It was God.

And that brings me to the next point. The key personality in Ezra. Who is the hero in Ezra? Do you know who the hero in Ezra is? It's God!

God is all... It's not Ezra. It's not Zerubbabel who cleaned up the rubbable. It's not Haggai. It is God because God does it all.

He's the one, and he does it out of ruins, which is so remarkable. God is the prime mover in every single chapter, every single change of scene in Ezra. God is the mover. And if you just read it again, you'll see it. You'll see it all over the place.

Just read it with that eye. What did God do in this story? Everything. It's absolutely wonderful. God causes four kings, Four pagan kings, four choppier head off for looking sad kings.

And he uses them to fuel this revival. And these kings bring encouragement and funds, enormous resources. Ezra comes back with about a hundred and sixty five million dollars of stuff in his pockets and doesn't get attacked. You know why? Because the good hand of God is upon them.

God protected them. And God is the prime mover. God sends the prophets, God raises up leaders, he sends Levites that they didn't have, that they needed, he even provides the money for the sacrifices. Okay? He does.

They needed to bring bulls and goats and lambs to fulfill all the sacrificial system. I mean, they came back to nothing. There was nothing there. Jerusalem was a rubble. It was in total ruins.

They had hardly enough money to do anything, but God actually gave them money to bring sacrifices to him. So God does everything. He's the prime mover. It's the good hand of God. God is preserving His people, and he brings you home out of ruin by his own power.

He'll do it. He has promised that he who began a good work in you will complete it on the day of Christ Jesus. He's going to do it. It's going to be him, absolutely. Your life is not your own.

All of history is the history of redemption. It's the redemption of a people for his own glory. He's using every single year of history in your life and in mine in order to bring you out about bondage. And he is doing it and he is going to absolutely complete it. And that's why when you read the book of Ezra, you can see the theme of it and its grand proportions, but it really is the history of your life, and it's the history of my life, how God rescues.

He's the one who does it. This is what gives us a measure of revival in our bondage. It's God. You know, we sent a letter, Mike actually wrote the letter to the church this week just saying, hey when you come, first of all we love the fellowship that we have here, it's such a sweet thing, it's such a happy thing. But when you come, We want you to come and be seated and be waiting on God, wait on Almighty God.

We want there to be a sense of sober joy, a sense of expectation. We don't want to just be coming in here back slapping each one another. We do want to be back slapping, but there's a time. There's a time to be before Almighty God. And it was very interesting to me this morning.

The people who are involved in the service go in that room and we pray on Sunday mornings just before the service, and we come out. But It was very different this morning, wasn't it? It was very different. I almost thought, well, it's kind of dead out there. But I don't think it was.

I think people actually paid attention to what Mike wrote. And they wanted to come in with a sense of sobriety. I really appreciated that. And there's a time for clanging. There's a time for symbols and feasting and things like that.

There's a time to come before God and recognize the presence of God. It is the key to our revival. It really is. Now let's talk about Christ in Ezra. Now salvation in Jesus Christ is without question the overwhelming theme in Ezra.

Because the entire book is about what? It's about rebuilding the temple. And what is the temple all about? What does the temple point to? The temple points to Jesus Christ.

Everything in this book is about salvation. It's a shadow. It's a picture. And there is, you know, all through, there's a sacrifice for sin. You know, there's, there, There are pictures of Jesus everywhere in this book.

In the second chapter, there are people that have to go back and populate Bethlehem. Why? Bethlehem is bombed out at this time. It's got to become a place where a Savior can be born, where there are actual dwelling places and houses and businesses and inns there. There has to be an inn in Bethlehem.

Somebody has to be there to build the city, to prepare for the Messiah. And then in chapter 3 verse 3, you have the morning and the evening offerings, the sacrifices, the lamb, the bread, the wine. What does the lamb point to? What does the bread point to? What does the wine point to?

