The sermon, delivered by Scott Brown, focuses on the passage from Ezra chapter 7 where King Artaxerxes issues a decree in favor of Ezra and the Israelites, emphasizing the sovereignty of God in influencing the hearts of rulers. The sermon underscores the concept of 'the hand of God' as a guiding force in the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem, illustrating it through the analogy of watercourses directed by a divine designer. The speaker highlights that God is actively working across generations, keeping His covenant and building His church. By exploring the detailed provisions and support for the temple's beautification, the sermon encourages worship and trust in God's long-term plans. It culminates in a prayer of thanksgiving, emphasizing God's mercy, the power of the gospel, and the ongoing influence of His good hand in all aspects of life.

If you could turn to Ezra chapter seven, book of Ezra, seven chapter starting in verse 11. It's an amazing passage of how God worked in the heart of Artaxerxes, similar to how he worked in King Cyrus. As we read, maybe worship him for what he did then and read with faith that he is alive today in the same way, working in our lives. Ezra chapter 7 verse 11 to the end of the chapter. This is a copy of the letter that King Artaxerxes gave Ezra the priest, the scribe, expert in the words of the commandments of the Lord and of his statutes to Israel.

Artaxerxes, king of kings, to Ezra the priest, a scribe of the law of God in heaven, perfect peace, and so forth. I issue a decree that all those of the people of Israel and the priests and Levites in my realm who volunteered to go up to Jerusalem may go with you and whereas you are being sent by the king and his seven counselors to inquire concerning Judah and Jerusalem with regard to the law of your God which is in your hand and whereas you are to carry the silver and gold which the king and his counselors have freely offered to the God of Israel, whose dwelling is in Jerusalem, and whereas all the silver and gold that you may find in all the province of Babylon, along with the free will offering of the people and the priests, are to be freely offered for the house of their God in Jerusalem. Now therefore, be careful to buy with this money bulls, rams, and lambs with their grain offerings and their drink offerings and offer them on the altar of the house of your God in Jerusalem. And whatever seems good to you and your brethren to do with the rest of the silver and the gold, do it according to the will of your God.

Also, the articles that are given to you for the service of the house of your God deliver in full before the God of Jerusalem. And whatever more may be needed for the house of your God, which you may have occasion to provide, pay for it from the King's treasury. And I, even I, Artaxerxes the King, issue a decree to all the treasurers who are in the region beyond the river, that whatever, as with the priest, the scribe of the law of God of heaven may require of you let it be done diligently up to 100 talents of silver 100 cores of wheat 100 baths of wine 100 baths of oil and salt without prescribed limit. Whatever is commanded by the God of heaven, let it diligently be done for the house of the God of heaven. For why should there be wrath against the realm of the king and his sons.

Also we inform you that it shall not be lawful to impose tax, tribute, or custom on any of the priests, Levites, singers, gatekeepers, nothing in or servants of this house of God and you as a according to your God given wisdom set magistrates and judges who may judge all the people who are in the region beyond the river all such as know the laws of your God and teach those who do not know them. Whoever will not observe the law of your God and the law of your King of the King let judgment be executed speedily on him whether it be death or banishment or confiscation of goods or imprisonment. Blessed be the Lord God of our fathers who has put such a thing as this in the king's heart, to beautify the house of the Lord which is in Jerusalem, and has extended mercy to me before the king and his counselors, and before all the king's mighty princes. So I was encouraged as the hand of the Lord my God was upon me and I gathered leading men of Israel to go up with me. Let's pray together.

Thank you Lord for this tremendous passage. Ezra himself just exclaimed, proclaimed, blessed be the Lord God of our fathers for what you did. And God how encouraged he was, he saw the hand, your hand upon him. So as I prayed Lord may we worship you as we meditate upon this as we hear this word proclaimed and preached and God bring faith that yes, you are alive today in the same way whether working in kings and governments or in all the details of our lives. God give us faith to believe your sovereign hand and your goodness in all that you do.

I pray you'd speak through Scott right now in Jesus name. Amen. These ancient words were all written for our benefit that we might know how to walk, how to understand our lives and the things that are going on all around us in our hearts and the people around us and in our nation and they're designed to help us to do it what Ezra did to be encouraged in his heart and to rise up and build and gather everybody he possibly could to go help him do it. And so there's a number of things I want to say about this text before we get completely into it. First of all, it affirms that God keeps his covenant to all generations.

This shows how he saves and how he heals in every generation. He's always working across every generation. He never stops working. And he never stops working in his church, and he never stops working in you, and he never stops working in me and he does it over a long time horizon. We often get so impatient about the work of God in our lives and our spouses' lives and in our church and our nation's lives, but let's make this very clear.

This passage is crystal clear that God is working his plan across many generations and he is going to he is building his church and he does it through many many means the second thing I want us to see about this passage is that the heart of it really is at the end. It culminates in a prayer. It's a prayer that we can pray every day. It's a prayer that we should pray today. It's a prayer to give delight to your soul.

