Steps to Spiritual Renewal | Ezra 3:1-13

• Sermon Transcript

  And then and continue with our series on the prophets. And today we're talking about steps to spiritual renewal that we see here and Ezra chapter three. And so we have little bit of long texts on reinforced today starting in verse one. When the seventh month came, and the children of Israel were in the towns, the people gathered as one man to Jerusalem, then arose Jeshua, the son of jhaza, duck, was with his fellow priests, and grabbable, the son of Shealtiel, with his kinsmen. And they built the altar of the God of Israel, to offer burnt offerings on it, as it is written in the Law of Moses, the man of God, they set the altar in its place for fear was on them, because of the peoples of the lands. And they offered burnt offerings on it to the Lord. burnt offerings morning and evening. And they kept the Feast of Booths as it is written, and offered the daily burnt offerings by number according to the rule, as each day required. And after that, the regular burnt offerings, the offerings at the new moon, and that all the appointed feasts of the Lord, and the offerings of everyone who made a freewill offering to the Lord. From the first day of the seventh month, they began to offer burnt offerings to the Lord. But the foundation of the temple of the Lord was not yet laid. So they gave money to the Masons and the Carpenters, and food, drink and oil to the side donations and Tyrians to bring cedar trees from Lebanon to the sea to Joppa. According to the grant that they had, from Cyrus king of Persia, verse eight, now in the second year, after they're coming to the house of God at Jerusalem, and the second month survivable, the son of Shealtiel, and Jeshua, the son of jhaza, DEC made a beginning, together with the rest of their kinsmen, the priests and the Levites, and all who had come to Jerusalem from the captivity. They appointed the Levites from 20 years old and upper to supervise the work of the house of the Lord, and Yeshua with his sons and his brothers and cameo, and his sons and the sons of Judah together supervised the workmen in the house of God, along with the sons of henna dad and the Levites their sons and brothers, verse 10. And when the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord, the priests in their vestments came forward with trumpets, and the Levites the sons of Asaph with cymbals, to praise the Lord, according to the directions of David King of Israel, and they sang responsively, praising and giving thanks to the Lord, for He is good, and his steadfast love endures forever toward Israel. And all the people shouted, with a great shout, when they praise the Lord, because the foundation of the Lord house of the Lord was laid. But many of the priests and Levites and heads of fathers houses old men, who had seen the first house wept with a loud voice, when they saw the foundation of this house being laid, the mini shattered, allowed for joy, so that the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout, from the sound of the people's weeping. For the people shouted with a great shout, and the sound was heard, far away. Heavenly Father, we thank You for this passage you've given us and Lord, as we look at this passage today that, that the words that that I've that I'm putting down on paper that I have before me, Lord will will be your words, that you'll speak through me and then with your spirit, that these people will receive your message today as we look at this passage, about what it means, Lord to to have a spiritual renewal just just from this description when you can, what principles we can gain from this today. And we get this time to you Jesus name, amen. Our text picks up with a nation of Israel, still an exile. But the Babylonians who took them into exile ultimately, had been conquered. They were no longer the world power. So there's a new world power on the scene, the Persians. Now the Persians would eventually fall to a man named Alexander of Macedon who would become Alexander the Great That would usher in the Greek Empire. But for now, the Persians were the dominant empire. And if you enjoy history, you can trace back to the time of Moses. And we can sit and we can name the dominant world powers in order it, it first was Egypt. And then it became Israel for a time with King David and King Solomon, and on and then it came a serial, and then Babylon, and then Persia, and then Greece, and then Rome, which led into the Roman Empire. So you see Israel's place in history, they're involved with all this world history, even unto the time of the Roman Empire. So as your takes place, as the Israelites are still in exile, in this foreign land, they're living in the areas of Babylon in this area out in the outskirts. And King Cyrus of Persia has now given them a decree has allowed them to move back to what is now the desolate territory of Israel, and literally from scratch start rebuilding their country. Can you imagine what a massive undertaking that would be? So in this passage, we see a few principles of spiritual renewal. There's their spiritual renewal principles all throughout Scripture, but in this one passes, we see I believe, at least three elements that we see them doing that we can apply to our own lives. If you want spiritual renewal in your life, and the life of a church and life of a family, whatever it is, three things that we see are indispensable for the believer. Number one, when there's a spiritual renewal, there is a renewal of congregational worship, congregational worship. First one says that when the seventh month had come, they were all in their towns, they all came together, as one in Jerusalem, the first thing that they did was they built the altar, which is how they worship, through sacrifices, they built the altar of gods, the first thing they did was they worship. They didn't find, we could tell they didn't have like a preview service or something. They didn't do it halfway. They, when they had everybody ready, they all came as one to Jerusalem, and they worship they they burned the prescribed offerings as God's word instructed, because sacrifices were central to their worship. So the first thing they do is they is they worship, verse three, they put the altar, they set it in its place where it should go. And it says that they were fearful of the people of the lands, the surrounding lands. So they continue to offer these burnt offerings, they were fearful of the people because they're leaving the protection, so to speak of the Persian Empire, they're going to a place, it'd be