The sermon, 'Hope in the Midst of Ruin' by Scott Brown, delves into the first chapter of Ezra, highlighting the pivotal role of King Cyrus of Persia in fulfilling God's promise to restore the Israelites. The sermon emphasizes the themes of hope, revival, and spiritual renewal, drawing parallels between the historical events in Ezra and the personal spiritual journeys of believers. It narrates the return of the Israelites from Babylonian captivity, the challenges they face, and the importance of rebuilding the altar and temple in Jerusalem as a symbol of renewed worship and obedience to God's word. The sermon underscores the continuous presence of God even in seemingly hopeless situations and the transformative power of surrendering to His will. Through the journey of the Israelites, the sermon illustrates the concept of history as a theater for redemption, where God's purpose and glory are fulfilled through the lives of His people.

I'll be reading the full first chapter of Ezra. Now in the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and also put it in writing, saying, Thus says Cyrus, king of Persia, all the kingdoms of the earth the Lord God of heaven has given me, And he has commanded me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Who is among you of all his people? May his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the house of the Lord God of Israel. He is God, which is in Jerusalem.

And whoever is left in any place where he dwells, let the men of his place help him with silver and gold, with goods and livestock, besides the freewill offerings for the house of God which is in Jerusalem. Then the heads of the fathers' houses of Judah and Benjamin, and the priests and the Levites, which all whose spirits God had moved, arose to go up and build the house of the Lord which is in Jerusalem. And all those who were around them encouraged them with articles of silver and gold, with goods and livestock, and with precious things, besides all that was willingly offered. King Cyrus also brought out the articles of the house of the Lord which Nebuchadnezzar had taken from Jerusalem and put in the temple of his gods. And Cyrus, king of Persia, brought them out by the hand of Mithridath the treasurer and counted them out to Shesh Bazar, the Prince of Judah.

This is the number of them, 30 gold platters, 1, 000 silver platters, 29 knives, 30 gold basins, 410 silver basins of similar kind, and 1, 000 other articles. All the articles of gold and silver were 5, 400. All these Shesh Bazaar took with the captives who were brought from Babylon to Jerusalem. Please join me in prayer. Oh Father, your mercy endures forever.

Lord, who can stand before you without your forgiveness? Lord, we humble ourselves and ask that you would give us reverent hearts before your word as we hear it. I pray Lord that you and empower the speaker who expounds with your spirit and also give us your spirit Lord to hear and to worship you. We pray this in Jesus name, amen. This morning I have the great privilege of bringing you the comfort of the Scriptures in this introduction of Ezra.

We're beginning a journey of Ezra and Nehemiah. And today I want to give us a sense of the flow of this comfort that's here in Ezra and then in Nehemiah. And Ezra is a story of returning home. The people of God had been captives in Babylon for 70 years. They had no hope.

They had no hope. They had no money. They had no help. They had nothing to look to in order to help them to find deliverance from the bondage that they had found themselves in. We also have to recognize that after 70 years, most of the people who were in Babylon, they didn't get there because of their own sins.

They got there because of their parents' sins. After 70 years, almost all of the original ones who had been deported for their sins had died. And so you had the children who were actual, in one way they were victims of their parents' sins. They were a victim of someone else's lapses. And even Zerubbabel, who led the first wave back, was born in Babylon.

And he got there as a result of the sins of his people, which often happens to people who name the name of the Lord. You know, Over a hundred years before, the prophet Isaiah warned Judah that if they did not turn and worship in spirit and in truth, then God would punish them severely by taking them to Babylon and But they did not return and they did they they continued to break his Sabbaths, which was Perhaps the primary reason for their being taken into slavery in Babylon because they refused to obey the Sabbaths. Jeremiah makes that very, very clear. They didn't turn to the discipline of the Lord. And so Nebuchadnezzar came in like a flood in 586 BC and he conquered Babylon and he took Daniel and many others to Babylon.

And Now this 70 years is coming to a close and God is restoring his people. And these people who have no money, they have no help, there is nothing on the horizon. They're rescued by God. And Ezra brings us one of the many examples in Scripture where there's hope in the midst of ruin. And it's true that really every trend line in history, every trend line in the Bible, there are always two things happening, always.