I pray that even today that we are praying this prayer over and over again as we consider this day for delight that God has called us to set aside so that we might experience Him and feed upon Him and speak about Him all day long. It ends with verse 27, blessed be the Lord God of our fathers who has put such a thing in the heart of the king to beautify the house of the Lord which is in Jerusalem and has extended mercy to me." That's the heart of the whole text. It's a prayer. All the things that come before it lead up to this prayer that Ezra delivers. He does this narrative doesn't turn to the first person until verse 27.

That's when Ezra speaks. That's the heart of the passage. Everything that we say somehow finds itself funneled into and culminated in this great prayer of Ezra. And I pray that we can learn from this prayer. And it would do to us what it did to Ezra.

It encouraged his heart and he rose up and he built, and that God would do that among us. The third thing about this passage is that it really expands on the whole doctrine of the hand of God, and this passage is one of the many illustrations of God's sovereign hand that governs all things and particularly the hearts of men and it's it's an illustration of Proverbs 21 verse 1 that that familiar and famous passage the king's heart is like a water course in the hand of the Lord. He turns it wherever he wishes. And so in order to understand this message here, you've got to notice this phraseology of the hand of God this term hand of God is mentioned three times in chapter 7 three times in chapter 8 and mentioned again in Nehemiah which really forms this whole structure of the story of how God rebuilds people's lives. He rebuilds people's lives by his mighty hand working in people's hearts to establish the altar of God where they come to God in spirit and in truth and they recognize the shed blood of Jesus Christ as their own hope and then it extends to their building the temple of God which has to do with building everything that God is concerned about in this world and Then and in the days of Nehemiah building the walls around your life, the protection functions of your life, the full armor of God.

So this passage is about the hand of God and the fact that it is the hand of God that governs absolutely every detail of life. There is an invisible hand in your life. It's always been working. It's working right at this very moment. By the way, you came here because the hand of God brought you here.

Now you might have thought that you woke up this morning and it was all your design that you came here. But there were so many forces at work in your life for years that got you here this morning and you weren't in control of any of them. So this is such a powerful declaration of the hand of God. And again that takes us to this the interpretive key to the whole passage, which is found in verses 27 and in 28, which explains why it is that God moved in the heart of a king, King Artaxerxes, to write this letter to Ezra. This is about the good hand of God, which we read about last week.

His hand is always working, but it's a good hand. And the hand might take you in places that you never dreamed, maybe never even wanted, but the hand of God is a good hand. And it reminds me of this whole language of the hand of the Lord and the heart of the king and the water courses, which really forms the whole message of this passage. It reminds me of a time a little while back I was preaching in the state of Idaho and we were driving through this beautiful farmland, very fruitful farmland, and It was all watered by a vast network of canals and irrigation ditches and things like that. And I was visiting a family there and we were having breakfast and they were telling me about how they water their property.

You could see it all around And they had all these little children. And they would go out, and they would open up the water courses so that water would run in this direction. And they would shut a gate on another ditch or even a canal to redirect the water. And so there was this intelligent design of diverting the water and sending it from one place to another as it was needed. But when you think about what was happening there in that farming community, there had to be a design because water was coming from from somewhere.

So one had to actually rise above this vast network and see how the water was flowing in order to see how it ought to flow on your own property. Because there's a designer. There is a hand at work. And he's determining the water courses and where the water flows. And this passage makes it clear that it is God.

It's God who has designed the flow of the water. It's God who has designed what water will flow at what time and where will it flow. And it's God who designs the hearts of every person in the world. Even kings, He moves hearts of kings because there is a grand designer. There is a hand.

And so in this passage, we see how the hand of the Lord works in the heart of a king, which is like a water course. Every beating heart is governed by the hand of God. So the whole doctrine of the sovereignty of God is communicated here because he does direct the water wherever he wishes and wherever he wishes it to go is good. Wherever he wishes it to go will turn out for his glory. Wherever he wishes it to go at the final end of all things will result in the praise and glory toward God.

Every bad thing, every hard thing, every good thing, every blessed thing, every penny, every deprivation of pennies will all be summed up in Jesus Christ and his power. And so this passage teaches this that God is designing your life as a water course Just like he designed like the King's heart as a water course He is designing your life and maybe you think the design is off course and And may And maybe there's a sense in which that's true, where you need to repent of your sins and return to Him. But be assured that if you repent of your sins and you see it in the course of your life change, it is because God is designing your heart like a water course. He brought you to that sense that you were that you needed to repent and turn to him because he governs all things and you might not like where you are right now but recognize this God will take you where you must go so that all things would stand to praise him you know in this whole testimony we find out that God's people are his jewels and that he loves them and he's carrying them.