It's Jesus. That's who it points to. Salvation in Jesus Christ is the absolute bottom line theme of Ezra. In chapter 3 verse 4 there's the feast of tabernacles. In chapter 6 verse 19 there's the celebration of the Passover.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 5 Christ is our Passover. All of this is about Jesus Christ and about coming back and worshiping Him. The temple is Jesus Christ. When the second wave comes back, recorded in chapter 8 verse 35, they offer burnt offerings. In chapter 10 verse 19, the guilty present a lamb.

These things are all fulfilled in Jesus Christ when Jesus said in Matthew 5 I did not come to destroy the law but to fulfill this is part of what he meant he came to fulfill the entire ceremonial law and that's why the Apostle Paul says to the Colossian Church in chapter 2 verse 17 he says these are a shadow of things to come And so Jesus Christ and salvation in him is the irreducible theme of the whole book of Ezra. It's all about rebuilding the temple. And this is how God gives a measure of revival in your bondage. He gives you Jesus, your only hope for salvation. And let's talk about contemporaries of Ezra.

This is historical context type stuff here. You have the prophets Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. Next Sunday, we're going to hear a sermon on Malachi. And then we're going to go into Nehemiah. It's during the time of Esther and Mordecai and Ahasuerus and these four kings, Cyrus, Darius, Ahasuerus, and Artaxerxes, 117 years of kings.

OK, now I want to get to applications chapter by chapter. I'm going to pull one application for each chapter, and then I'm going to sort of bring a call to action, a call to do certain things. So, and with each call to action, Don't delay. Don't delay. Delay is a disaster in our lives before the Lord.

Don't procrastinate. So as I go through this recounting of these chapters and an application from each one, remember the book breaks it down easily into two sections. The first six chapters are the restoration of worship by rebuilding the temple through Zerubbabel and Jeshua. Those are the first six chapters. It's restoration of worship.

The second section is 7 through 10 and it's the reformation of the people by the word of God through Ezra. Those are the two sections. Okay, let's talk about this first section. Chapter one, here's the application. Don't worry or fear, every human heart is in the hand of the Lord.

And let me just say it a little bit differently, every single human heart is in the hand of the Lord. In this chapter, we see how God stirred up the heart of a pagan king, his name is Cyrus. And It documents how God stirred up the heart of a king to release the people and to fund their efforts of reformation. And really, This chapter begins where Isaiah 44 leaves off. A hundred and forty, a hundred and fifty years before Ezra 1, Isaiah prophesies, he says, I'm going to send Cyrus, my shepherd, and he is going to help my people.

God gives Cyrus' name before he's born. Okay. A hundred and fifty years. This is a fulfillment of Isaiah chapter 44. And the king's heart and everyone else's heart is in the hands of the Lord.

And that's why Solomon said, the king's heart is in the hand of the Lord. Like rivers of water, he turns it wherever he wishes. And it's why Daniel said in Daniel chapter 2, verse 21, he changes the times and seasons. He removes kings and raises up kings. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding.

He reveals deep and secret things. He knows what's in the darkness. And light dwells with him. A God is the one who makes all the changes in all the minds of the world. I like to say it like this.

I've said it many times. God controls every synapse of every brain in the world. And he did it here, many, many times over this 117-year period. He moves the hearts of kings. And this is just the blessing of God.

He did it with Cyrus who lived from 539 to 530 BC. He did it with Ahasuerus who lived from 486 to 464 BC. He did it with Artaxerxes who reigned from 464 to 423 BC, a 42 year reign which included the time of Nehemiah. Now, don't fear kings, Don't fear people. There's one governor in the world.

There's one moderator of every heart. And God governs the reasons and the years that are spent in captivity. God sets the dates. He sets the dates of your trials. He sets the dates of your blessings, the beginning and the end of them.

He's the one that's doing that. And God is the one. God knows the beginning and the end date of every situation you're in the midst of right now. He knows it and he's carrying you through it. Do you understand that?

That's exactly what this chapter declares among many other things. And so here's the call for decision. Here's a call to action. Do you have fear of any men or women? Do you have fear of any situation?