And there are so many examples just like Ezra in Nehemiah where God takes an absolutely hopeless situation with people that have no money, they have no resources, they have no help, they have no hope, they have nothing on the horizon at all. And God is working. And God is always doing two things in every single thing that ever happens in the world. Number one, he's bringing many sons to glory. And number two, he's destroying the works of the devil.

Bringing everything to be summed up in Jesus Christ, everything, every single thing that happens in this world is being done so that God in his infinite wisdom will sum up everything in Jesus Christ. We know it's true. The Apostle Paul said it this way, all things work together for good for those who love God and are the called according to his purpose. It's really reserved for the called. It won't go well for the uncalled.

It won't go well for those who hate God, but it will go well for those who do. It absolutely will. And Ezra and Nehemiah stand as another one of those dramatic testimonies that God is causing all things together to work for good. He is bringing you home. He's engaged you in a time of history, your history, in which he's bringing his people home.

And even when there's ruin, even when that ruin wasn't your cause, God is bringing many sons to glory. And this is true of everything. And I think as we begin Ezra-Nehemiah, as we dive into this moment in history, this 100-year period, We're going to look at about 100 years of history from the time of as from Zerubbabel in the rebuilding of the temple to the rebuilding of the wall by Nehemiah. We're only going to look at this slice, But this slice in history is a pattern. This slice in history is a type.

It's a type of your life. You may not live a hundred years. You may. But we're going to look at a slice of life in the history of a people who had no hope, who had been ruined by sin. And it shows us that all of History is a theater for redemption.

You're always somewhere on the stage of the redemptive theater. And all of us who are here together now are on a stage. We're on the stage of the theater of God. And in his theater he's bringing many sons to glory and he's destroying the works of the devil and he's summing up everything in Jesus Christ. And He's using history, he's using every person, every political movement, he's using every place in the world to glorify himself.

And that's why the hymn writer said like this, Every joy or trial falleth from above, traced upon the dial by the Son of Love." Where are you on the dial of the Son of Love? Because everybody is in some place on the dial as the dial is moving throughout history. And there you are. You're there in this moment in history. And God is bringing many sons to glory.

And your situation might be just like the situation that Zerubbabel faced, hopeless. Without money, without help, nothing on the horizon at all, and you're stuck and you've been stuck there for a long time, in this case 70 years. God uses every moment in history in that way. You know, he used a garden that way, he used a flood that way, He used slavery in Egypt that way. He used the parting of the Red Sea that way.

He used the wanderings in the desert that way. And He used the time of Ezra and Nehemiah that way. And he's using your moment that way, right now, this very moment. Your moment is traced upon the dial by the Son of Love. And so as we look into this 100-year slice of history, perhaps the span of your own life, consider the power of God.

And here's what And here's what I want everyone to understand, that if you are the called according to his purpose, Then you're caught up in a story. You're caught up in a theater. And the story will end beautifully. You need to know that. Because it's a story that's governed by the Creator of the universe.

By a God who is all wise, who is all loving, and who is all powerful. He's the shepherd. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside the quiet waters.

He restores. He restores. He restores my soul. And so this is the sweep of the message of Ezra and Nehemiah that God is glorifying Himself in this theater of history. And He's glorifying Himself in the lives of the people who are coming home and who have hope in the midst of the ruin of their lives.

And it really is, It's a picture of your life and it's a picture of mine. And I don't want us to miss that as we go through these coming weeks in Ezra and Nehemiah. This is a story of their lives that tells the story of your life and my life. And so there's a lot to learn there. You know, in an introductory message like this, it's difficult to know exactly how to focus.

But my mind has been so much on Ezra's prayer in chapter 9. Go ahead and turn there. There are certain phrases in this prayer that are so helpful, so comforting. Ezra 9 Verse 8, And now for a little while grace has been shown from the Lord our God. Grace has been shown from the Lord our God.

You can count on that in the time of your ruin yet being restored. Grace has been shown from the Lord our God to leave us a remnant to escape and give us a peg in His holy place. That our God may enlighten our eyes, and I love this phrase, look at it carefully, and give us a measure of revival in our bondage. And give us a measure of revival in our bondage. God is always reviving in the midst of your bondage.

He's never done. He'll never be done until you reach heaven. Give us a measure of revival in our bondage. He says, for we were slaves, and then he says, yet our God did not forsake us in our bondage, but he extended mercy to us in the sight of the kings of Persia to revive us, to repair the house of our God, to rebuild its ruins, and to give us a wall in Judah and Jerusalem. Did you notice the things that God was doing?