And his righteous right hand is upon them. And so that's what we see here. And that's why Ezra 7 ends in this prayer of praise that we should all learn how to pray more and more as the days pass. Now there are three sections in this as you'll see in your outlines. First of all there is the introduction to the letter in verses 11 and 12 and then there is the letter in verses 3 through 26 and and then finally there's Ezra's response in the first person there in verses 27 and 28.

So let's begin to move through this passage of Scripture and see just exactly how the King's heart is like a water course in the hand of the Lord and and how it is that just like the great design of those canals and ditches and and valves that turn the water on and off and move it from one direction to another that he also is the designer of your life and even your heart, even your life is like water in his hand. Okay, so there's the explanation of the letter. Verse 11 is written in Hebrew. Then in verse 12, the language changes to Aramaic, which is the official language of the Persian government and the authorities at that time. Because this is a letter, it's a very personal letter, from King Artaxerxes to Ezra, the scribe.

King Artaxerxes is the son of Ahasuerus. Ahasuerus was the king who married Esther. How did Artaxerxes become king? Artaxerxes became king by killing his father. He was a vicious ruler and yet even the most vicious turns his heart according to the divine command of God.

This is very much like what we read in Romans chapter 13 where God says that he appoints all civil authorities. All authorities come from God. Paul writes this and who is king? Nero, one of the most vicious rulers who ever lived. And so one should never be afraid about the water course and where God is leading it.

He's always leading it for his own glory the problem with us is we're so concerned about our own glory that we don't understand what God is doing and And so this is this letter was written by King Artaxerxes to Ezra the scribe and of course Ezra is identified in the very words here the expert scribe in the law of the god of heaven But there are three things I want us to see in these first two verses. First of all, that the favor that God gave Ezra, favor in high places. God had given grace to Ezra and put him into a personal relationship with the king. The letter that is written to Ezra is a personal letter. And first of all, you don't go to before a king and make requests.

Just anybody can't do that. There are only particular people who can come before the king and make your personal request. And in God's kindness or providence, Ezra was one of those people. He had been given favor, and he was put in this position where he actually had the king's ear. And so it's a very personal letter.

And there are many evidences of the connections that Ezra had, you know, in the civil government there. And he actually was a man who preached the power and the goodness of God to this king. Like if you go to chapter 8 and look at verses 21 and 22 when he when he was before the king he tells us that he was actually ashamed he was ashamed before the king he says he said I was ashamed to request of the king and escort of soldiers and horsemen to help us against the enemy on the road because we had spoken to the king saying the hand of our God is upon all those for good who seek him but his power and his wrath are against all those who forsake him. Ezra is standing before the king and he has already told the king that God's hand is on those who love him and that God will destroy those who hate him. And he's telling this to our deserts.

Can you imagine that? He had preached the gospel of the power of God to care for his people and to destroy the wicked. He had a personal relationship to stand before him and be very frank about the power and the wrath of God against sinners. He preached the gospel of sin and damnation to this king. And so he had these connections by God's providence.

And perhaps these connections came about as a result of what happened in the reign of Ahasuerus when Mordecai desired to destroy the people of God to exterminate them just like the Nazis did in Germany, but he failed and he was and he was hanged on his own gallows and then Mordecai, the Jew, the Jew was put in second command and then there are other evidences that other Jews were put in command of various provinces. We'll read about that later in chapter 8. But what you find here is God has given favor. Now here's the question for us. Where has God given you favor?

Ezra went to cry out for the favor of a king for the people of God. Who do you know? Who has God given you to cry out for favor in behalf of the people of God, to bless the people of God? He's given us all authorities in our lives somewhere, or relationships in one place or another. Why?

Why has he done that? Why do you know the people that you know? Why do you have the job that you have? Why is it that you live in this town? Why are you going to travel to another city in two weeks?

Why? Because God has given you relationships. He's given you. He's sending you in the same way that he sent sent Ezra. Now the second thing I want us to recognize about this letter is this is a different kind of letter than some of the letters that we've already read in the book of Ezra.

This letter stands in sharp contrast to the letter that we read in Ezra chapter 4, where Darius sends a letter to and he orders the people to stop the work and he did it by a letter. Now in this life you're going to receive different kinds of letters and some are heartwarming and some are heartbreaking. Now this happened to be a heartwarming letter but we've seen some heartbreaking letters that have come across as well and God does not always give his people experiences of sweetness and light Sometimes he gives them threatening letters that strike fear in their hearts Sometimes he gives really really bad news that will absolutely dishearten you to the bone At other times he gives you things that are so heartwarming and so blessed, like this letter here. But let's be clear. This isn't the only kind of letter that God sends.

And God did send this letter, which is such a blessing. Which letter was from the hand of the Lord? The slanderous letter from Rahum to Artaxerxes? Not sure if this is the same Artaxerxes. It may be.

It's possible that Rahum sent a letter to Artaxerxes saying, hey, these people aren't going to pay taxes. They're rebellious. You need to shut them down. And guess what Artaxerxes did? He shut them down.