Do you have fear of any political leader? Do you have any fear of the economy? Do you have fear of the spin on your life? What people might say on the internet that might go viral? Are you afraid of man?

Remember what Isaiah said in Isaiah 22, 22, sever yourselves from such a man whose breath is in his nostrils. For what account is he? Or like David in Psalm 118, it's better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man. It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in princes. Or Jeremiah, who said this, "'Cursed is the man who trusts in man, and makes flesh his strength, whose heart departs from the Lord.

He shall be a shrub in the desert. He shall not see when good comes, but shall inhabit at the arch places in the wilderness. Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord and whose hope is in the Lord." Anybody struggle with fear of man? Hear God is telling us, don't fear man. Second, And by the way, this is a great help to give one a measure of revival in your bondage.

Number two, chapter two, take radical steps to rebuild your life. Take radical steps to rebuild your life. What are they for you? In chapter 2, there's a census of the returnees. There's a listing of the returnees.

It's a chapter you're tempted to skip. There's so many names, difficult to pronounce, but we need to remember all scripture is given by inspiration of God. This is a story of a real revival in real people. And these people took a radical step. They walked for four months.

They left everything that was near and dear in Babylon. Here's what they believed. Restoring true worship was worth it. It was required. They couldn't be in Babylon what they needed to be.

And so there's this long testimony of the various categories, all different kinds of categories of people. Their leaders, their specific families, their priests, their Levites, their people of unknown lineage. And it's a hodgepodge of kinds of people. Here's a principle of revival. Revivals touch every level of society.

Revivals that are real don't just touch one little people group. They touch everybody. They touch the young, the old, they touch the rich, the poor. When there's a real revival, it's not a matter of psychology. It's not a matter of connecting with people's needs.

It's a matter of God making himself known and he makes himself known to everyone because he's doing it. But when the Lord awakens, he sets you on a journey into the heart of worship and you long for true worship. And these people were willing to make radical sacrifice. Imagine how disruptive this would be. It's like walking from here to Austin.

And it's a long way. And they gave up their well-worn patterns and they packed their bags and walked across the desert in order to get there. And you notice that there are words like families and children. They did this all together. It was a whole family affair.

Here's a call to decision. Here's a call to action. Are you making every effort you need to to worship God? Is the worship of God in the Church of God a huge priority in your life, such that you're willing to disrupt your life for it? Or is it something that just kind of fits in conveniently in your life?

You just fit it in with all the other things in life? Or do you fit all the other things in life around worship? There's a really big difference in the way that people think. And what about worship at home? Does it just happen out of convenience?

Do you just kind of do it when you have time, when things aren't too pressed or whatever like that? Or is it something that just gets pushed around? It's just always getting pushed around because the things in life just get a little bit too bigger than worship. That happens to me all the time. But when you rebuild worship, you have to make radical changes.

Now remember, when they came back, they came back to a really broken system. There was nothing there. It wasn't like they showed up and everything was in place. A lot of times when you turn your heart to the Lord and you really turn to worship, you get there and you realize it wasn't what I thought it would be. It was harder than I thought it would be.

There was more opposition, it cost more money, it was more taxing. That often happens. But these are the things that give us a measure of revival in our bondage. When We take radical steps to rebuild worship and reorder our lives around the worship of God. Number three, application number three, restore true worship at the altar of sacrifice.

Now after coming back there was work to do. Like the first thing they did was they rebuilt the altar. The city was in ruins. They had nothing there. But the very first thing they did was to reestablish blood sacrifice.

Blood sacrifice was all about guiltiness. Blood guiltiness. It was all about dealing with sin. If you're ever going to be revived, you've got to rebuild the altar of sacrifice. It always starts and continues on with repentance.

Revivals are always fueled by repentance, and that's what we see here. Repentance has as its foundation the guilt of the human heart and the only remedy for that guilt is the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Remember, the sacrifices in Ezra are figurative of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. And they needed to reestablish the altar of sacrifice. That was the very first thing that they should do.

