In Scott Brown's sermon titled 'The Power and Effectiveness of a Prepared Heart,' the focus is on the biblical figure Ezra from the Book of Ezra, chapter 7. Ezra, a skilled scribe in the law of Moses, is highlighted as a model for believers due to his dedication to seeking, doing, and teaching the law of God. Brown emphasizes the importance of preparing one's heart to seek God and His word. Ezra's story is used to illustrate how God sends individuals like Ezra to revive and recalibrate His people, even when they face challenges and imperfections. The sermon outlines five key aspects of rebuilding one's life and community: knowing one's identity, being skillful in God's word, taking bold action, having the right anointing, and preparing one's heart for the right things. Brown also discusses the significance of God's hand upon Ezra, which symbolizes divine guidance and protection. The sermon encourages believers to emulate Ezra by becoming skilled in God's word, taking initiative, and teaching others, all while being under the influence of God's good hand.

If you would turn in your Bibles to Ezra, chapter 7. Ezra, chapter 7, starting in verse 1. Now after these things, in the reign of Artaxerxes, king of Persia, Ezra, the son of Saraiah, the son of Azariah, the son of Hilkiah, the son of Shalom, the son of Zadok, the son of Ahetub, the son of Amariah, the son of Azariah, the son of Marrioth, the son of Zerahiah, the son of Uzziah, the son of Bukai, the son of Abishua, the son of Phineas, the son of Elisar, the son of Aaron, the chief priest. This Ezra came up from Babylon, and he was a skilled scribe in the law of Moses, which the Lord God of Israel had given. The king granted him all his requests, according to the hand of the Lord his God upon him.

Some of the children of Israel, the priests, the Levites, the singers, the gatekeepers, and the nethahnim came up to Jerusalem in the seventh year of King Artaxerxes, and Ezra came to Jerusalem in the fifth month, which is in the seventh year of the king. On the first day of the first month he began his journey from Babylon, and on the first day of the fifth month he came to Jerusalem, according to the good hand of his God upon him. 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." Please pray. Lord God, we come before you this morning so thankful that we're able to gather together and unite and praise to you, our great King. We thank you, Lord, for this text that we are going to hear preached today and seeing this scribe skilled in your word, coming to teach your word to your people.

And Lord, I pray that it would provoke in each one of us a desire to be like Ezra, to seek to be skilled in your word, to dedicate our hearts to know you through your word but not to be hearers only but to be doers to know and to do your word and then to teach it to others would help that to be the desire of each one of our hearts Be with our Elder as he comes. Give him your spirit and your strength and your power to proclaim your truth, to encourage our hearts, and to draw us close to Christ. In his name we pray, amen. Well, it's a real joy for me to bring this passage of Scripture before us here this morning as we find ourselves appearing into the life of a man who is praying in the Holy Spirit, who was keeping himself in the love of God, who was looking for the mercy of God, who was filling his mind up with the goodness of God, and he's set before us for a reason to help us to understand how we might be like him in that sense. And you can never underestimate the value of a person in the world whose heart is turned toward the Lord.

You know, we live in a world surrounded with people running around like chickens with their heads cut off, frantic and frenetic and changeable and misdirected. And we are often those people, you know, we're often misdirected and distracted from really the things that bring life to life. And it happens so easily in this life as we're chased around by various desires and disappointments and fears and anger and all kinds of things like that. And we're taken away from this way of living that really produces blessing in the world. It brings the love of God into the world.

That brings the truth of God into the world. And there's so many things that seek to distract us from all these things. And I was just thinking this last week, we had a big commotion over at our house. One day, some of my grandchildren were standing out in the chicken pen, and this hawk came swooping down right in front of my grandson started chasing these chickens all over the place. Have you ever seen a hawk run?

Well, they tell me hawks run faster than chickens, and it's a good thing for the hawk. But our lives are often like that. There's so many things biting at our heels. You know, we're told, you know, in Genesis that the devil is going to be biting your heels. But what do you do about it?

How do you grapple with a life that's like that? Well, with Ezra, we really find a person who helps us to understand how we ought to survive in a world with so many difficulties and contradictions, fears and pains in our hearts. What do we do? How do you navigate a world like this? And there's so much here for us in Ezra.

How do you keep a quiet heart but not have a passive heart at the same time? These are questions that are answered here. But I want to give a little bit of a framework for what's happening here in Ezra in terms of the timeline. As you've been tracking with us in Ezra, The temple was completed in 516 BC, and now our text begins in chapter 7 verse 1 with these words, now after these things. When you come to verse 1, you've jumped ahead 56 years from the time that the temple was completed.

And so life has been going on. They've been worshipping the Lord. The revival that they experienced has had an effect. But things still aren't perfect. They really aren't.

And it's like that for our lives God rescues us from so many things, but still things aren't perfect And so God God sends help to his people He sends Ezra to come and help them to kind of recalibrate their lives And this is happening during the reign of Artaxerxes, whom Nehemiah was the cut bearer, and the guy that Ezra married, or Esther married. And So this, you know, between chapters six and seven is the historical context of the book of Esther, when there was this great attack and desired annihilation of the people of God at the hands of those who hated God. And so in the midst of this, God sends a man, and his name is Ezra, and this chapter reveals his identity, his affections, it talks about his behavior and his and his qualifications as a scribe And I think verse 10 is the heart of the whole matter you know for Ezra prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord and to do it and to do it and to teach the statutes and ordinances in Israel. God sends a man like that to come and help his people figure out how they're going to get through these doldrums, these even times of discovery of more disobedience in their lives.