very similar to the Wild West, lawless, no one living there starting a community rebuilding a community from scratch. And there's people out there and outskirts enemies, they were vulnerable, they had no army, and no protection. And here they are trying to do what's right, and renew themselves spiritually, and worship, they made worship a priority. And many of you know that I love sports. Many of you know that I love, especially college football, but you know, I don't really go to allow the games anymore. You know that. And I have 12 reasons why I'm going to give you 12 reasons why I don't really go to a lot of the games with the game card games, I'll go to high school games, but a lot of the game card games don't go anymore. First of all, you know, it's really expensive. Every time I go, they want more money, right? They want money every time I go. And so that's the first one. Secondly, a lot of times when I would go to these games, the people sitting in my room and my row, they just weren't very friendly. Just weren't very friendly. And I didn't want to be around that. And third reason is, if you ever been to a game, the seats are hard and uncomfortable. And you have to sit there for three and a half hours. And so I don't want to do that sometimes. Right? And you know, from age eight to 22 I did not do this maybe one or two home games grew up in Colombia, the game card games, maybe one or two home games from age eight to 22. And you know, the, you know, the coach never came to visit me. Never and there are multiple coaches, you know, I didn't even get an assistant coach to visit me. None right after all that time. That was number four. Five, very often the referees would make decisions that I didn't agree with. So you know, why would I want to go to when that happens, right? Number six. I was often sitting with him with with with hypocrites, because they were only there to see what other people were wearing. I didn't understand that. They went there to watch the game. Number seven And sometimes the game would go into overtime. And I'd be late getting home and I, you know, I'm life's too busy to bother with that right? Every now and then number eight, the band would play some songs that I'd never heard before. You know, I don't know that song. I don't know, I don't want to hear that they would play it anyway. Right. And one of the big things is the games are scheduled on Saturdays, which is my only day just sleep in and run errands. So one day, I can do anything to myself and so that can't You know, I don't really have time to travel and to go do that. But I you know, I was psychoanalyzing myself and number 10, I wrote this down to, I think one of the reasons I don't like to go to him now is because my parents took me to too many games when I was growing up. That's number 10. It just took me whether I wanted to go or not I went, I went to Home games, Home and Away games, I didn't get to decide whether I win or not. You know, we had all kinds of places. And then number 11. Do you know, I was a sports journalist for a while for when the ministry and I've watched a lot of sports. And, you know, I feel like I know as much as the coaches, if not more than anyway, right? So why do I want to go there? And then number 12. This is really the clincher. I don't really want to take my children to a lot of games because I want them to choose for themselves what sport they like best. So I'd like for them to do right. Clearly, you catch the joke, do you? You can see what I'm what I'm doing here. Do these reasons for not wanting to go to a football game sound familiar? You can substitute these names for church, Pastor, leaders, deacons, congregants worship leaders, choir, right. You've probably heard these excuses before, why people will not go to worship. Now I'm kind of speaking to the choir today, metaphorically, since you're all here. But when you but when you feel like you need spiritual renewal in your life, the first thing you should make center, if you haven't already, is to make worship a priority. There's something powerful about a group of people coming together for a common purpose of worshiping God. We're all in here today, for the same reason to worship God, there's power in a room where everyone can essentially agree about why they are their worship is the baseline of what we do. As a Christian, you know, we live in a highly individualized society. That doesn't value. corporate worship. We hear people say they can worship at home, they can worship out by the lake. They can worship at the beach by themselves. And that's true, they certainly can. But God has this worshiping together. And any truly homebound person or working person who's watching online today would tell you they'd much rather be if they could be worshiping God with the people of God. So we have spiritual renewal, for going to have that in our life, we need to make worship a priority. Secondly, when there's spiritual renewal, there is a renewal of congregational obedience, a renewal of congregational obedience that says verse four, that they kept the Feast of Booths, that this is one of the most important festivals that they had where they were, they would go and sleep in a tent and a booth for a week. It showed that they were committed to obeying God and his what he said he to do. Number Number, Verse five says that they did the irregular burnt offerings, and they did the offerings for the new moon. And they did all these things that we see this, this committed obedience. But in the second half of verse six, they realized something they hadn't quite done yet. The foundation of the temple of the Lord was not yet laid. Solomon's glorious temple had been destroyed by the Assyrians and Babylonians and everyone and they would have to rebuild this temple from the ground up from matchsticks, so to speak. So what are they do they they pull their money together. They got to work. Verse seven, they gave money to the Masons, the brick masons, the carpenters, those who put the wood together, right, who make the wooden material and food and drink and oil to the side donations, the Tyrians to bring cedar trees in all this, according to the grant that cyber said go and do this. Here is money here is funds. I'm going to help you rebuild it. Go rebuild it. Now this is a very different approach. From when Solomon built his temple, he was the king of the known world. He had every resource imaginable, he would tell nations, we want your trees, they would give them to him, we need your wood, they would give them to us. He had people that help, and he