He was rebuilding. And as we'll see going through this, what does he first rebuild? An altar. An altar. And then he rebuilds a temple.

And then he rebuilds your walls. That's the progression of God's redemption. So let's talk about the authorship and the literary features of this book. You could have an outline in front of you where you'll see the progress of what I would like to try to communicate this morning. But first of all, authorship, Ezra wrote the book of Ezra, Ezra wrote the book of Nehemiah, and probably Ezra wrote the books of 1st and 2nd Chronicles.

Ezra and Nehemiah are now separated in your Bibles, but they haven't always been separated. Before the third century BC, they were together, and they were called First Ezra and Second Ezra. Instead of Ezra and Nehemiah, they were called first Ezra and second Ezra. So Nehemiah is really just part of the same story that Ezra begins. And so we should see them as a unity and we're going to treat them as a unity as we preach through them.

We're going to do Ezra and then Nehemiah in sequence because they really do go together. You'll find remarkable features in this book, in these books. In chapter one, there's going to be a decree of a king, Cyrus. In chapter four, there's going to be an accusatory letter sent to a king. There are all these official documents.

There's the injunction of Artaxerxes and Tatani. In chapter six, there's a memorandum from Cyrus and a decree of Darius, king of Persia. In chapter seven, there's a decree of Artaxerxes. In chapter 10, there's a formal proclamation. So The book includes lots of really interesting literary features.

You'll find yourself in the midst of movements of people and the hearts of kings being changed. One of my favorite phrases in this, in Ezra is, the Lord stirred up the heart. The Lord stirred up. You can always count on God stirring up the right hearts at the right time. Do you understand that?

You can always count on God to stir up the right heart at the right time. Because it is God who rules the hearts. Let's talk about some of the contemporaries of Ezra. This is very, very critical. As we read and preach through Ezra and Nehemiah, we're going to encounter the prophet Haggai because he was prophesying at that time.

It'll be a great temptation not to preach through the whole book of Haggai. We'll see what happens. Same thing with Zechariah. You'll see Zechariah. Zechariah comes on the scene at just when they're at the bottom of discouragement.

Their work has been has been stopped for 16 years. And God sends in prophets to energize them and also to tell them how they've lost their way. So you have the prophet Haggai and the prophet Zechariah. You also have the prophet Malachi. Also Daniel is in this mix.

Esther and Mordecai and Ahasuerus, they find themselves slotted between the sixth and the seventh chapter. So this is the historical scene, these are the contemporaries. You know, also at this very same time, Confucius was writing and Socrates was writing and so is Gautama Buddha. Which would you rather have? Zachariah, Daniel, Haggai, or Gautama Buddha.

Well, This was the time. Then let's talk about Ezra the man. Ezra was born in Babylon and his name means Jehovah helps. And this is the drumbeat of everything in his life. In his teaching of the Word of God, in his calling for obedience, he was a scribe in the law of Moses.

In chapter 7 verse 10, for Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord, number one, and to do it, number two, and to teach statutes and ordinances in Israel. Ordinances in Israel. You know, Ezra means Jehovah helps. In Hebrew, Edzer is the word. It's the same word that we encounter in Genesis where we read that the woman is the helper of the man, Edzerknegdo in Genesis.

He's the helper. He comes alongside to help the people to rebuild their lives. Zerubbabel comes to clean up the rubbable of the broken down temple. You children need to remember that. Who was Zerubbabel?

He cleaned up the rubbable. But Ezra came in to rebuild the lives. The only way you get your life rebuilt is really through, first of all, through worship and then through the Word of God. And that's why God brought Ezra on the scene. He was a Levite descended from Aaron.

You know, he left Babylon, imagine this, he left Babylon and it took him probably four to six months to get there, to get to Jerusalem. Let's talk about the context and the time frame that all of this exists. It's at the end of the Babylonian captivity. We read 1 Chronicles 36, which is critical. It's very helpful and centering to help you understand what's happening here by reading 1st Chronicles 36.

But there were three returns, you can see them listed on your outline here. The first return was in 530 BC when Cyrus issues a decree and the first wave of captives go back. Almost 50, 000 captives go back into the land and they go with Zerubbabel who was going to clean up the rubble. The rubble. And Zerubbabel was a high priest.