You know we realize when we get to Nehemiah that Nehemiah is hearing these reports of how things aren't really going very well in Jerusalem. Yeah, the temple was rebuilt. It was a revival. There was rejoicing. People listened to the prophets.

But you know what it's like? You know, God saves you and he keeps working on you. He keeps showing you your sin. And so God is sending this man, Ezra, to come and refresh and revive his people. And you know, Zerubbabel and Joshua and Haggai and Zechariah, they're in the grave probably, or they're in their 80s or their 90s.

It's a different season for the people of God. And so now 56 years later after the temple was completed, Ezra the scribe departs from Babylon and he walks for four months to go get back to Jerusalem in order to help prepare his people. There's a timeline here in your outline. I'm not going to go over the timeline in any kind of detail here, but just recognize, you know, this is a testimony of decades of God's working among His people. How many decades has God been working on you?

Well, I've had a few decades of God working on me, and I'm so thankful. But we just have to realize how kind God is. He keeps on working decade after decade in our lives, and he keeps sending us people to come alongside us and help us. So in this whole historical context, there are three primary phases of the rebuilding of God's people that are disclosed here. There's first the rebuilding of the temple under Zerubbabel and Joshua and this whole restoration of worship.

Now with the coming of Ezra, 76 years after the original returnees came, Ezra comes and he is teaching the Word of God. He's rebuilding the people by his Word, okay? Zerubbabel and Joshua rebuilding people through their worship. Now it's the rebuilding of people by the declaration of the Word of God. And then when we get to the book of Nehemiah, where Nehemiah comes to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, it's a disclosure of how God works to protect his people.

How does God work to protect his people by the building of their walls? So you have the worship and the word and the walls. These are the ways that God has always used to build his people and he's doing that with us now he's doing that in your life now if you're a Christian and it's such a blessing to know of God's ways among us these things were given to us as types so that we might look to those types and learn not to be Idolaters like they were that's why this is all there and so we have these these types of temples and walls and and Things like that and so There's so much here for us. You know there's so much here in terms of how you learn what it means to live a life that's really worth living, and how do you live a life that makes a good impact on this world? How do you change the world?

And there's wisdom from heaven here. And God, I think, has designed all this to deliver us from foolish investments of our lives, unprofitable, wrong ideas about this life and how we ought to live it and how we ought to make an impact in the world. And in this case, God sends people. God sends Ezra. God sends someone to speak.

And what does he speak? He speaks the Word of God, the only thing that really changes people's lives anyway. And so if you're going to be a rebuilder or if you're going to be rebuilt then learn from Ezra and you can see in the outline there are five primary categories of how do you do this? How do you rebuild your life? And how do you rebuild other people's lives?

And how do you end up rebuilding the church? First of all, you must know who you are. Ezra knew who he was. He was a priest. He understood his function.

Secondly, you must be skillful. Ezra was skillful in the law of God. Thirdly, you must take action. Ezra took really bold action that he could have lost his head over. Number four, you must have the right anointing, the anointing of the hand of God.

And then number five, you must prepare your heart for the right things. Ezra prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord and to do it and to teach the statutes and the ordinances in Israel. So those are the things that we learned from Ezra that I think they should be very helpful to all of us. So let's take these one by one as we walk through the text. First of all, You must know who you are.

Ezra was a priest and understood his function. You find this in the first five verses of chapter 7. Ezra was a priest and his ancestors were listed. Sixteen of them are listed and you can read this also in 1 Chronicles 6, but his lineage is traced all the way back to Aaron, the brother of Moses. And Ezra is in this long line of men that God used to refine and refresh his people.

People who kept themselves in the love of God, people who were anointed with the Holy Spirit, people who served God in their generations. And what we learned from this genealogy is the people in his lineage, they loved the law of God. And in his lineage are the two most prominent families in the Bible the family of David and the family of Aaron if you want to Say the other most prominent family is is the is the family of Adam but these these are the rebuilders that God sends into the world. And some of the most significant personalities in redemptive history are mentioned here. You have Saraiah, he's the most recent one.

He was a martyr. Nebuchadnezzar killed Saraiah when he destroyed the temple in Babylon in 586 BC. And then you have Hilkiah. Who is Hilkiah? Remember Hilkiah?

Hilkiah was the priest in the days of Josiah when they discovered the law of God. And Josiah is a young man and they rediscovered the book of the law. A revival breaks out, idolatry dies, but Hilkiah is the guy. Can you imagine being this guy? He is the one who brought, He reports to Josiah and he says this I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord and Truth and love is revealed and there's a beautiful expression of the love of God that breaks out in Israel.

And then you have Zadok, he was a priest during David's reign, and then you have Phineas, this is Aaron's grandson. You remember that story of the people were taking Midianite wives, they were rejecting everything God said about marriage and Phineas came in and he put an end to it and the plague and really actually actually by by by putting to death those who are in a couple that had been that were intermarrying and it stopped the plague because the sin of syncretism was abandoned at that time in Israel. Then you have Eliezer, Phineas's father, who served as a high priest right after Aaron died. So you have from Aaron's brother Moses all the way up, this is traced, and I want to give you three applications to the first five verses. First of all, the lineage of the priests here is a shadow of the priests in the New Covenant because God has made us a kingdom of priests.

