Back to Basics—Five

Two more points in my reading of Ezra that I initially suggested were: G-d’s prophets must stir up the people AND appeal to non-Jewish leaders to honor previously granted commitments to G-d’s people while declaring they are following the G-d of Israel; Once again, a non-rebellious, non-Jewish leader looks reasonably into the records and sees that the Jews are entitled to rebuild their temple, and commits to help also.

In my reading of Ezra, even though the rebuilding of the Temple had been objected to, and the Jews ordered to stop work, it continued. Perhaps it continued only very slowly. Perhaps it was problematic even among the Jewish Returnees. I can image some Jews saying to others who might be working on the Temple, “Hey, we have orders not rebuild. We have to honor those orders.” I can also imagine some Jews beginning to side with the non-Jewish residents of the area, even telling them when building is going on so that protests can be made. Non-Jews then would be telling the Jews not to follow G-d’s desires, not to follow after G-d’s heart, that the king had ordered them to stop.

Finally a couple of men begin to see things from G-d’s perspective, and encourage actively rebuilding the Temple. And this time, these wise men appeal to the king based upon King Cyrus’s decree. And they win. The decree is located in the archives, and permission is granted to continue the building. Not only does the current king, King Darius, allow it to begin, he helps fund it.

Let the work of this house of God alone; let the governor of the Jews and the elders of the Jews build this house of God in his place. Moreover I make a decree what ye shall do to the elders of these Jews for the building of this house of God: that of the king’s goods, even of the tribute beyond the river, forthwith expenses be given unto these men, that they be not hindered. And that which they have need of, both young bullocks, and rams, and lambs, for the burnt offerings of the God of heaven, wheat, salt, wine, and oil, according to the appointment of the priests which are at Jerusalem, let it be given them day by day without fail: That they may offer sacrifices of sweet savours unto the God of heaven, and pray for the life of the king, and of his sons.

Ezra 6:7-10

King Darius even desires prayers be made for him and his sons. Once again, a non-Jewish leader has reverence for the Lord, G-d of All.

Ezra provides a picture of Restoration. It models getting back to the basics. Once apart, we must get back to a stable place from where we can begin to celebrate in the Lord in the Community of Believers. We can then rebuilt our selves as Temples of the LORD. It seems clear that today, as Believers, we will go through periods in our lives in which we find resistance to our focus. And as we begin to slow down our work, our hope is that G-d will send someone to encourage us in our journey, our seeking, of G-d’s heart. We seek G-d’s heart and His Temple in us is restored.

There are other lessons in the remaining chapters of Ezra. There is another group of exiles to return. There are more corrections to be made in the religious observance of the Jews in Israel. It is like this for us, too. We ascend a tower, following a circular stairway. We look out a window each new level, and see more of the landscape then previous levels. We continue on. We will do this our entire lives, until the Lord calls us to Him, in death or in His return to Earth. We grow. And every now and then we must take a time in which we return to the basics, renewing our vows and journey with our Messiah, Y’shuaJesus.

Lord Bless, Keep, Shine. . .

Getting Back to Basics—Four

Regardless of how we get into an exile situation, we are not in the place G-d intends for us to be. In the book of Ezra, a wave of exiles are released to return to Israel. Once there, they follow an interesting order: First on the agenda: getting settled in and their own homes in order. They meet in Jerusalem to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles (or Booths/Tents), and then begin the ritual sacrifices to G-d. Finally they begin work on the Temple, starting with the foundation.

Now when the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the returned exiles were building a temple to the LORD, the God of Israel, they approached Zerubbabel and the heads of fathers’ houses and said to them, “Let us build with you, for we worship your God as you do, and we have been sacrificing to him ever since the days of Esarhaddon king of Assyria who brought us here.” But Zerubbabel, Jeshua, and the rest of the heads of fathers’ houses in Israel said to them, “You have nothing to do with us in building a house to our God; but we alone will build to the LORD, the God of Israel, as King Cyrus the king of Persia has commanded us.” Then the people of the land discouraged the people of Judah and made them afraid to build and bribed counselors against them to frustrate their purpose, all the days of Cyrus king of Persia, even until the reign of Darius king of Persia. And in the reign of Ahasuerus, in the beginning of his reign, they wrote an accusation against the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem.

Ezra 4:1-6

Point three in this look at Getting Back to Basics is: Once G-d’s people return to where they are suppose to be and begin to rebuild their spiritual lives, there is resistance to their efforts.