There was a high priest, and there were, and the prophets were also going to come into this mix. The second wave happened in about 458 BC where Ezra returns with approximately 1700. There may have been a few thousand, maybe 4000 or 7000. I'm not sure. But it was a much smaller group that returned and they returned to recover the worship of God.

The altar had been rebuilt, the temple was being rebuilt, and Ezra comes back to really restore fidelity to the Word of God. And then the third wave was with Nehemiah in 445 BC, and Nehemiah came back to rebuild the walls. So the sequence is critical. An altar is rebuilt, a temple is rebuilt, the people's lives are rebuilt by the Word of God, and then the walls are rebuilt. And all of Those things are instructive to us about how you rebuild your life.

How do you go through a time of hopelessness? How do you come back home when you have no external hope and you have no money and you have nothing on the horizon. How do you do it? Well, first of all, the Lord must stir someone up, and then you must begin the rebuilding process. All these things happen not by might, not by power, but by his Spirit, says the Lord of hosts.

He says, don't despise the day of small things in this revival. You know, the way that Ezra prays in chapter 9, he says, Lord, that we would have a measure of revival in our time, in the midst of our desolation. Because revival is always something that's progressive. It's never completely complete. It goes on your whole life long.

Remember this is a 100 year time footprint. How long is your life? Where are you? Where are you in this recovery? Where are you in being, you know, brought back from the ashes?

He's giving you beauty for ashes. He's rebuilding your walls. He's rebuilding the altar. And He's bringing you back. You know, one of the things that I love about chapter three is it tells you what happens to you.

You want to sing. You sing. You sing through your time of healing. And that's exactly what they experienced here. But here's what we need to recognize, that this entire context, this entire timeframe, these returns to the faithfulness of God toward a repentant people.

And he's speaking to people who've experienced unspeakable hardship, some of it not of their own doing. God was disciplining his people through the Babylonian captivity. They'd minimized his word and rejected the voices of their prophets. They rejected the details of God's commands toward them. They rejected the law of Moses.

They didn't really care about keeping the Sabbath anymore. They really didn't want to be governed by anything but their feelings and their culture. And God was punishing them. Was punishing them. Because you took lightly the word of God.

That's how they got into Babylon. They took the word of God lightly. And it was hard. They'd minimized his word. Second Chronicles 36 verse 16 says it like this, They mocked the messengers of God, despised his words, scoffed at his prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against his people, until there was no remedy." Well that's what happens with sin.

There's no remedy except that the Lord would stir up a heart. Accept that an altar would be rebuilt. Accept that a temple would be reconstructed. Accept that the Word of God would come and transform your life and rebuild you unless the walls are rebuilt brick by brick. And that's exactly what we see here.

You know, One of the most famous passages of Scripture known to almost everybody in the world, or at least in America, particularly in times of political campaigns, is 2 Chronicles 7 and 14. You know it. If my people, who are called by my name, humble themselves and pray and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and I will forgive their sin and heal their land." You know, people use this and they say, this is the promise for America. This is America. And the truth is, this is written for those who are coming out of captivity.

And they've been in Babylon for 70 years. When you read, if my people, who is that anyway? Well, it's not everybody. It's only God's people. It's my people.

It's the sons and daughters of Abraham. It's only those who have the faith of Abraham who are my people. Those are the only ones who are going to find the healing in their land. And this is the Church of Jesus Christ. It's the people who are in covenant with God.

When God told Abraham about his descendants saying, I will be their God and they shall be my people. And so this verse in Chronicles is about God's faithfulness to his people. And here's what God is saying through it, through this return from captivity. He's saying don't lose hope. You're still struggling with sin.

There's still opposition. Put your hope in God. He'll heal your land. Call on His name if my people will humble themselves. I'll heal their land.

This is a promise. You can count on this. This is absolutely true. When you see the ruin from sin, either that you committed or somebody else committed, You need to know something with all of your heart. He will heal your land.

And the whole focus of this book is the complete restoration of the people of God that begins with the revitalization of worship and spiritual renewal and moral revolution and really social reconstruction. That's exactly what you see in Ezra and Nehemiah. But God stirs up a heart when you least expect it, in the heart from which you would least expect it. A pagan king. Now, there are always three phases in our healing, and they're illustrated throughout.