He stole them to stop. They were rebuilding the city. It was long after they were rebuilding the temple of course this is you know around 50 years maybe more after the temple has been built and now they're rebuilding the city. Is it the same Artaxerxes? It might be.

There was Artaxerxes the first and Artaxerxes the second and I'm not sure which one it is but it's quite possible that this same Artaxerxes wrote a really bad letter to shut their work down and then his heart changed and he wrote this letter. It's possible. It may be two different men, but in many ways it doesn't really matter. What matters is that the heart of the king is in the hands of the Lord and he might write a letter to destroy you and he might write a letter to help you. Which one is from the hand of the Lord?

They're both from the hand of the Lord because in this life you're going to get all kinds of different letters. What letters are you responding to now? You know, what kinds of threats are you reacting to? What kind of news have you received? And do you think that maybe only the sweetness and light kind of letters are from the hand of the Lord, but the others aren't?

Well, that's not true because every heart is like a water course in the hand of the Lord and he has designed the flow of the water. He's turning it on and he's turning it off and he's doing it for many, many generations, and he's doing it in your life right now. Your life is nothing but a microcosm of what God is doing in the greatness of his grand scheme to glorify his son, Jesus Christ, and he will use his enemies to praise him in the same way that he did as he used his enemies to crucify his son. They did it out of hatred and malice, but they did it because the heart of all kings and all people is like a water course in the hand of the Lord. So don't forget, don't forget here that you may get various kinds of letters in this life.

I'm very confident that every person in this room is responding to some kind of information they've got. And what do you think of it? And have you reconciled yourself to the fact that all the hearts in all the world are like a water course in the hand of the Lord, designed to help you to know the sweetness of his presence, to wean you from this world, to turn your heart more to his glory and away from your own, so that you might really care for his kingdom and not your own, quite so much. Done quite so much. And then thirdly, out of this whole scene here, we should be comforted in the sovereignty of God over authorities.

And it is God who brings up and takes down empires, and it is God who moves the hearts of all people in the world. And so Here you have this letter here that has much meaning really to all of us. As it turns out, all of the letters that are written will turn out for the beautifying of the temple of God. God wants to beautify your life and so he sends joy, he sends trials. They all fall from above to turn you toward him Because he loves you and so we have to really understand that and so, you know Whatever whatever kinds of letters or information you're responding to now Are all of our prayers should be the same blessed be the Lord God of our fathers who has put such a thing in the heart of the king to beautify the house of the Lord, which is in Jerusalem, and has extended mercy to me.

The question we should always ask is, how is this information designed by Almighty God to beautify my heart to change me to transform me into the image of his son Jesus Christ to continue to refine me as fire to bring me out as gold okay so that's the letter now let's let's move into the actual contents of the letter. The decree is delivered here in verses 13 through 26, and I want to just walk through various observations that exist here in this passage and so the first is that volunteers were sent by the authorities that's verses 13 and 14 and they were what what happens is that the king says that volunteers can come. The king is actually calling for volunteers to come and rebuild the temple or to rebuild Jerusalem and to be a blessing to its city. And it's very much like Psalm chapter 110 verse 3, your people shall be volunteers in the day of your power. This is a picture of God raising up his people.

And this is why Ezra is praying in words of praise by saying, blessed be the God of our fathers who has done such a great thing. So volunteers were sent by the authorities. The second thing is that freewill offerings were given. That's in verses 15 and 16. And these freewill offerings came from the people and the priest.

So there was an upwelling in people's hearts to come and support the building of the people of God. You know, Ezra, Nehemiah are all about rebuilding people's lives. It begins with worship. It continues with the preaching of the Word of God as Ezra was building, rebuilding the people through the preaching of the Word of God. And these upwellings out of a heart of love for God is what makes the work very sweet.

And we're always so thankful when we see such a thing happening, where from the heart, people began to do the things that beautify the Church of God. It's one thing to tell people and assign people to go build up the Church of God, but boy it's a whole another thing. When out of the overflow of a heart of love, of joy. It becomes a labor of love and a work of faith as we see in the Thessalonian church as they turned to God from idols. And then the third thing is that the king exhorts them to be diligent and speedy.

Verse 17, now therefore be careful. The King James says speedily, the ESV says diligent. That's that kind of gives the range of the meaning of this word. Be careful. And he here, actually the king is urging the people to do it speedily and expeditiously and to do it with vigor, to do the work with vigor.

A pagan king is encouraging the people of God to do this. I find that astonishing. This isn't the pastor standing up urging people to go do this. This is the pagans. They're saying, you just ought to do this with all your heart.

And this is particularly important for all of us who are involved in building anything. Everybody's involved in building a family. Everybody who's a Christian is involved in building the people of God. And it really matters, you know, how we do that building. And often we get very comfortable with delay.