That should be the first thing. You know, when you get married, some of you are going to get married someday, the first thing that you should do is establish your marriage on the fact that you are sinners. And that every issue, every problem is resolved by acknowledging your sin and repenting of your sin. You can psychology-guise your way until you're blue in the face and both dead and alienated from each other, but here's the reality. If you're able to identify the sin in your own heart and repent of it, there's hope.

But if you're always worried about your needs and I'm not being fulfilled or whatever like that, you're dead. You will never recover and your marriage will always be subject to your own passions and your desires. You're always looking for someone to scratch your back and meet your needs so that you can be happy enough. But the truth is the greatest problem in every marriage is sin. That's it.

And they recognized how critical this was. This is a beautiful chapter. They came together as one man. It says they gathered together. It's a picture of what God does when God gathers his people together.

It's amazing. God's always done that. He's always bringing his people together. You should always gather with God's people. You never know what's going to happen.

And they had a heart to obey, and they offered their burnt offerings. You know, it was a time of feasting. Remember, it was in the seventh month, which was, there were three feast days in that seventh month, the Feast of Trumpets, and the Day of Atonement, and the Feast of Tabernacles. I mean, it was feasting par excellence. It was a time of rejoicing.

And they worship twice a day, morning and evening. You know, like Spurgeons, morning and evening. That's what Christians do they they they book in their day with the worship of God and This is the pattern You know that's why David said he he meditates on on it day and night day and night So this rhythmic pattern of worship was reestablished. Here's the call to action. Answer the question, do I have zeal for worship?

Do I have zeal for the worship of God? Weak desire for worship will make for a weak recovery of your life. It'll always prolong your recovery and cause more hurt to be continued in your life. And if you Cry out to God for a strong heart for worship. Cry out to God when you gather with the people of God, where there's worship, where there's prayer, where there's preaching, that you would have a hungry heart.

Pray that God would give you a hungry heart. How many times do you come to the worship of God and you think, my heart's just dead? It happens, doesn't it? It absolutely happens. And how do you recover from that?

Cry out to God. God, unify my heart to fear you and to love you. And cry out to God. If you're kind of sauntering in to worship lackadaisical, realize how dangerous that is. Revival takes place when there's this heart for worship.

To come humbly and to come, not judging the situation, not judging the people. People come into churches and they're making all these judgments that just pour cold water on their soul. Well, nobody greeted me like I wanted. You know, the atmosphere isn't, you know, the coffee's not that good. I don't like that style of song.

Why do they have to sing that song that way? And your spirit is dampened. It's the devil that's working. But what happened here was there was an ardent desire to restore worship and to recognize the centrality of worship, and that is the altar of sacrifice, coming clean before God with sin and giving thanks to him for his mercy. His mercy is new every morning.

These are the things that give us a major revival in our bondage. Here's another one, chapter 4. Brace yourself for opposition. Brace yourself for opposition. Chapter 4 is, it's interesting, chapters 1 through 3 focus on these early moments of the revival when they first returned.

Chapter 4 broadens out and gives this panorama. It's a 117-year period over four kings. It documents opposition toward the people of God over a long time horizon. But it's a story of resistance and trouble that came upon the people of God. Sustained spiritual opposition will always be the experience of a true church.

And guess what? It's always been that. There are periods of peace in churches. The book of Acts records one such period of peace that happened in Jerusalem. But if you look across the broad landscape of history, the history of the church is that people battle against true churches that want to restore worship in God's way.

It'll always be that way. And some of the first opposition came from the religious Jews known as the Samaritans. They did not like, they were not happy with the kind of worship that the returnees were going to establish because the returnees wanted to establish worship according to the law of God. The Samaritans liked something a little broader. The Samaritans wanted a little bit of...