And the first is returning home. And the second is restoring worship. And the third is removing idolatry in the filth of the nations because restoration always comes from surrender to God everything according to the Word of God. When people come to a place where they say, oh Lord, you have every right to tell me what to do about everything in my life. I'm not independent.

I'm not my own free agent in this world. My only hope is in you and in your Word. This is how the people of God are healed and restored. And the only real restraining factor to healing and restoration is hardness of heart against the Word of God, because he will heal the land of those who humble themselves. And so this, we're going to be confronted here in these two books with cleansing from worldliness, turning away from the ways of the Gentiles, making a hard turn and continuing to make hard turn after hard turn away from the ways of the Gentiles.

And you'll find you'll find this whole matter of putting away the filth of the Gentiles. This is always required in any true conversion. And the result is prophesied in Jeremiah 29, 14, I will be found in you. I will be found in you. I will be found in you.

In other words, you have the presence of God through his Son, Jesus Christ. I will be found in you. And the problem with our lives is we get them so cluttered up with the idols of this world. And there's so much of us. And the whole Christian life is cleansing ourselves from idols, getting rid of one after another, so that more and more of Him through this process of sanctification is in us.

I will be found in you." And it really is a reflection of Ezra's prayer that grace was shown that God enlightened the eyes that he gave us a measure of revival. He says in that prayer, our God did not forsake us in our bondage. He didn't. You might feel like you're forsaken in your bondage, but you're not. This is a 100-year time footprint.

It's your life. It's a picture of your life. And I just want to suggest that it's quite likely that every single phase of your life is found in this book. You can find it. Look for it.

Look for yourself there. Say, oh, I was there. I was here. This happened to me. The Lord stirred up so and so.

Now let's walk through this book chapter by chapter. You have an outline in front of you, a fairly extensive outline. Here's one of the beautiful things about Ezra. It's divided into two sections. Oh, it's just fantastic.

And The first section is the restoration of the temple by Zerubbabel in chapters 1-6. And then there's the reformation of the people by Ezra in chapters 7-10. So let's begin to look at chapter one here. In this chapter, you find those words, the Lord stirred up. I've just, I've so grown to have affection for those words.

The Lord stirred up, that's your only hope by the way. You know, it's not by might, it's not by power. It's by the Spirit of God. Every, Everything that you're dependent upon rests upon the Lord stirring up. This life is not your own.

This world is not your own. But God, he stirs up. And so here we see that God stirred up the heart of a pagan king to bless his people. He uses the most unusual tools in his hands. Tools you just...

God is so... He'll surprise you... ...And he'll... Is so far away, because he'll surprise you, and he'll come to your door, and he'll the spirit of Satan that you had no idea, and you couldn't control it. And then he also stirs up the father and almost 50, 000 of them return because the Lord stirred up their hearts.

And there's this decree of... And those beautiful words. Now, Chapter one, what do you learn from chapter one? First of all, the Lord is moving when you're in captivity. The Lord is moving even when you can't see it.

And God is moving right now. And you can't see it, You have no idea what's around the corner. God is moving Secondly that God God is fixed and in date to all your trials God has fixed an end date to the trouble that you have now in your life. Whatever trouble it is, I'm sure there are dozens of categories of trials that people in this room are experiencing right now. But God has fixed the end date.

And your trials are not indeterminate. They are determined by God for the testing of your faith that you'd come forth as gold. You'd be refined by fire. Why? That I might come forth as gold." Matthew Henry explains it like this, God governs the world by his influence on the spirits of men And whatever good is done at any time, it is God that stirs up the spirit to do it, puts thoughts into the mind, gives to the understanding a right judgment, and directs the will which way he pleases.

God does this so that he'll have glory for himself. He does everything to glorify himself. He uses all of your joys and trials for the purpose of his own glory, and that's exactly right here. He raises up kings, he turns their hearts, he turns their heads, he takes fathers' houses, and as it says in verse 5, that the heads of the fathers' houses, all whose spirits God had moved, arose to go up to build the house of the Lord which is in Jerusalem. It was a work of God that caused that temple to be rebuilt.