We get very comfortable with laziness. And the question that we should all ask is, are the things that the Lord has put in our hands, are they being delayed? Are they being done expeditiously and diligently? You know, this happens in almost every area of life, And it can happen with the way you're schooling your children if you're schooling them at home You can get lazy and you can get really content with delay But what does God put in your hands do it with all your heart do it vigor You know do it as it says here carefully diligently with speed go after it And so I'm here just to say what this pagan king said, go after the work, go do it, do it with all your heart. What's lagging behind?

What are you allowing to be delayed? Don't let it be delayed any longer. And then the fourth thing we see is that purchase was necessary for the items of worship. That's in verses 17. They were given money to buy, and you can see the list here, bulls, rams, lambs, with their grain offerings and their drink offerings to offer them on the altar of the house of God which is in Jerusalem.

And in verse 18 we read, and whatever seems good to you and your brethren to do with the rest of the silver and the gold do it according to the will of your God all of these things had to do with the service in the house of God God was building his people and he would God desired that that the his people would be focused on worship. It is worship that changes your life. You can try anything else in this world to change your life, but there is nothing like worship to change your life. And God was facilitating the worship of God by bringing out, bringing the wealth of the king to purchase the things that were necessary for the worship of God. And so this, God was moving in this king to do something that we should always see in a time of a revival.

And then the fifth thing is that they were given freedom to use the money as the Lord led them. I think this is an astonishing statement in verse 20. You know, whatever you think you need to do, just do it. So there was a tremendous level of trust that the king had in Ezra, and he said, whatever extra you have, spend it any way you think is right, because he was a trustworthy man. He could be given funds and they would be safe with him to be used for the purpose that they were given.

And that's always a question that we have to grapple with, are the things that we have been given being used for the purpose they were given. The money that God gives us is it being used for the purpose that God has given us those resources. Are we deploying our resources in the way that God has designed? Are we just spending our money any way we want? Well we already know that people of God had a real problem with that when they started rebuilding the temple.

They started using their money just to build their paneled houses, and they got distracted. They got off mission because, you know, They lost a sense of why they were being given what they had been given. And that happens to us. We can lose a sense of why we have what we have and begin to squander it and use it just like they were using their resources to build their fancy houses. And then the provisions, look at the provisions that were given, look at verses 21 to 26.

First of all, enormous gifts were given, enormous. And I, even I, Artaxerxes the king, issue a decree to all the treasurers who in the region beyond the river, that whatever Ezra the priest, the scribe of the law of the God of heaven may require of you, let it be done diligently, up to 100 talents of silver, 100 cores of wheat, 100 baths of wine, 100 baths of oil, and salt without prescribed limit. Okay, so it was 7500 pounds of silver, it was 6000 gallons of wheat, it was 850 gallons of oil and 850 gallons of wine. So there were enormous resources that were deployed by the king. And he called upon his treasures in the different provinces, I want you to cough up these resources for these people." Whatever he asks, up to this amount.

And then notice the diligence toward God-ordained worship that is commanded by Artaxerxes. This is another stunning thing to me. Here a pagan king is commanding the people to order their worship according to the word of God. In other words, that God would regulate their worship, that they wouldn't worship their own way, that they wouldn't do their own thing in worship. But this Pagan king actually urges them to do what God has always told them to do.

And he says in verse 23, whatever is commanded by the God of heaven, let it be diligently done for the house of the God of heaven. And he viewed that there would be wrath against him if the people of God didn't do this. And perhaps he saw how God was blessing his people. Again, you know, this brings us back to the overall theme of Ezra and Nehemiah that God is building His church and He wants it to be built in His own way, not in the way of man. And God builds His people through the way that He prescribes, through His worship, through His Word, and through the fellowship of his people and the various means that he has designed.

Whatever is commanded by the God of heaven, do it diligently. How about that? I mean, you don't even have evangelicals saying that today. You know, evangelicals in evangelicalism today, it's kind of do whatever you want you fit the culture you know you know go and meet people's needs you know go out and find out what people want and go do that I mean that's what you hear from evangelicals now you hear this from a pagan king it's in sharp contrast even to the spirit of our own age. But blessing always flows to the people of God when they obey His word and they humble themselves under His mighty hand and They say, speak Lord for your servant is listening.

And they just want to do the things that he wants them to do. They just want to do the stuff that Jesus told them to do. They just want to do those things. And they don't want to go create their own world. They did that.

They don't want to do that anymore. They saw how that was working and didn't work all that well. So, God is keeping his covenant through this king. And then interestingly enough, the third thing you see here is that no taxes were to be exacted from the priests. That's verse 24.

Also, we inform you that it shall not be lawful to impose tax, tribute or custom on any of the priests or Levites, the singers, the gatekeepers, the nethineem, or the servants of this house of God." Now, you know, not taxing the priest was a common practice in ancient cultures. You can see it in Egypt, in Samaria, you can see it among the priests in Babylon, and in Persia they did not have to pay taxes. In Numbers chapter 18 verse 21, you actually learn that taxes were not taken from the priests, they were given to the priests and the Levites. And this has been the pattern among the people of God, that you don't tax the priests. Why is it that the church is tax-free today?