They did like almost all the stuff the Jews were doing, but they wanted to add a few more things that kind of connected with people. That people who were involved in worldliness and paganism liked. So they would bring little elements of paganism into their worship, sprinkling just a little bit of it. And Zerubbabel and Jeshua said, the Samaritans wanted to help, they said, no, you can't help us. We have a different worldview.

Our worldview is that only God has the right to order worship. That's our view. So we don't want you coming in and doing this. So they were turned away. So what did they do?

Chapter 4, verse 5. They tried to discourage the people of Judah. They troubled them in the building. They hired counselors against them to frustrate their purpose. All the days of Cyrus, king of Persia, even until the reign of Darius, king of Persia.

Two kings and people were scurrying around, they're hiring counselors, they're spreading rumors, they're writing letters, they're writing letters to authorities to say these guys are really bad guys, you know, and That's what happened. And I don't know if that's happened in your life. It probably has. Might have come from family members. It might have come from all different kinds of people, because you were just, all you wanted to do is to try to establish some level of biblical worship in your life and some biblical regulation to the way that you're living.

And the Samaritans, the people around you, don't like it. And it's always going to be that way. So here's a call to decision. Are you living in times when the church, as you're living in times where the church is departed from many elements of true worship, in church life and family life, take heart. Don't be discouraged.

You might have family members or friends who are opposing you because you just want to do things that are really clear in Scripture. And you have two responsibilities. And that's this. You have to ask, is what I'm doing grounded in the Word of God and am I lovingly communicating that to those who are around me or am I a proud, arrogant jerk about it? Because it matters.

But these are the things that give a measure of revival in our bondage when there is a turn to God but then there's opposition. So brace yourself for opposition and recognize all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. That's what the apostle Paul said. He understood it, he experienced it, and he's telling the church to recognize it. Number five, chapter five, consider your ways.

This is the fifth application. Question, have you gotten distracted? Now what we see in chapter five is that It's been 16 years now and the building of the temple has stopped because the people were building their panel houses and they were discouraged and they were afraid of the opposition. That's why they stopped. And so God sends prophets, he sends two prophets to help them out of their funk.

And their personal goals were hindering the goals that God had. Their fears of man were hindering and their desires to build really nice houses had gotten in the way. And so God sends these two prophets to awaken his people to the task. And these two prophets, They do two different things. Haggai really calls them out of their selfishness and how they're spending all their time and their money and their focus on their houses.

That's what Haggai does. Zechariah is a little bit different. Zechariah doesn't come with a lot of correction really. Zechariah gives them a vision of what is really happening. He says, don't despise the day of small things.

God is doing something here. This is really important. He's saying, and he gives a vision really of all of history. He gives a vision of heaven. He gives a vision of how mighty to save God is.

He's saying, you think this is so dinky? This is so small now? He's saying, don't think that way. And so Zechariah wants to open up the horizons of their minds and saying look at how God is doing. He's saving a people.

And Zechariah, You know, like we read earlier today in chapter 14. Hey, there's rivers of living water that are going to flow. Okay, you're preparing for rivers of living water. You need to get back to this work. The temple needs to be established.

You know, the people who were listening didn't realize that the temple was really a figure of Jesus. But Zechariah came there to remind them of that. And so the results are just marvelous. And so the people return. Hey, you know what?

They listen to the Word of God. They listen to the preaching and they change. They get back to work and boom, it's done in four years. They finish it up. There's rejoicing and feasting and stuff like that that happens.

Questions like Adam Haggai, are you obsessed with your own houses? Consider your ways. He says this in verse four. Is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses and this temple lie in ruins? Now therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts, consider your ways." In other words, reevaluate.

And then in verse 6 he says, you know, this isn't working out so good anyway. He says, you've sown much, but you bring in little. You eat but you don't have enough. You drink but you're not filled with drink. You clothe yourselves but no one is warm.

He who earns wages, earns wages to put into a bag with holes. He's saying, what he's saying is that your bag would be full if you had been giving to me, and giving your labor and your treasure to me. But you're poverty-stricken because you're serving yourself. And I'm not blessing people who serve themselves. Call for decision.