We're in that same line. You're in the line of Aaron. You're in the line of Hilkiah. You're in the line of Saraiah who was murdered in the temple. We carry on the work of God as priests in the New Covenant.

1 Peter chapter 2 verse 5 says this, you also as living stones are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. We stand in that line. These are our forefathers. They stood for God in their generation, and they're such a blessing. The second application is this, rejoice in God's faithfulness.

God is demonstrating here that he has and he will preserve his people through his servants. Why is this genealogy here? It's not for us to think that Ezra was such a big shot. It's for us to think that how merciful God is to preserve his people. He is so kind.

His ancestry doesn't declare his greatness, it declares God's greatness to sustain his people. How he will never leave you and he will never forsake you. He will walk with you, he will talk with you, he will call you his own. He is your God and he will see you to the end. That song that we've been led in so many times.

I will strengthen thee. I will help thee. I will uphold thee with my righteous right hand. Here's a third application. Let your family be a family where the gospel is preserved, like it was in this family.

This is the power of a heart that is prepared before God, is that the gospel is preserved in that generation. Let your family be the place where the word of God is preserved. God has always preserved his word in various people throughout the ages. Let your family be that family. Let your family be that family where when you walk by the way, when you sit in your house, when you lie down, when you rise up, it's the Word of God that's filling the hearts of the people there.

Make sure that you fill your heart and the hearts of the people with the Word of God. That's what Ezra did and that's what we ought to do. We are his descendants and we ought to do such a thing. Okay, so the first thing, if you're going to be a rebuilder, you must know who you are. You are a priest.

Do you know who you are? Well, maybe you're not. Maybe you haven't turned to the Lord Jesus Christ. Maybe you're opposing, or maybe you actually are opposing, and everybody knows it. There are really two kinds of non-Christians, those who are opposing and those who are opposing.

There's really no difference between the two in God's eyes. Okay, number two, you must be skillful. Ezra was a skilled scribe in the law of Moses. He was an expert in the law of Moses. Verse six, this Ezra came up from Babylon and he was a skilled scribe in the law of Moses, which the Lord God had given Israel, the king granted him all his requests according to the hand of the Lord which was upon him." So he was a skilled scribe, meaning that he was diligent, that he was quick, that he was eager about it.

It doesn't mean that he was able to write fast, you know, and taking notes. Some of you are taking notes. You know, he wasn't a scribe in the way that he just took notes really quick and he got it all down. You know, he wasn't a transcriber. He was a scribe, and this is a person who can take the law of God and expound it with clarity.

His heart was overflowing with the law of God. He kept himself in the love of God by his pursuit of the law of God. He was skilled in it. If you want to be a lover of souls in this world, you must seek and be skillful in the law of God. There is no contradiction between the law of God and the love of God.

They are one and the same. And Ezra was skilled in that. You know, this exact phrase is used in Psalm 45 verse 1 where Asaph says, my heart is overflowing with a good theme. I recite my composition Concerning the king my tongue is the pen of a ready writer a ready writer Someone who is skilled someone who is ready to just overflow with the love of God. He kept himself in the love of God, he loved the mercy of God, and he was praying in the Holy Spirit.

That's what he was doing. And if you want to be useful to God in this world, you must be a skillful scribe. You must be a skillful scribe. You must be a skillful scribe. And I'm gonna give you three applications for this verse.

First of all, you can be skilled in many things in this life. Oh yes you can. Aren't the opportunities marvelous? I'll just have to say there are so many things I would really like to be skilled at. I wish I had like five or ten lives.

I would do a lot of different things. I love so many things that are that are that are laid before us in this world. But make sure that you don't spend your life building your skills in the wrong areas. There are so many things you can do in this life that are lawful but they do not prosper the love of God. Remember when we were in 1st Corinthians 13?

The first few verses of 1st Corinthians 13 can be summed up by this, without love you ain't nothing. And it's skill in the law of God that teaches you how to love and You can find many people in churches who are very skilled at what's happening in the news They're very they're very skilled in their golf score they can recite the details and the performances of all their favorite athletes and their sports team, but they're not all that skilled in the Word of God. They can quote movies, you know, you see children like this, they can quote lines from dozens of movies they've seen, but when they open their mouth, that's what comes out, because they're not skilled in the law of God. They've been honing their skills in the wrong places. You've heard about the person who spends his life climbing a ladder and he finds it's leaning against the wrong wall.

Well that wasn't Ezra, his ladder is leaning against the right wall. Now the second application is this, the first is You can be skilled at many things in this life. Choose wisely. Secondly, skill involves three things, at least three things, in this order of importance in my mind. Skill involves this.

Desire. Well, you had that in Ezra. I mean, he prepared his heart for this. He loved it. Desire, practice, and natural ability or inclination in that order.

Natural ability is at the bottom of the list. Because skill, skill primarily is built through desire and practice. So you can be skilled at many things in this life. And you know, Ezra, the Jewish tradition says that Moses had memorized the entire Pentateuch, but he was skilled in the law of Moses. Just a quick comment for those who've been poisoned by the liberal scholarship.

The Bible says that Moses wrote the law. There weren't five redactors or 50 different editors of the Pentateuch. Moses wrote the law, okay? That's what the Bible says. And here's the third application.

His heart was overflowing. His heart was overflowing with the law of God. Is your heart overflowing with a good theme? Is your tongue the pin of a ready writer and you're just writing the things that you've heard from heaven from the law of God? You know, people like this, they're such a delight to be with.