Well, the reason is because of what the Bible says. This is why Constantine in the 4th century AD released the church from taxation. Later on, a thousand years later, English law did the same thing and they released the church from taxation and that's why churches are tax exempt and they have been since 1776 and taxing churches can be a tool in the hand of the wicked to persecute the church and to enfeeble the church. And thankfully, God has maintained this principle even to our own day. And then number four, God had given wisdom to Ezra and it is exalted by our desert seas look at verse verse 25 and you Ezra according to your God-given wisdom set magistrates and judges and judges who may judge all the people who are in the region beyond the river and then he says all such as know the laws of your God and teach those who do not know them.

So what what Artaxerxes does is he acknowledges the wisdom of God that had been given to him to organize and also to teach. So Ezra was an organizer and a teacher. This was his gift that God had given him. You know there are different kinds of people in this world. Some are visionary, some are organizers, some are individual performers, some are salespeople.

Guess what? Ezra was an organizer and he was a teacher. And the king recognized his giftedness in administration and in teaching. And he recognized that the wisdom came from the hand of God. He was like Joseph, where the Lord just gave him significant responsibility because of his significant gifts.

And I think it just should help us to understand how critical it is that we bring all that we are and all that we have before the Lord to put it into his hands so that we might be useful to him, that we would pray about our decisions and our actions, about our relationships, that the Word of God would guide us and that we would be filled with the Holy Spirit in the realm of responsibility that God has given us. And that it would be, there would be no distinction between the spiritual and the secular in our lives. We would see our work as spiritual work and that our kings, our bosses, our authorities would say the hand of God is upon that person. He has been given a gift. It's a divine gift.

That's exactly what Artaxerxes is acknowledging is that Ezra has been given a gift from God. And whether you're a plumber or you're a builder or you're in finance or whatever you are, whatever you're doing, recognize it's a spiritual work. Do everything for the glory of God, whatever your hand gives you to do. And we see that working here in Ezra, it was the Spirit of God that gave him those abilities. And it's the Spirit of God that works in every Christian, And we should recognize that.

And then next, another fascinating thing, punishment will be experienced by those who oppose. Verse 26, and whoever will not observe the law of your God and the law of the king, let judgment be executed speedily on him, whether it be death, number one, that's one kind of punishment, banishment, that's another kind of punishment that the Persians were involved in, confiscation of goods, that's another kind of punishment, and imprisonment. There are all these various classifications of punishments. Now, it's interesting, there's kind of a mix of law and punishment here because the king is urging Ezra to apply the law of God in the civil realm. But it's interesting that the judgments that Artaxerxes prescribes aren't biblical judgments.

The only biblical judgment here is death, because the Bible doesn't prescribe confiscation of goods or imprisonment or banishment. Those are not biblical punishments by the way. You don't find God...this whole idea of imprisonment, God has a different way of dealing with it. It's actually more humane than locking people up in in cages like animals he has he has modes of restitution and actual physical punishment that's what God prescribes so anyway you see this picture of how the law of God is kind of acknowledged but not not really in every possible way but God you know here God is is working to establish his laws in this realm, in the region beyond the river, you know, which is a vast area. And so then we arrive at what I am saying is the heart and the soul of this passage, and it's verses 27 and 28.

And so this is where we find this wonderful prayer. You know, there are different kinds of prayers, aren't there? There are prayers of supplication, there are prayers of intercession, and this is a prayer of thanksgiving. And so in all of our prayers we find a prayer to help us. It's wonderful that there's so many prayers in the Bible.

Well, this is one of them right here to help guide us. You know, prayers can be one of the hardest things. You know, Paul said it, we don't know how to pray. So he gives us his spirit And His Spirit utters words beyond ours. He helps us in our lack of ability to pray because we don't even know what to pray sometimes.

Our minds go blank. They get distracted. They want to adjust the shutters. They hear the dog barking. They want to go get a drink, and we just are so messed up with prayer, you know.

And then when we pray, often it just seems fake, you know, and it might even sound fake, it isn't even really in our voice, it's in our God voice, and we struggle with matters of prayer to be real before God. This is a prayer of the realities of the kindnesses of God that this man had experienced. It's a real prayer. And so here we are, he speaks in the first person. Now I'd like to just work through some of the elements of this prayer.

And the first few words tip us off on the heart of the prayer, blessed be the Lord God of our fathers. Blessed be the Lord God of our fathers blessed be the Lord God of our fathers and the most important element of this text is is the fact of God God who is the source of all things And so these first eight words in verse 27 speak of it, blessed be the Lord God. Now the central figure in this drama of restoring his people and rebuilding people's lives isn't really the people. It's not Ezra. It's not even Artaxerxes.

It's God. It's God who is doing all these things. It's God who rebuilds his people. It's God who puts his hand on people to keep his covenant from one generation to the next. This entire testimony is about the power of God to preserve his people.