Is it time to reallocate your time? Is it time to reallocate your money? Is it time to reallocate your time? Is it time to reallocate your money? Is it time to reallocate your emotions because you're discouraged?

You're discouraged about how hard it was? Is it time to reallocate the way you think about what's happened to you in your life as you tried to reform your life and to really come to terms with what are really the critical things in this life. So is the maintenance of my life getting in the way of building the kingdom of God? Are my affections distracting me from the greater work? Are my disappointments, my sorrows, my hardships, are those dragging me down, and I'm just spending all kinds of time lamenting something that God brought in my life to sanctify me.

You know, there's so many ways that we engage in rebuilding this temple. Number six, celebrate what God has given with joy. So in this chapter, God provides through a pagan king, Darius. And it really is a picture of worship. He actually funds the worship.

The building is authorized, and it's funded through Darius. Remember when Abraham, in the experience of Abraham when he was called by God to sacrifice his son, God is called Jehovah Jireh, the God who provides, and that's exactly what we see here. This King Darius had resisted the people of God before, but God changed his heart and then he gave enormous resources and help and protection. And he issued a decree to protect these people. And it was remarkable what happened and they dedicated the house of God.

They had a big celebration, they dedicated the temple and everyone was gathered there and the key issue that comes to the surface in this chapter is the joy that they experienced because they reestablished their priorities and it says the Lord made them joyful And they kept the feast of unleavened bread seven days with joy. And they returned. They returned and they celebrated the Lord with joy. You know, call for action. We're getting ready to take the Lord's Supper.

We're getting ready to have a feast before the Lord. Take it with joy. It's the cup of blessing. And we're declaring his death until he comes. We're celebrating God who has mercy on sinners.

Let this be maybe the happiest part of this whole gathering, the Lord's Supper. It's the cup of blessing. You know, God gives His children the cup of blessing. He gave His Son the cup of poison, and He drank it down to the shards so that we could have a cup of blessing. That's what's happening today.

Okay, in just a few minutes. Let's don't limit what we don't have. Let's celebrate what God has provided for us. Let's have joy in what He has given us. And the Lord's Supper is that celebration for us today.

Remember what Jesus did when He inaugurated the Lord's Supper? He broke bread and He gave thanks. He gave thanks. So I pray that's the spirit of our time as we gather. We do examine ourselves for our sin and we repent and we recognize the magnificent grace of God.

Let this be a time of rejoicing. Okay, so that's the first half, or the first part. The second is the Reformation of the people by Ezra in chapters 7 through 10. So with chapter 7, here's the application. Prepare your heart to seek the law of God and to do it and to teach it.

Be a disciple and be a disciple maker. That's the pattern of Ezra. So now when we get to chapter 7, 85 years have passed since chapter 1. 56 years have passed between Ezra chapter 6 and Ezra chapter 7. So there's a big time gap here.

The people have been worshipping and that's where our text begins with, now after these things in verse one, because we've jumped ahead. And so this chapter contains the identity and the affections and the qualifications of Ezra the scribe. And it's that beautiful verse that I know a lot of you memorized, 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. That's chapter 7 verse 10. And what we learned from this is that there's no reformation without submission to the Word of God.

And this is how God restores his people. Ezra was skilled in the law of Moses. Now you can be skilled in many things in this life. You can spend a lot of time getting a lot of skill for a lot of things. Make sure that you don't spend your life building skills on the wrong things.

Don't spend too many hours getting skilled on things that don't matter. We live in a world that's awash in things that don't matter, and people build their skills on them. Make sure that you don't neglect this skill. And we prepare our heart for the right things, and that's exactly what Ezra did. And here's what we learned from this.

The heart of the matter is always a matter of the heart. Always. And that's what was driving Ezra. He loved it from his heart. And He had a heart that was ready.