Now those “adversaries” are not Jews. But before you say, “Well, the Jews made the Gentiles angry when they refused to let them help.” I think the Gentiles wanted work, wanted a share in the money being spent. They wanted construction contracts. And they were refused. Here’s what the note in The Apologetics Study Bible says, “Some people see an arrogant attitude at work in this rejection of help. However, the Jews were applying an important spiritual principle—service should be conducted by God’s people. They should be very wary of partnerships that involve unbelievers in fulfilling their service to God.” This rebuilding is between the people of G-d and G-d Himself, without outside “assistance.” This rejection of help enrages people, and those people become resistant to the Jews’ efforts at rebuilding their spiritual lives, their nation.

So here’s the the modern-day exile: Tarnished Gold. We are Christians. We are among those who Believe. We know we are saved by grace. Our names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Live. But we also know we are far from being G-d’s model Christian. We are tarnished. At some point we become conscious of the tarnish that is on us. Our Thoughts, Words, and our Deeds are not what we want them to be. We begin to try to clean ourselves up. That’s when things get interesting.

Sunday I visited Christ Community Church. Pastor Jason, in his talk, spoke of the fallacy of trying. We try, we fail. We are, he said, to train. We either do or we don’t. We train to do. We take it one step at a time, is what I took from this part of his talk. The overall theme of his talk is really interesting. It was May Day: A Heart Check. It took its core message from Mark 10:17-31 in which a man walks away from Y’shuaJesus, turns away from Y’shuaJesus, Who asked him to sell all his material possessions and come and follow Him.

The key points in Pastor Jason’s talk are:

Sincerity is not the same as obedience.
If possessions have our heart, God cannot.
Following Christ will always cost you something.
Allow his love to transform your heart.

So, in the book of Ezra, non-Jewish folks resist the Jewish rebuilding of the Temple. They raise concerns to the Earthly authority, and that authority says, “Cease and Desist.” Pastor Jason didn’t speak about resistance as such in our attempt to reconnect with G-d, to get into a place with Him to which we feel called. Pastor Jason did, however, talk about how he would, as his pastor before him, try to talk people out of going into the ministry. Pastor Jason said that if he could talk a person out of it, it wasn’t from G-d.

If we really want to build or rebuild our relationship with our Lord, we are going to experience resistance. In Ezra, the resistance is from non-Jewish peoples afraid of the power of a people totally in G-d’s plan and protection. The resistance we may receive today, to our re-establishing or deepening our relationship with G-d, should only come from non-believers in Messiah. But, from what I take out of what Pastor Jason said, this resistance can come from those near and dear to us in order to test us to be sure that we are truly called to this new thing. Wow! Assaulted from both sides.

Funny. There are so many times in which I’ve pushed toward some goal, whether physically or spiritually, that I’ve not known whether it was G-d’s desire that I push onward, or allow myself to stop and be redirected. Resistance. The real question is when is resistance to bend us toward the destination or be broken through in order to get to the destination. Interesting question, isn’t it? But then perhaps you’ve got that figured out. I suppose is has to do with knowing precisely what the will of G-d is, what the destination is suppose to actually be.

Here’s something from Mira Grant’s book Blackout (the third book in a zombie trilogy):

“You’re a crazy. . . Shaun Mason, and I think sometimes you’re not going to be happy until you’ve managed to get every last one of us killed, but you’re a good man, all the same.”

“Remind me to have that inscribed on my urn.” I said, and Becks laughed, and things felt like they might be okay again. We had a direction. I didn’t like it; I didn’t have to. All I had to do was follow it, and let it lead me to whatever the next step on this increasingly insane journey would prove to be.

Direction. The Will of G-d. Perhaps I think too much. Perhaps I’m sincere, but fail to obey. Perhaps I simply am not willing to spend what it takes to follow. It becomes a bit clearer to me now, though, that isn’t the doing. The way Pastor Jason put it is that it isn’t about finding out, and following, G-d’s will; it is about seeking G-d’s heart. This isn’t something new to me. Rephrased, yes. I’ve known it this way: “It’s not about doing, but being,” meaning being in relationship with the Lord, our G-d, our Creator, and knowing HIM.

Knowing G-d’s heart allows us to overcome all resistance, even if it means allowing the resistance to redirect us. Knowing G-d’s heart means not worrying about the moment, where we are starring at our path, but to lift our head up, to look toward heaven, to watch for our Lord with utter rapt attention.

Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

Matthew 24:30

Lord Bless, Keep, Shine. . .