When you talk to them, what comes out? The Word of God. It's so refreshing. It's so helpful. You just want to be around people like that.

And that's what he was like. Is your heart overflowing with a good theme? You know I can't tell you how many times you know Debra and I've walked up to bed, and I'm moaning and groaning about something you know and My heart is not overflowing with a good theme and just FYI. It's not all that nourishing for your wife when you do that You really you owe it to your wife you owe it to your children to fill your heart with good themes So that you're pouring out the love of God and the mercy of God and the truth of God Just like Nehemiah said the joy of the Lord is your strength. Well, that really can only happen when you're fed from heaven from the inside out.

Okay, Third, you must take action. Not only must you know who you are, you're a priest, not only must you be skillful in the law, third, you must take action. Ezra took action. You know, you learn here in verses 6 through 9, he reached out to the king. He reached out to a pretty bad guy who would take your head off in a heartbeat.

But he did. He went before the king and God had given him a position to appeal to the king. He had a diplomatic and a political relationship there, and God gave him favor. He, I mean, he reached out to the king and asked the king if he could, if he could do this, if he could go back to Jerusalem. Here's what he did.

He didn't sit idly by. He took the initiative. He saw a problem. He took steps to correct. He wasn't passive.

And he requested of the king. So here's some applications. Number one, I'm going to give you two applications. Number one, take action with what you have and multiply it. This is how faithful people operate.

They don't pine away what they don't have. They don't pine away about what's been taken from them. They take what God has given them and they multiply it. And take action with what you have and multiply it for the glory of God. And the question is, are you using everything God has given you for his glory?

Now you might be discouraged about this thing and it's sapping your energy. Well you need to deal with your discouragement so that your energy is not so depleted. We carry around all these disappointments and they really hinder the work of God in our lives. But take action with what you've been given. We've been given so much.

Use everything you have for the glory of God. And the question I want to ask us and the question I'm asking myself is, You know, are any of us being passive in some matter that needs our attention? Are we acting on the things that God has given us to multiply them? Think about what God's given you. We really are a wealthy people in so many ways.

We're rich in relationships. We're rich in the place that we live. We're rich in so many ways. Do you multiply? You have to remember the parable of the talents.

You know, God gives people different deposits, and he expects a return on them. And, you know, hey, one of the most frustrating things that happens in a family is a situation where a father won't act. He won't take action, he won't make changes, he's either blind or he's lazy or he's uncaring or he's discouraged or something, but there, you know, it's, it's really difficult for wives and children when there are things that really need to be paid attention to, but dad is just lazy and passive. He's not multiplying. He's not taking ground.

He's not taking dominion. He's not trying to beautify everything in his way because he's glorifying himself. And remember the parable of the talents. The first application is take action with what you have and multiply it. And don't despise the day of small things.

He has given you more than you think. What is it? Think about it. I would just like to encourage all of us to think about what God's put in our hands today. What does he put in our hands that we can multiply and deploy for his glory?

Number two, second application. Ezra was willing to go and engage in a disruption of his life in order to serve God. He goes to the king, he says, I hear there are bad things going on back in Jerusalem, I want to go back and help. Can I go and would you help me? And the king says yes, but think about the disruption.

He's going to take a four-mile journey, or four-month journey, to get back to Jerusalem. Now, kings can move their armies at the lightning speed of about two months from Babylon to Jerusalem. So I think, you know, with all the people they had in tow and what they were doing and their families, they were making tracks to Jerusalem to get there in four months. And they made their way. And, you know, Ezra was willing to undergo disruption in order to serve God.

A lot of times we're afraid to make changes that need to be made. We're afraid that our little lives will be disrupted. Is there anything in your life that needs to be disrupted? Your patterns? The way you think about things?

The way you're handling your relationships? Is there some need for disruption? Maybe God would give us some holy disruption, you know, as a result of what we learned from Ezra here in this passage. Okay, so the third thing was you must take action. Ezra took bold action.

He put his neck on the line, he made a request, he disrupted his life, and you know what happened? The love of God gets spread all over the place. It's fantastic. Number four, you must have the right anointing. Ezra had God's hand upon him, But it wasn't just a hand.

It was a good hand. God's a good hand. You can see that in verse 6, at the end of verse 6. All of this happened according to... Okay, do you see the language?

You know, all these things happened. Ezra did all these things according to the hand of God he did it because of the hand of God it was the hand of God that was working it was the hand of God that gave him the thought to go to the king it was the hand of God that made the king say go and I'm gonna give you a lot of resources to make it happen It was the hand of God that made the king say, go and I'm going to give you a lot of resources to make it happen. It was the hand of God that protected him from marauders and bandits along the way and got them successfully home. It was God that made it all happen. It was the hand of God.

And this phrase, the hand of God, is mentioned three times in this chapter. It's mentioned three times in the next chapter. And it's also mentioned in Nehemiah. Because it really is the key to all good work in your life that the hand of God is resting upon you that You have an anointing from heaven and God is clearing the way for you This is how God's work gets done doesn't get done by us It gets done by him and his and his anointing And this kind of imagery is used just to explain God's tender care for his people. And there are various illustrations of this in Scripture.

We've encountered them, you know, in recent months in the expositions of Scripture. You know, we've read about the eye of the Lord. We've read about the arm of the Lord. And now we learn about the hand of the Lord. I mean, you can read about the feathers of the Lord covering you up.