This phrase, whose spirits God had moved in verse 5, so what does that mean? Well in Hebrew it means awakened, it means roused. They needed to be awakened, they needed to be moved, they couldn't move themselves. They were awakened. You know, there's a song I used to sing to my children.

It goes like this, Oh Lord, have mercy on me and heal me. Place my feet upon a rock. Put a new song in my heart. Oh Lord, have mercy on me. Well that's your only hope.

That the Lord would stir it up, that the Lord would awaken. There's only one way that healing takes place, and that is by the hand of the Lord. And so we're so dependent upon him. Now we also learned that not everybody's spirit was stirred, not everybody woke up. There were some who did not hear the sound of his voice.

Then in chapter two, we see how God keeps his promises. And there's a census of the returnees. This is the longest chapter in the book, and it's almost all names. Don't go to sleep on the names we'll get to that later you know it's easy to sort of yawn through the genealogies and the lists of names we're gonna try not to do that because there are particular things to learn from this. There's nothing thrown away in scripture.

Nothing is a throwaway. Not one single word is a throwaway. And when we get to chapter two, we'll see that. And it's a long testimony of various categories of people who return. Because when the Lord awakens, he awakens various kinds of people.

He starts with Zerubbabel. His name means offspring of Babylon or son of Babylon. Zerubbabel born in Babylon. You know, he's just like everybody here. You've been born in the midst of trials and disobediences.

And you think you're kind of stuck there, but you're not really. You're not stuck. Zerubbabel wasn't stuck, even though he was born there. You know, Zerubbabel is the grandson of Jehoiachin, And he was executed by Nebuchadnezzar. His grandfather was executed by Nebuchadnezzar.

And now he's in Babylon going back, by a decree of the king with enormous resources to make it happen. You just never know how life is going to turn out. You don't. You think it's all dark, and it's not all dark. There's a light shining, and God will fulfill all his word.

Then there are family names in verses 3 through 20. Then there are names of people from different cities and locations. Then there are the people that came back that were related to worship and there you know you had you had priests and gatekeepers you had singers I mean it was just marvelous oh to have so many singers to come back well you need singers if you're going to be revived and how you see that there. People unknown. People who didn't really have a heritage at all.

But there were together 42, 360 besides their male and female servants. So quite a lot of people. Then in chapter three worship is restored. After coming back, after coming back the primary work was to rebuild an altar and to renew the worship of God. This is always the beginning of any revival in anybody's heart.

The Church of Jesus Christ is prioritized. You can always tell who's running toward and running from God. The people who run into the Church of Jesus Christ are running toward God. The people who are diminishing it are running away. Always, you can always tell who's who in this world.

It's always of a great concern to me when I find people who diminish the importance of the people of God and the worship of God. Because it's very telling. But this was the beginning of their rejoicing. It was a joy mixed with sorrow though as well. But they brought burnt offerings.

That's significant. They brought burnt offerings when the altar was rebuilt. Why did that happen first? Because revival only takes place by the blood sacrifice, by atonement, by the blood of Jesus Christ, by completely trusting in His righteousness for your salvation. You know, As long as we keep trying to shine ourselves up and fix up our lives and try to make a good show of things, there won't be any revival.

But when you trust in the righteousness of Jesus Christ and you believe that you have no righteousness of your own and none of your outward appearances have any meaning at all unless they have come from a work of the Spirit of God. Unless you understand that the only righteousness you can have is given to you by Jesus Christ, you'll never be revived. And unless you rest in that, you'll never have hope. And so they offered burnt offerings, as it says in verse 2 in that chapter. At the same time, they had some fear because the people around them did not like what they were doing and that's always the case.

Whenever you're reviving, whenever you're rebuilding, you're always going to have people who are resisting. And you'll find there's quite a bit about that in this book. Then chapter four, there's this great opposition that arises. Those who returned were rejoicing, but not everybody was rejoicing. And there were opposers.

Opposers. They wanted power and influence. They wanted a piece of the action. They wanted their name to be included on this great victory. They wanted to be part of it.

But not really. They just wanted a name. They just wanted the outward stuff from it. And Zerubbabel saw right through it and he said, you're not part of us. But it caused a tremendous problem.