Getting Back to Basics—Three

Recapping. In one of my Bibles, the book of Ezra is introduced as having a theme of “Restoration: getting back to basics.” In my reading I found a number of points worthy of discussion. The first point, “As shown in the book of Jonah, and now in Ezra, non-Jews can acknowledge G-d as The G-d of All and obey Him,” was discussed Wednesday. The second point is that “G-d sees to it that even when He allows His people to be hauled into captivity—which perhaps provides a modern analogy for backsliding into sin—He finds a way for them to return to His service.” Here’s how the book of Ezra begins (Ezra 1:1,2):

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: “Thus says Cyrus king of Persia: The LORD, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah.

It doesn’t seem that ol’ King Cyrus was really letting the Exiled Jews return out of pure altruism. The king said he was charged to build G-d a house at Jerusalem. Additionally, it was a general policy he’d developed of letting exiled people and their stolen goods return to their homelands. A note in The Apologetic Study Bible states that “Skeptics note that the magnanimity shown by Cyrus toward the Jewish exiles was not due to divine intervention. It was a typical policy toward displaced people under his rule. This is undeniable, but this fact of history does not diminish the significance of the return of the Jews for exile. After all, the return was a fulfillment of prophecy. Isaiah prophesied the rise of Cyrus and his benevolence toward Israel 150 years earlier (se Is 44:28-45:7). Furthermore, the timing was impeccable. Cyrus’s decree coincided with Jeremiah’s prophecy that the captivity in Babylon would last 70 years (see Jr 25:11).”

Irregardless of what people think, G-d worked upon the heart of king Cyrus—says the Bible—and the king decided he would let Israel go. Good decision. Better than Pharaoh. The prophesy was fulfilled. Israel’s exiles returned.

In the book of Ezra, the people got into this state of captivity because they were hauled away after conquest. Israel was conquered as a result of forsaking G-d. Israel remained only seventy years in Babylon. Egypt is different. Israel fled from drought that would have led to famine, into a land that G-d had prepared in advance to receive them. Once there, Israel remained for four hundred thirty years. And in the beginning, Israel was welcomed, given land away from the Egyptians in Goshen (see Genesis 46:34). Israel prospered in Goshen too. But perhaps too much, as successors of Pharaoh that didn’t know Israel well, became afraid of Israel, and began to subjugate the people. As with Israel in Babylon, the people ended up in harsh captivity. As with G-d rescuing His people out of Babylon, the LORD came to the rescue of His people in Egypt, Both times, returning the people to the place He’d chosen for them. The Promised Land.

Lord Bless, Keep, Shine. . .

note: There’s no doubt more that can be compared/contrasted between the two exile periods and the subsequent returns. You may also like Mark’s Blog This Day With God, in which he has great studies from the book of Ezra.

Getting Back to Basics

Ezra shows us how G-d puts it into the heart of a non-Jewish king, King Cyrus, to not only release the Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple, but to fund it all. Sweet! Had Pharaoh cooperated so readily with G-d, a lot of people would have not died, including Pharaoh’s son.

Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia, The LORD God of heaven hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth; and he hath charged me to build him an house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Who is there among you of all his people? 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 the God,) which is in Jerusalem. And whosoever remaineth in any place where he sojourneth, let the men of his place help him with silver, and with gold, and with goods, and with beasts, beside the freewill offering for the house of God that is in Jerusalem.

Ezra 1:2-4

According to the introduction to the book of Ezra in my Matthew Henry Study Bible (KJV), “The purpose of the book seems to be threefold: 1. To show the providence of God as He cares for His people in the face of hostile neighbors, 2. To show the importance and wisdom of obedience, 3. To underline the importance of distinctness of belief and separation from ungodly practice.” The major theme is “Restoration: getting back to basics.”

As I read the first six chapters of Ezra, I was struck by the following:

As shown in the book of Jonah, and now in Ezra, non-Jews can acknowledge G-d as The G-d of All and obey Him;
G-d sees to it that even when He allows His people to be hauled into captivity—which perhaps provides a modern analogy for backsliding into sin—He finds a way for them to return to His service;
Once G-d’s people return, there is resistance to their efforts to rebuild their spiritual lives;
G-d’s prophets must stir up the people AND appeal to non-Jewish leaders to honor previously granted commitments to G-d’s people while declaring they are following the G-d of Israel;
Once again, a non-rebellious, non-Jewish leader looks reasonably into the records and sees that the Jews are entitled to rebuild their temple, and commits to help also.

I plan to finish off the book before expounding upon these initial points. Perhaps y’all might take a look at Ezra and we can dialogue on it.

Lord Bless, Keep, Shine. . .