I mean, there's so many ways that this whole idea is expressed, but this is why Ezra did what he did. He did it according to the hand of God that was upon him. God compelled him and God protected him along the way. And Ezra realized it was God who did all that for him. And so there's God's hand of blessing and he was anointed to do a particular work.

And you need to ask yourself, what work has God anointed me to do? Where is the hand of God upon my life? Is the hand of God upon your life? Or are you just like a chicken running around with your head cut off And you don't really have a sense of God's hand upon your life. The only thing that you care about is that fast-running hawk that's chasing you down.

And so you can hardly even think, but you need to recognize that if you're a Christian, the hand of God is the anointing that you need. And it's a mark of God's presence and it's a mark of God's providence. When you have a sense that the hand of God is upon you. You have a very sweet and settled sense about life. But if you don't, you'll have a frenetic life like a chicken running around with his head cut off.

We give you three applications here of this whole idea of the hand of God. First of all, pray that God's hand would rest upon you. We don't want to go through life without the hand of God on our lives. You know, I love the way that David speaks of it in Psalm 39, you hem me in behind and before you've laid your hand upon me. Where can I go from your spirit?

Does anyone want to live any differently than that? The hand of blessing is the most comforting and empowering thing that a human being can ever experience. Do you know it? Do you in your heart feel his hand upon you? You have all these mixed metaphors, don't you?

Do you feel his eye upon you? Do you feel his hand upon you? Do you feel the strength of his arm, you know, the arm of his strength, of his righteousness? Second application. Are we a people upon whom the hand of God rests?

It's a legitimate question for us to ask. Do we have a sense of it? Because we are keeping ourselves in the love of God, because we are seeking Him with all of our hearts. There's a sense that we have the hand of God upon us. Does it grieve you How often you've just sort of lost touch with of the presence of God You know, how often does that happen every day?

I don't know how many times it happens a day to me, but Do you want it? Do you Do you want to lose a sense of the hand of God? No, you don't. You want His hand upon you. You want to know that He's hemmed you in behind Him before.

You want to know that He's with you, And he's strengthening you and protecting you and he's upholding you with the right hand of his righteousness Third application Examine what you think of his hand What do you think of his hand? Like when you think of God's hand upon you, how do you think about it? Well, we're given a word here to help us to think about what it's like. Here the Lord is revealing to him, to us, what it's like to have his hand on your head. Do you know where I'm going with this?

It's a good hand. It's his good hand. His hand is so beneficial and so good. It is the good hand of God. Number five, you must prepare your heart for the right things.

Now we get here to verse 10. I think this is the heart of the passage I've been trying to race to get here because I think this really does sum up everything that we've already read. It brings it all together in one simple verse. For Ezra had prepared his heart. That's the first thing.

For what? To seek the law of the Lord, number one, and to do it, and to teach the statutes and the ordinances in Israel. That's what he did. And if you want to be a part of rebuilding the people of God, this church, people's lives, your own life, then you must prepare your heart for the right things. Prepare your heart for the things that actually bring benefit.

The benefit of the kingdom of heaven, that bring the love of God into the world, that transmit the mercies of God and the goodness of God in the world. It happens this way. Isn't that weird? You know, God does this with people. He takes people like you and like me.

It's really scandalous that God would do something like this, that He would take people like us and he would actually put us in the world to do this kind of thing. It's exalted and beautiful work. It's the most beneficial work in the world. And he's appointed his church to do this work here. And it begins with the heart, doesn't it?

Because Christianity doesn't start on the outside and work inside. True Christianity starts on the inside and it works out. And that's what we see here. That's why we read, for Ezra prepared his heart. The heart of the matter was the matter of his heart.

And so here, I mean, we're brought to this place in this passage, and We should all just be examining our hearts and weighing our hearts, sounding the depths of what's in our hearts. We know what's in our hearts. The Bible tells us so. Our hearts are desperately wicked. Who can know it?

And we need his work in our hearts. And so to prepare a heart is what I think is the absolute center of this whole testimony in chapter seven. You know, what does it mean to have a prepared heart? How do you have a prepared heart? And this is what was happening with Ezra.

To have a prepared heart is to set the heart in order. Set the heart in order. And This indicates the priorities of Ezra. His priority was the condition of his heart. There were things that happened as a result of his heart.

He applied his heart in all the other three areas that we read here. But it was his heart that was his preoccupation. Now, you know, we're tempted to start on the outside and hope it'll affect the inside. That never works. It's got to start on the inside, and then it begins to manifest itself on the outside.

And this terminology means to set in order, and it's also used in a negative sense in Psalm 78, that great Psalm. The longest Psalm other than Psalm 119 in the Bible is Psalm 78, and it speaks of the whole history of Israel. It starts really talking with fathers and how they ought to teach their children the great deeds of God But then he turns and he says but your forefathers they didn't do that. They didn't set their hearts a right That's the phrase so it's used in a negative sense I mean you can set your heart aright or you cannot set your heart aright. You know as as we're going through this now we should be asking is my heart set aright?

Is your heart set aright? Really is it? And because there are times in the history of God's people where their hearts were not set at set aright and so David in Psalm 70 says and main and don't be like their fathers a stubborn and rebellious generation a generation that did not set its heart aright in whose spirit was not faithful to God. And so in Psalm 78, David is saying, don't be like that, but be like this. And he says, he says, I'll open my mouth in a parable.