And they, these people tried to discourage the people of juda as it says in chapter four verses four and five They troubled them in building they hired counselors against them to frustrate their purpose all the days of sirus King and persia even until the reign of darius king of persia a hundred years almost In other words, they faced opposition all throughout the time. It never stopped, except Maybe quite possibly in some short seasons, but there was always opposition. And there were people on the outside who wanted to discourage them in their reformation of restoring worship of God. And they troubled them in the building and they hired counselors. Well, they wrote a letter of condemnation saying these people are bad news.

A letter was written to the king saying, these people are harmful. They're not good people. And the work was shut down for 16 years. It worked, but only for a while. One scholar said that they suffered a century of sustained spiritual opposition from the time of Cyrus to Artaxerxes.

So here's what you learn about this, is that when God is doing a work of revival, there's opposition and sometimes it doesn't stop. Now in this case, it kept going for about a hundred years. That should tell you something. You know, we live in a Christian culture where nobody wants to have any kind of trouble at all. If there's trouble at all, then They hightail it out of here because they don't think that Christianity should include trouble.

But Christianity always included trouble and opposition and slander and misrepresentation, which is exactly what happened in chapter 4. And then in chapter five, in chapter five, the prophets come and they speak. You know, God, God raises up Haggai and Zechariah, and they come in to encourage people to get back to work. And you'll find out what it was that caused them to stop. And what you find out it was the opposition and the slander and the misrepresentation was only part of the problem.

Another reason they stopped is they just got so tired of the opposition and they just wanted to spend their life building their houses and having a nice life. And that's what Haggai says. You're building your houses while the house of God remains in ruins. You know, a lot of times when you face opposition, you just want peace. You'll do anything for it.

You'll give up anything to have peace, because it's like what Francis Schaeffer said, your God is personal peace and prosperity. And Haggai shows up to say, get back to work. And they do. And Zechariah does the same thing. And then in chapter 6, there's a big turnaround.

The building is authorized, and it's funded and protected by these kings. And so you'll read about this remarkable turnaround in chapter 6. And the protection is pretty remarkable. In fact, the king issues a decree and he says this, I love these words, whoever alters this edict, let a timber be pulled from his house and erected and let him be hanged on it and let his house be made a refuge and a heap because of this. Now that's what I'm calling protection from a king.

You just never know how God's going to protect you. You just never know. It comes out of nowhere. And so then the temple is dedicated in chapter six and they celebrate the house of God with joy. And then in chapter seven, God raises up Ezra to renew the people.

Now, between chapters six and seven is about a 56 year time frame. Temple has been rebuilt, it's been dedicated, and time is passing, and the people are living, and as a result of that it becomes known that there's still so much of the world in these people. They've married foreign wives, they haven't put away all the filth of the Gentile nations. They're still trying to be just as cool as the nations. That's the problem.

They want to look like the nations, they want to walk like the nations, they want to have all the stuff that the nations have, and it's still in them. And one of the problems is when you go into Babylon, a lot of times Babylon gets into you, and you don't live as a separate people. And so in chapter seven, God raises up Ezra, and This chapter is such a beautiful chapter, you know, because of Ezra, the way that Ezra's life was, you know, he was a scribe and There's much to learn from Ezra in the midst of your renewal, in the midst of your hopeless situation. You always ask, is my life worth anything? Is my life worth anything?

And Ezra really shows you the way if you want to do something of eternal value in this world, you can learn from Ezra. You prepare your heart to seek the law, you obey it, and you teach others to do it. That's it. You want to have a meaningful life? That's it right there.

There's nothing better than you can do for your life. It doesn't matter what your job is, it doesn't matter what your status at this moment, whether you're a little child, whether you're single, whether you're married, whatever you are, at any time in your life You can know how to do a good thing in this world and how to do things that are of eternal significance. You prepare your heart to seek the law of God. You do it and you teach all those around you to do it. And so chapter seven is about Ezra and his qualifications in his life.

It's such a beautiful, beautiful chapter. Chapter eight is about how the hand of God restores the people by using men of understanding. He restores his people by bringing his people to fast and to pray to seek him. There's this beautiful phrase in chapter 8 verse 21. Ezra says, I proclaim to fast there at the river of Ahava, and that we might humble ourselves before our God to seek him the right way for us and for our little ones and all our possessions.

That encompasses everything in life. Do you have little ones? Do you have possessions? Do you have a way? Are you walking down the way of this world?