Even when they're disobedient, even when they stop to work for 16 years, even when they're confused about things, even when they go off mission, God is faithful. He's going to protect and care for his people. He's going to get them to the end. And you know, you might look back and you say, oh, I messed up this and I messed up that. What am I going to do?

Turn to God, because God is building his church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. And by the way, that really does filter down to the life of the individual Christian. He will hold you fast. He will take you there. But it is God.

It is God who does it. God is keeping His covenant. Did you think that all these good things are happening in your life because of you? No, it's because God is keeping His covenant. And every joy or trial that's been falling from above, all of it has been designed for one single purpose, to demonstrate the power of God's covenant and how he keeps his covenant through everything that happens in this world.

So the most important fact of this passage is God. It's the power of God. And you know, the essence of this text isn't be like Ezra and be really responsible, okay? That's actually not the primary message here. The primary message is look how God moves people by his hand.

And so there's this prayer of thanksgiving toward God for his control over the heart of the king. Now, there are several things I want to point out about this prayer. First of all, it is praise for the longevity of the work of God, and it is thankfulness for the past okay so I want you to think about the past I want you to think about your past because Ezra is thinking about his past and you should think about your past too And your past should always stand in the light of God in your prayers you should in your prayers your past should even actually in some ways past before you and Because the past is always coming back up the to bite us, isn't it, you know And but this is praise for the longevity of God's work. It's thankfulness for the past. He says blessed be the Lord God of our fathers.

He's looking way back. He's looking back to the sins and the victories of the fathers of the past. And I don't know what the sins and the victories of your fathers were or your life or you as a father, but here's what I know is that Ezra was able to look back even in the sins of his people, even the sins that landed them in Babylon, even the sins that caused him to stop working on the house of God for 16 years because of the pressure and because of their idolatrous addiction to their own outward appearances. Even that, he says, blessed be the God of our fathers. He sees God as faithful to his people.

You think about your past. Is that how you look at your past? Do you see how God worked through your past? Or do you just despise it? Well, God holds all of history in his hands, and he's guiding it.

God is moving over the centuries, and don't try to judge what God is doing when you look at a single year of your life. You might say, hey, this was a hard decade. This was a hard year. What was God doing to me? When you look back, we should be like Ezra and look to the past according to the faithfulness of God over the generations.

You know, a couple of weeks ago I was reading a book to Deborah. It was a book that recorded some of Samuel Rutherford's letters to his friends, and Rutherford had some really hard things happen to him. You know, He was one of the Westminster divines. For four years they went to write the Westminster Confession. When he was there, he was very sick and two of his children died during those four years.

He was thrown out of his church for years by the authorities for preaching the gospel. And then, but you know, he says some of the most remarkable things. He said, he looked back and he said, how blind are my adversaries who sent me to a banqueting house, to a house of wine, to the lovely feast of my lovely Lord Jesus, and not to a person or a place of exile." In other words, he's saying, you know, the hard things that happened, they sent me to Jesus. They sent me to a banqueting table and I fed upon him it was my only hope in my banishment that he sent me to a banqueting table they thought they were sending me to prison but my prison wasn't a prison and he says he says my prison is my palace, my sorrow. My sorrow is with child.

It's the child of joy. My losses, my rich losses, and my pain have become my joys. So when you look back at your life, Remember this prayer when you think about your past. You know what's happened to you in the past? Can you see it as God's beautifying work?

Can you see it as His building His church? Can you see it as His driving you to Him? Can you see it as His pushing you to His banqueting table and giving you communion with Him and faith and hope and love and every good thing in this world even though you've been deprived of something precious in this world. You know, it all comes down to this question is God treating you like a son? Like when you look back, do you see yourself as a son who has received the chastisements of the Lord that were meant for your good because he was driving you to himself by driving the world out of you.

The second thing, so there's this praise for longevity of the work of God, thankfulness for the past, okay? He starts with the past, do you get that? Secondly, it's praise for the power of God to move King's hearts, and this is thankfulness for the present. He says, who has put such a thing in this king's heart? That's the present.

So he gives thanks for the past and he gives thanks for the present. And he's looking at the blessings that God has poured out at that moment. And you know, there's, And I think that in our prayers we ought to be very careful to give thanks to everything we possibly can for what's happening in the moment. We often lose sight of God because we can't give thanks for what he is doing in the moment. We are so upset and diverted by what he isn't doing or what he did that was hard.

And so we miss what he actually is doing to care for you, to help you, to uphold you with the right hand of his righteousness. And so, you know, as you consider the day, today, the day of delight, delight yourself in what he actually has done. Can you give thanks to him for what he has given you, what he has taken from you, and what he has deprived you of. Because that also fits into the scheme as well. Often those are the only things we care about, what he took from me, what he withheld from me.