I'll utter dark sayings of old. You know, you fathers declare, declare the great deeds of God to your children. Tell them how mighty God is. Tell them how great God is. You know, you have got to teach your children the greatness of God because there is going to come a time where there is there is a great calamity and trial in their life And if they don't have a great vision of God their calamity will overcome them They have to see God greater than all calamities all potential problems all Bad news They have got to see God is greater than all of that.

Or they won't have any hope. They won't be able to get through the difficulties. Your children are going to face some hard things in the future probably. God will ordain it. But do they have the internal resources?

Do they know God? When you have a little God, you have big problems. When you have a big God, you have little problems. And so Moses, or I'm sorry, David in Psalm 78 is speaking of this whole thing here. And Ezra set his, he did set his heart, or he did prepare his heart in the language of the New King James.

But Ezra's primary motivational factor was his heart and its relationship to the Word of God. Those are the two things. It's simple, isn't it? God gives us a very simple life in a lot of ways. And This is what drove him.

This is what motivated him. This was the fuel of the fire in his life. We always have these problems of trying to create this designer life. We try to create this great and wonderful marvelous life, but really if that life hasn't really arisen out of the Word of God isn't worth anything. We build our life out of the Word of God.

We build it out of the love of God. We build it out of praying and the Holy Spirit and it's his life that's manifested. And that's the power of the gospel in a person's life. And so we have to ask, what areas in my life are an expression of that center? But what areas of my life are not an expression of the centrality of the Word of God.

You know, we're a people that really only have one hope in this world, God and His Word. That's what we rely on. The world doesn't appreciate it, But our lives are designed to be an outgrowth of these things. It keeps us from kind of living on the fly. You know what I'm talking about?

Where you're just bouncing around. You know, the hawk lands and he starts running and you're going to run too. You know, but you have no sense of equilibrium in your life. So he sought it with his heart. That's the critical matter here.

He had a heart to seek the law of the Lord. And there are three verbs that are in verse 10 that explain how he applied his heart. Okay? All three of them, all three of these areas were motivated by his heart. Examine your heart, fill your heart, nourish your heart in the love of God so that you have that, you have a true heart as the motivation for everything that you do and he because of his heart he sought and he did and he taught or he pursued he perfected and he proclaimed that's what he did and it But it all came out of his heart.

You know when it says that he was seeking the law of God, that means that he was seeking God. It was God, and God reveals himself in his word. And so his heart really, though the language here says it was the law of God, he was seeking God because the law of God has come from God himself. And he sought it out. Now there's a kind of learning of the law of God that's contrary to this.

The Pharisees had this. Woe to you Pharisees, hypocrites. You pay tithe and net, but you strain out a net and you swallow a camel. You know, you tell people to do things, but you don't do them yourselves. And so there's a way that you can learn That's opposite to the way that Ezra was learning.

Ezra had a true heart before the Lord. He wanted to put it all into practice with all of his heart. Did he do it perfectly? No, I doubt if he did. But his heart definitely was inclined in that direction.

Ezra was real and he wanted God. And so he also, not only did he want to pursue it or study it or seek it, he also had a heart to obey it. He applied the Word of God. When he heard the Word of God, he did something about it. He wasn't just a hearer of the Word, but he was a doer of the Word.

He had an obedient will. And when he heard something from the Word of God, He wanted to try to figure out how he could obey it, how he could put it into practice, because he, like all of us here, we haven't quite arrived in obedience to everything that we know about God and what he wants us to do. But he had a heart to obey it, to study it. It was laboring. You know, the same word for labor or study is the same word that Noah used in the building of the ark and that Jacob used in Jacob building his house and the building of the tabernacle.

It was a building kind of a word. It's something that there was energy that was invested in it. Here's what I want us to realize. Here's an application. Ezra didn't let go and let God.

Ezra pursued the law of God. He went after it. It was like building a house. He got his materials together and he put it in and it was sweat and it was time and he and he built something of value on the foundation of the word of God. So it's not for Christians to sort of let go and let God and just sort of float through the world.

We must pursue, you know, Solomon said, get wisdom, get understanding, go get it. You know, it's kind of like, you know, it's like mining for gold. Gold doesn't strike you. You strike gold, right? I mean, that's how it works.

And it, and it, our energy level matters. And we always have to ask, you know, are we in the mind to strike gold? Are we digging and digging in order to strike the gold? Or are we just kind of hanging on the outside of the cave waiting for the gold to strike us? Well, it isn't going to happen.

It's got to be pursued. He pursued the law of God from his heart. He wasn't doing it for outward show at all. And then finally, he taught the law of God to teach the statutes and the ordinances in Israel. So he had a life to communicate the Word of God.

By the way, I'm sure when you think about it for a while you'll think about how often it is that God in the New Covenant era commands his people to go out and preach the gospel, to go out and baptize and teach them to obey all that I've commanded. This is what New Testament preachers supposed to be doing. We're supposed to be teaching. Ezra was a very special kind of teacher that God used to stimulate his people and bring reformation, but God God uses his priests in the same way in the New Covenant era. In one sense, all are teachers.

Women are teachers, men are teachers in some particular way, and children ought to be teachers as well, just like Josiah was as a young boy king, who centered the whole kingdom on the Word of God. And so he taught the Word of God. He had a testifying kind of a life. And Paul said to Timothy, entrust these things to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. That's the discipleship community that the people of God is designed to be.