Well, this chapter helps us to understand how to make our way with our children, with our possessions, and along this highway that he has us on. And so this is the story of Ezra, you know, coming back with this small number of people, either 1, 700 or 5, 000 or however many people were with him. And then chapters nine and 10 really have to do with a reality that all of us have faced and are facing right now. And that is it. We're learning that there's a lot more of the world in us than we thought.

We're saved, we reestablished the altar of God, we reestablished the worship of God, we have been under the instruction of the Word of God, we've been rebuilding the walls, but guess what? The world is still so much in us. And that's what chapters nine and ten are all about. Because the people had embraced the ways of the Gentiles, and it was through the porthole of their wives. They wanted to be just as cool as the nations, so they got themselves cool wives from the nations.

And they needed to be cleansed from that. And so chapters 9 and 10 speak about the fact that God's not finished with his people yet. And there's more repentance and there's more reformation necessary, and that's true for all of us. And again, that prayer in chapter 9, grace was shown from the Lord to give us a peg in his holy place that he might give us a measure of revival in our bondage. Well That's what we need.

And so in chapter 10, the people weep and they repent. They enter into a time of confession and they display really the doctrine of repentance. They say, we have trespassed against our God. We have taken pagan wives from the peoples of the land, and now there's hope in Israel in spite of this. In spite of this, In spite of this, there's hope.

It really is, it's a message of hope. And The people respond with obedience in chapter 10. So there you have it. That's a flyover of Ezra. So what's it all about?

You've experienced some ruin in your life. You've lived in a nation that has rejected the worship of God, and it has had an effect on you. And you were carried to Babylon. You've been growing up in Babylon. You've been here for 70 years, figuratively.

You don't really know anything else. It was perhaps not just only your sin, But it was the sin of your parents or the sin of your spouse like it was in Israel. Or it was the sin of your culture, the filth of the nations that has so profoundly affected you. Every part of your life you don't even know how to unpack it all. You've never really been able to understand how to repent of everything because you don't know because it's just too deep.

Your sin is so deep that you can't even acknowledge every single part of it. You can only acknowledge what you can acknowledge, what the what the Spirit of God allows you to acknowledge. And there you are. And you learn what the captives learned, that there's hope in the midst of ruin. Ezra teaches us that God will wipe every tear from your eye, and he shows you how he's going to do it.

And he restores worship first. That's chapters one through six. And then he revives and reestablishes his word in your heart. And you repent of the ways of the gentiles that have gotten so deep in you, and that's chapters 7 through 10. And you learn that God moves hearts to restore.

You know, one of the commentators, Derek Kidner, he summed it up like this, it was a death to make way for a rebirth. It was a death to make way for a rebirth. And that's how God works. And it's the death of His Son, Jesus Christ. Our Lord Jesus Christ bore all of the worldliness, all of the sin of repentant sinners So that they would have hope in the midst of their ruin and there's a lot that gets ruined You just have to say that it's true sin always ruins Everything, You know, I was just with Jeff Pollard at a conference, and he said something that I heard all the little children in the conference repeating as they were writing out all of them, several of them.

He said this, sin is stupid, and sin makes you stupid. That's what he said. But God is wise and he does restore those who surrender to Him and who trust in the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so in this way you know, you know, Ezra really does tell the story of your life. And it shows how God moves hearts, how God takes the initiative, and how it happens through the ministry of kings and priests and true worship.

And so who knows what the Lord has for us to teach us His ways. We who've been born in Babylon, we who are being restored by God, you know, what will He reveal about His faithfulness? What kind of hope will he give us in the midst of this ruin that we're in? Well, you know, as a pastor, I'm extremely thankful to be here in this book and to be a messenger of the comfort of the scriptures and the comfort of God in the midst of all of our healing. We have so much healing to do, don't we?

It's amazing. It's remarkable how much healing is needed in us. And yet we have such a good shepherd to take us into all of his healing arts. And here we are today, and this is all part of it. And I'm thankful that we have our children here as well, that perhaps somehow they would know it as well.

Would you pray with me? Oh Lord, we thank you for laying before us these things that really happened in the world so that we would know what is really happening with us. This hundred years that you've presented before us so that we would understand how you bring hope in the midst of ruin, how you can lead people home and you can restore them. When they have an altar rebuilt in their hearts, O Lord, make it so among us. Amen.