This was the key motivational driver of his life. And hey, it's these kinds of things that give us a measure of revival in our bondage, where we become true disciples and we become disciple makers, just like Ezra did. Chapter eight, application eight, take stock of what you need for worship and fill up what's lacking. Take stock of what you need for worship and fill up what's lacking. Take stock of what you need for worship and fill up what is lacking.

The theme of chapter 8 is capsized in this statement, the good hand of God was upon us and it it documents Ezra's journey back from Babylon he took he too took about four months to come and the challenges and the experiences so What happened to Ezra is with his group of maybe 6 or 7, 000 people, we're not sure exactly how many, they stopped at a river outside of Babylon, the river Ahava, and they stopped in order to pray and to take account of what they had with them. And I told you earlier, they had about $165 million in modern dollars being carried with them, but they realized that they didn't have Levites with them. And so they stopped and they prayed. There's this classic statement in verse 21, to seek from, they fasted, to seek from Him the right way for us and our little ones and all our possessions. So they were trying to deal with what they needed for the worship of God for their little ones and everything they had and they were lacking Levites.

They were lacking people to come and bring the kind of consistency and faithfulness into their worship. Hey, no Levites, no corporate worship. That's the calculation that they were working with. And so they identified leaders and Ezra instructs them in holiness and they fast and God gives them the Levites. And so they continue their journey along the way.

And so the question is, do you need to take stock of what you have and fill up what is lacking. And first of all, are you putting to full use the things God has given you? Are you waiting for someone else? Maybe you don't think you need the Levites, maybe you think you need something else. God knows that the people of God need the Levites.

They're particular things that you need. You need the Word of God, you need prayer, You need preaching, you need singing, you need evangelizing, you need those things. But do you want something different? Are you just waiting around for something different? When God has actually given you everything you need.

Well they realized they didn't have everything they needed. They needed Levites in order to complete their mission. It's critical that the things that God has provided are the things that we're seeking and we're really, really dealing with. The apostle Paul says, "'My God shall supply all of your needs "'according to his riches and glory.'" He is the God who provides. But these are the things that God gives, gives us a measure of revival in our times.

And we should take stock of what we need for worship and fill up what's lacking. Number nine, admit your paganism and lament it. Admit your paganism and lament it. Chapter nine, we encounter the situation where the worship has been established for 56 years and there's a revival that has taken place, but the work isn't finished. And it's one thing to embrace the practices of worship for Reformation, but There's always more sin to be discovered and rooted out.

And in this case, the people had embraced pagan practices. They were engaging in the filth of the nations. They were doing stuff that their neighbors were doing. They wanted to look cool just like their neighbors. They wanted to fit in with the neighbors.

And so they were picking and choosing things to add into their lives. And it ended up to be paganism. And in this case, there was a dramatic expression of it, and that is that people had compromised in marriage, they'd lost a sense of the purpose of marriage, and they married pagans. They married pagan wives. And because of that, they had pagan lives.

You marry a pagan wife, you get a pagan life. You marry a pagan man, and you're going to get a pagan life as well. And so you ought to be really careful about who you marry. And they were being infected by it. So you have this constant need in the churches for repentance and awakening.

The need in the days of Ezra will always be our need to identify our paganism, to fall on our knees, and to cry out to God. That's exactly what Ezra did when he saw warliness in the camp. They arrived in Jerusalem and in just a few days they started hearing reports of all this paganism that was going on in the homes. But it was directly related to their marriages. And they had broken specific laws of God regarding marriage that are declared in Deuteronomy chapter 7 and Exodus 34.

We talked about that last week and the week before. But They were mixing the ways of the Gentiles. That was the heart of the matter. Mixing in the ways of the Gentiles with your Christian life creates an opportunity to repent and return. We should ask, how have I not separated myself from the Gentiles?

Ezra is astonished. He says, I tore my garment and plucked out some of the hair of my beard and sat down astonished. And then Ezra prays this prayer. And the news spreads. And the people begin dealing with their sin with their remaining sin, then here's the here's a call for decision What's the remaining sin in your life?