We are a teaching community and I pray that today, you know, when we're done and we are eating lunch together, that people are teaching one another. And yes, the littlest child is teaching that the men and the women and the young girls and the young boys, they're teaching one another, they're speaking to one another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in their hearts to the Lord, teaching one another. You know, when we sing, it's actually a form of teaching. The singing is one way that we teach each other. When we sing it out, when we lift our voices and before the Lord we're actually teaching each other.

Worship isn't just with you and God alone. Do you understand that? When you sing, it's not just for an audience of one, because in singing, you're teaching one another. We have a rich teaching ministry that God's given us. And as we celebrate the Sabbath, it should be a day where there's more teaching that gets poured out on our hearts than any other day of the week.

God desires that we set aside a day to delight in all of His instruction, to speak of it and to glorify it and to rejoice in it and to give thanks for the power of God in His word in our lives. So let's make today a time where we're teaching each other, you know. It was real in his heart when Ezra taught it. To teach, to teach, that word is really critical. It means to goad, to exhort, to move forward, to prod.

In other words, that's what we're supposed to do with each other, to sort of goad one another, to prod one another, to love in good deeds. And we do it by teaching one another because we are a kingdom of priests that have been given the treasures of the kingdom of heaven. And we have so much to give, but if we just hold it in, what benefit is it at all? Well, Ezra was a reformer and he taught the statutes and the ordinances. Most likely these two words, statutes and ordinances, refer to two particular parts of the law of God.

The statutes most likely refer to the laws of God itself, the Ten commandments. The ordinances most likely refer to the case law, the applications of the law. If you read through Deuteronomy and Exodus and Leviticus, you'll see a number of expressions of the case law. You know, what do you do in this situation when someone steals somebody's animal? Well, there's case law.

Here's what you do. If somebody murders someone, what do you do? So there's case law in all manner of situations of rape and various classifications of immorality and things like that. That's the case law. So what Ezra was doing, he was teaching the fundamental principles of the law that are summed up in the Ten Commandments, which is summed up in one word, L-O-V-E.

He was teaching that, and he was teaching how to apply the law of God. That's what Ezra was doing. And he was teaching the statutes and the ordinances of Israel. The way you ought to think about things and then what you ought to do about things. That's the difference between statutes and ordinances.

Okay, my grandchildren are asking me, grandpa, what are statutes and ordinances? Well, I just explained it right there. We'll talk about it at lunch. So here's some applications. We've seen how God uses a priest to rebuild people's lives.

Would we be priests like that? Like this right here. This has given us as a shadow to help us to understand. And in order to do that, we need to know who we are. And we need to be skillful in the law of Moses, and we must take action, like Ezra did, and we must have the right anointing.

And we must prepare our hearts. That's how we become effective priests in God's kingdom until he comes again. Second application, I think we should rejoice. I have been thinking back about how many helps and teachers I've received over the last over 40 years when I first turned to the Lord. I mean, I was going back just this morning thinking about the different preachers and brothers and sisters that God has sent me to help.

Just like Ezra, God sends people into your life to take you on to the next place in your journey. And you don't want to despise those who God sends you at a particular time in your journey. I look back very fondly at the things that God brought to me by men who were trying to work out their salvation in fear and trembling. So make today a day of giving thanks. God sends us teachers so that we're not driven and tossed by the wind.

He gives us people who will equip the saints for the work of the ministry. He gives us people to help direct our lives. And Ezra was that kind of man. And hey, God has sent you preachers and prophets and priests and counselors and husbands and wives and even children to direct you and help you. And it's a blessing.

Give thanks. Let today be a day of thanksgiving for all those that have helped you along the way. You know, there's really a command in the book of Hebrews about this in Hebrews chapter 13. In Hebrews 13, the writer is just reminding the reader, I will never leave you or forsake you, and so that you'll boldly say, the Lord is my helper. I will not fear.

What can man do to me? He says that, and then He says, hey, remember those who rule over you, who have spoken the word of God to you, whose faith follow, considering the outcome of their conduct. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Why was he saying that? He was reminding the people that God has never left them, he's never forsaken them.

He has sent teachers, He has sent people to speak the word of God, and he says, follow them. Consider the outcome of their conduct. In other words, consider the fruit of their lives, and consider what fruit you might bear. That's the whole matter. So, rejoice that God sends teachers.

Thirdly, here's the third application, hey rejoice that God sends a way of living. There's a way of living here that's so wonderful, it's superior to living on your own. God doesn't just send us help, he also sends us men who will provide an example, a way of living. There's a whole way of living here in this passage of Scripture. To prepare your heart to seek the law of the Lord and to do it and to teach the statutes and the ordinances in Israel.

You know, he gives you a way of living. You know, every husband, every wife, every father, every mother needs to recognize God has given a way of living to bring out of the family. You know, every person here has a way of living. And it's such a wonderful thing. Every person is given a center from which to operate.

God has given you a center of life that you build your life out of. It's a treasure. And you can know it's eternal in the heavens and you're never wasting your time when you devote yourself to it. And so rejoice that God has given you a way of living. And Jesus Christ actually continued to speak of it.

He told his disciples to go out and preach the gospel and to teach all men to obey what he has commanded. Number four, are you real? Ezra was real. It was in his heart. It worked every day of his life because it was in his heart.

What's the condition of your heart? Number five. Seek the law of the Lord. Seek the law of the Lord. Seek the law of the Lord.