But we have to realize that the King's heart is in the hand of the Lord. Every heart is in the hand of the Lord. Every heart is in the hand of the Lord. Every heart on this earth, every synapse of every brain is governed by Almighty God. And it's God who moves the hearts today to bring many sons to glory.

John Gill, when he comments on Proverbs 2, 21, 1, you know, the king's heart is like a water course in the hand of the Lord, you know, he takes it wherever he wishes. Here's what John Gill says, the Lord can turn the hearts of men as he pleases. They're understanding. They're will. They're affections.

They're in his hands. He can make the understanding light which was darkness. He can turn it from darkness to light. He can take off the stiffness of the will and turn it from its bias and its bent and make it a willing heart to do what's good in the day of his power. He can turn the channel and course of the affections from sinful lusts and pleasures to himself To his son to his truth to his word to his worship to his ordinances to his people And he can take out of the heart what he pleases He can take out ignorance.

He can take out hardness. He can take out enmity. He can take out fear. He can take out his laws. He can give and take of his spirit at any given moment.

He can operate upon it, he says. God moves hearts. And that's why he said, blessed be the God of our fathers as renew God. Number three, praise for how God moves all things to beautify his house. He praised Thanksgiving that God would beautify the house of the Lord, which is in Jerusalem.

This was all about the beautification of his house. We know in the New Covenant in this age since Jesus Christ, the house of the Lord is actually the church and it is actually his people, even corporately and individually. You are the household, you are the house of God. He's beautifying your house. He does everything to beautify his house.

And here Ezra is praying, is praising God for what he has done to beautify his house. We can take that and say, Lord I praise you for what you have done to beautify my house before you, to turn my heart to you. Look what you've done. I praise you, O Lord." That's what he's doing. This is the power of the gospel.

God's house is beautified when a sinner turns to Jesus Christ, repents of his sin, recognizes that it's only the blood of Jesus Christ in which they can have forgiveness. That is, there's nothing but the blood of Jesus. What can wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. And how do you know him?

You repent and you turn from your sins, and you recognize that Jesus Christ is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. And you trust what he said that he is the bread of life, that he is the water of life, that in him was life and the life was the light of men. Well that's what this is all about. It's about God beautifying his house and He takes people who absolutely don't deserve it. There isn't a single person in this room who turned to Christ who deserved any blessing in this world from Christ.

The undeserving become the ones who are served water and wine and bread. Instead of poison, they get sweetness. And so this is really about the power of the gospel and how God moved in the hearts of kings to turn people's attention to him. And then there's praise for the mercy of God. That's the fourth part.

Actually, Ezra seems to now just be making a comment. He says, And has extended mercy to me before the king and his counselors and before all the king's mighty princes." So, Ezra is praising God for his mercy. He says that mercy was extended. I love that part. Extended.

Mercy came from outside of you, from God. Mercy was extended. You know, there are So many places in the New Testament where people are crying out for mercy. You know the woman with the demon-possessed daughter, Oh Lord, Son of David, have mercy on my daughter. The blind men, they cried out and they cried for mercy.

And all those who come to Jesus Christ really have come out of darkness like that demon possessed, like that daughter, and like those blind men. We're blind. And God extends mercy and He opens up His eyes, opens up our eyes. And guess what? He keeps on pouring out His mercy.

His mercies are new every morning. And then there's finally praise for the hand of God. Remember this was all about the hand of God, the invisible hand, always working, always moving, never stopping. And Ezra is just proclaiming that God had encouraged his heart by his hand. So I was encouraged as the hand of the Lord my God was upon me and I gathered the leading men of Israel to go up with me." So this passage of scripture is all about the mighty hand of God, how God has designed all the water courses, He turns the flow of water on and off all your life long, all throughout redemptive history.

He's going to continue to do it. And He moves the hearts of kings, he moves the hearts of every person in the world, he works through the synapses of every brain in the world to glorify himself. Ezra really understood that. I think the New Testament equivalent to this is what Paul said to the Philippians, My God shall supply all of your needs according to his riches and glory. He'll do it in Jesus Christ.

The only thing you really need in this world. And He'll turn the course of the waters to supply all of your needs according to His riches and glory. By the way, it's His riches and it's his glory he's concerned about. And the sooner we learn that, the happier people will be. God is glorifying himself through the hearts of all kings and all people in this world like a water course.

And he's the grand designer. He's designed where the water is going to flow. That water may take you in a place that you never dreamed or never wanted to go, but recognize this, it is God who holds the hearts like a water course. So I pray that today we'll be able to praise God, we'll be able to pray this, it'll come back to our minds, we're going to have a banquet in a minute and We're going to celebrate a baptism about a rescue of a daughter of Zion, a lost girl who became a daughter. And all of it happened because of God.

We'll be able to celebrate that today. Would you pray with me? Lord, we thank you for Ezra to take our hearts in this direction, to lead us out of our own wilderness and into your banqueting table. Lord, I pray that you would give us strength, that all of our trials would become banqueting tables before you. Amen.