How have you married the world somewhere? You know, maybe you married a little part of the world a long time ago, and you still have a relationship, and it's time to sever that relationship. It might be in any area of your life. It can touch every area of your life. It can touch the way you think about money.

It's the way that you think about your spouse, the way you think about everything. How you work, how you dress, has any form of paganism entered in? Do you need to divorce from the nations? And Is the way that you're spending your time feeding your paganism? You know, are you watching things that are drawing you to God and working for your holiness or do they just make you more silly and irrelevant in this world?

They might make you laugh, but how long does that last? And what does it really, what good is it really in this world? So, you know, the question is, is there paganism? You know, do You have a relationship somewhere with the world that you need to sever, maybe even today. You walk out today and you say, no more.

I'm turning from that. These are the things that give a major revival in our bondage. Chapter 10, don't just lament, repent and prove it by taking action. That's what happens in chapter 10. The people weep and that beautiful three-letter word, yes, yes Lord.

They said yes and they enter into a time of confession. They turn away from their particular sins, particularly, and they didn't just give lip service, but they actually change their lives. And this is just another appeal to the mortification of remaining sin, this is the call to action. Are there ways you've compromised? Are there ways you've accommodated?

Ways you've winked at this, at this, at this, at worldliness and you're giving yourself a pass. You know, maybe it's today the day you're going to quit giving yourself a pass on that. Because it's not helping you at all. Bring forth fruit in keeping with your repentance and don't delay. Turn to Jesus Christ.

Stop saying you'll do it tomorrow. Take up your cross and follow Him. There are sins that stick with us for many years. They might go back decades, and we just haven't had the courage to turn from them because they're too disruptive and they might be too embarrassing and they might bring too much exposure if you change it. And they might make a few eyebrows go up if you do it.

But don't let eyebrows and don't let favor of man control you. Serve God. Turn from sin. Turn to Jesus Christ. You know, this is a story, it's a story of hope.

It's a story where all is not lost. It's a story of people who they go through periods of revival and then they fall back away. But you know what God does? He always goes back and He rescues His people. You know, I was astonished when we were going through the 16 year period gap.

When God comes back to them, He really gathers them in His arms and He instructs them and He gives them a vision of His glory. It's amazing how God deals with us in bringing us back. He loves us and cares for us and He pulls us back even in the times when we've fallen away from Him. He's so kind. His mercies really are new every morning.

This is our God. This is the God that you see in the whole book of Ezra. I kept thinking of one of my favorite verses in this whole narrative, and that is, yet now there is hope in Israel in spite of this. That's one of my favorite verses. Yet now there is hope in Israel in spite of this.

That's one of my favorite verses. Yet now there is hope in Israel in spite of this. And it made me really glad that a long time ago we named our church Hope Baptist Church because we want to have a culture that nourishes people in the living hope, the living hope that is Jesus Christ and Christ alone. He alone is our hope. He alone is the theme of Ezra.

He is the one that brings us back from ruin. He takes us into his home and he gives us a peg, a holy place where we can grow. What a blessing it is. We have so much to give thanks for. And I'm really grateful for Ezra.

It's been a comfort to me. It really has. I've been so thankful that the Lord had us go through it. And I pray we don't miss the fruit of it. Now we're not really done with the story.

Because Ezra and Nehemiah really are one book. They have always been one book in the Old Testament canon. So we're gonna keep on, this storyline keeps on going. You'll see some of the same themes. God's not done with us yet.

And he wasn't done with them either. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for your faithfulness. We thank you that you are the one who has supplied all that we need for life and godliness. We praise you that you supplied a temple and a sacrifice.

We thank you that you've been so faithful and so kind, so long-suffering toward us. You are everything that you told us in 1st Corinthians 13, that love is patient and love is kind. We're so grateful for you, Lord. And now help us to worship you even more. Amen.

Thank you.