This might be really important to some of you. It's good from time to time to identify the areas of ignorance that you have. Ignorance of the law of God. Areas that are lacking, You know, build up the things that are lacking. I just want to challenge everybody that's listening to consider what they lack and then go after it.

Get wisdom, get understanding. Gold is not going to strike you. You've got to strike the gold. What are you lacking? Make a list.

Maybe get a prayerfully, you know, correct the lack that you might have. You know, is there scripture that you need to memorize? Are there books of the Bible that you really are clueless about? You know, God would have you understand the whole counsel of his will from Genesis to Revelation. Do you, Like, can you tell me what Genesis is about or Exodus is about or Zechariah or Haggai is about?

Well, you know, we need to understand the whole counsel of God so that our hearts are overflowing with the good theme, so that our hearts are overflowing with the good theme, so that our hearts are overflowing with the love of God, that we have the hand of God upon our lives. But how do you prepare your heart? How do you prepare your heart? Well, first of all, you must be born again. You must be born again in order to prepare your heart.

It will do no good to try to Prepare your heart if you've not been born again. If you haven't come face to face, that you're a sinner, that you're desperately, hopelessly lost without the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ. There's no hope at all for you to turn your life around unless you are born again. You must be born again. Repent and believe in the gospel.

Believe that Jesus Christ was sent as a substitute for your sins. He will save the repentance center. And He'll wash you. And He'll clothe you and He'll put you in your right mind and then you'll be able to prepare your heart like you never could before and it will be real and it'll bear fruit. Once you've made peace with God and he with you through repentance and faith from the heart, then you can begin to prepare your heart.

So how do you prepare your heart? And I'm going to give you just a few things very quickly here. You must make God and His Word your only hope. You must make God and His Word your only hope. David said, for I put my hope in your word.

That's why Solomon said, above all else, guard your heart, for it's the wellspring of life. It's why Moses said, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart. It's why Moses said to the fathers of Israel, these things shall be in your heart. It's why Moses said in Deuteronomy chapter 5, oh that they had such a heart within them that they might fear me and keep all my commandments, that it might be well with them and with their children forever. You have to recognize that God's Word is your only hope.

Do you have any other hope in this world? Where do you turn for help? Turn to God and His Word. And that has to do with placing your trust in his word. You know Solomon said, trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.

In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your path straight. You know you might have a confusing situation in your life but let me tell you something, He will make your path straight if you keep your mind stayed on the. He will keep them in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on the. This is the most difficult thing in time of trial is to keep our mind stayed on him. We get our minds so fixated on our problems and our future and our past and all the trouble that we lose all of our peace and we're like chickens with our heads cut off running around the chicken yard afraid of everything.

Prepare your soul like David did, for I have stilled and quieted my soul like a weaned child is my heart within me. Open your ears like Samuel did, who said, Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening. Open your eyes like David did when he said, Open my eyes that I might observe wondrous things from your law. Meditate in your heart like Paul instructed. Let the word of Christ dwell richly within you.

Seek him all day long. Seek him in the morning. Seek him when you go to bed. Seek him in the night watches. Say in your heart, let me hear thy loving kindness in the morning, for I trust in thee.

Teach me the way in which I should go, for unto thee I lift up my soul. His mercies are new every morning. That's what the weeping prophet said. He needed mercy every morning. Cry out to him in the morning and the night.

Cry out to him three times a day like Daniel. Cry out to him seven times a day like the priest did in the tabernacle. Pray that God would raise us up as people like that who seek Him all day to be a kingdom of priests, to be a picture of what a true Christian is. You know this was the Lord Jesus Christ. Remember when we were in Isaiah 50?

I'll close with this illustration the Lord Jesus Christ looked to his father for everything and In chapter 50 of Isaiah we read The Lord God has given me the tongue of the learned that I should know how to speak a word in season to him who is weary. He awakens me morning by morning. He awakens my ear to hear as the ear of the learned. The Lord God has opened my ear and I was not rebellious nor did I turn away this is how Jesus Christ related to his father He had the tongue of the learned. He took what he received from God and he spoke the words of God in the world.

And what was he speaking? He spoke a word in season to the weary. This is perhaps one of the greatest things a Christian can do in the world is to speak a word to the weary. Maybe it's the person who's weary of their sins and they need to be washed in the blood of Jesus Christ and be cleansed forever. Or maybe it's a Christian who's become fitful and worried about things or not thinking right, and they need a word for their weariness.

And God has given us this role in the world to be dispensers of the love of God that's in Jesus Christ, to be filled with the Holy Spirit and to do his work in the world. And the Lord has given us this ministry. We're not peddling the Word of God, but we're bringing words of everlasting life. And so God uses this man, Ezra, he prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord and to do it and to teach the statutes and the ordinances in Israel. Now, that's the kind of priest that all of us need to be.

And I pray that God would raise us up as such priests in this community. What a blessing it would be. Would you pray with me? Oh Lord, we thank you for your faithfulness in sending your messengers century after century. You send prophets rising up early.

You send them to us in the day and in the night. You send them to us in the night watches. Oh Lord, we pray that you would make us more like Ezra and less like ourselves. That we would know who we are and our hearts would be so prepared to do all these things that are so beneficial in the world. And Father, we can't even think of this without thinking of your Son, of how he has done the very same thing for us, how he's reached out to us with your word and saved us.

Amen. Well, if you want to hear more about the story of the Lord, you can go to the book of Acts Thank you.