built this magnificent palace. But this is a very difficult, very different situation. The Israelites this time are coming back with poverty, poorest of the poor. The fact they can even do this is because they've been giving money from the government. Here's a grant, go do it. So they did what they could to scrape up enough money to pay people to build. And I could have said it was too hard. They could have said it was too expensive. But their commitment to be obedient is what led them to doing this. And after working on the temple, they continued to obey God by then assigning the temple workers from the appropriate tribe, the Levites. First they talks about this, that in the second year, verse eight, the second month, grabbable, and Jeshua, they made a beginning it says they made a beginning and together with the rest of their kinsmen, the priests and the Levites, who all had come from captivity, they appointed the Levites, who were 20 years old and upward to be a Levite. Yet to be between 20 and 50. He retired at 50. So I'm only six years away from those 20 to 50 as the able bodied man because the Levites were essentially butchers. They were offering the sacrifice that it'd be strong, able bodied men. And they appointed those from the from the proper tribes, and Jeshua with his son, in CAD mill, they supervise the workmen, verse 10, and when the builders laid the foundation of the temple of Lord, the priests in their best they came forward with trumpets, and cymbals. They're getting it all prepared already to be built, because you're being obedient to the command of God. 1970s There's something a war that you may not have heard of called the Franco Prussian war. And it was essentially a war between what we now know as the German people and the French. And then the French were still were empires, so to speak, that was declining with Napoleon that ran it and everything. And they were still trying to assert their dominance in the region. And the growing Prussian Empire, which were the Germans of the day they they took exception. And so they had a battle. And the Germans eventually marched into Paris and siege it, and ended the skirmish. And there was a man of soldier for France named Pierre Barlow. And he was a gunner at one of the forts during the Prussian siege of Paris as it was coming to an end. And France was losing, and the enemies were surrounding them in their own city. And he's standing by his gun and his general spoke to Pierre and he said gunner, you see the bridge over there? Yes, sir. I see it. He said, Do you see that little shanty house to the left? Yes, sir. I believe it's a nest of Prussians. I want you to Shell it. So he looks in his sight and he sees the shanty house and looks again and hesitates a little bit. He says, Go ahead, shoot. So he shoots and he hit it. Shanty exploded, and was destroyed. He says, Great hit my man. And he looked down at Pierre and Pierre had tear coming down his eye. So what's wrong? He said, pardon me, General. That shanty was my house. Everything I had in the world. There's a cost of obedience. This is a wartime situation for Pierre the cost was hard, because they end up losing the war, and they end up losing the house. But that moment, he was falling orders. He was being obedient, and we know the outcome, and in our own life. Every day, we see spiritual battles, that God calls for our obedience. But unlike for Pierre, we know the outcome of the battle, amen. We know the ultimate outcome of the war that God wins. Imagine the the confidence soldiers would have if they knew the outcome of the war. How more motivated they would be to fight how motivated they would be to to be obedient to follow orders. They didn't even know the outcome and they're still being obedient. We know the end result we know the outcome. How much more obedient should We'd be Amen. Are we too afraid of the costs? Are we too afraid to give up our earthly shanties for the mansions in heaven, amen. are too afraid to do that for spiritual renewal to take place in a person's life in a church and a family, there must be that congregational obedience to God's word. And number three, there is a renewal of congregational praise, a renewal of congregational praise. The foundation of the temple had been built. The nails have been hammered in the bricks have been laid. There it is, just the foundation, just the floor, so to speak, you know, there's there's construction all over our area you drive by so there's always being built. And every now and then when you drive by, you'll see just the foundations built. It's just the beginning. It's really It's nowhere near being complete. It's just the beginning of but they celebrate, over just little wins, little bit costly. Obedience. Look in verse 11, they saying responsively, praising, giving thanks to the Lord saying, For He is good for his steadfast love endures forever toward Israel. This is a refrain from Psalm 118. They're singing directly from scripture of what the Lord has done. And this is what we should be singing. And we're very careful about the songs you pick out at 830 and 11 o'clock, we don't want to be singing about ourselves all the time, we wanted to be singing about what God has done in our lives, what he's done. We sang those songs today. What God has done for us, and that's what they're saying, God has done this. Now, these are people who've been away from their homeland for generations now. Some had never even seen their homeland. And they're celebrating with just the foundation being laid. It says in verse 11, that the people shouted, with a great shout, when they praise the Lord. Because the foundation of the house the temple was laid. You have seen, you have shouting, they're both appropriate responses to worship. This is why we even say, Amen. This is why we even clap when we worship. This is why we cheer sometimes even in here, because it is appropriate. We see God's people doing it. First 12. But many of the priests and the Levites, and heads of fathers houses old men who had seen the first house they had seen the first temple. They wept. When they saw the foundation, this house being laid, the mini shattered for joy. Some of the old timers they remembered the first temple, which was magnificent. When they see the foundation being laid, they they wept. Think about these men had memories of the temple when they were 789 10 years old, seeing the magnificence of this temple, seeing what it was, and then they saw it destroyed. And they saw the horrors of war. They saw people they knew killed and raped and pillaged and people's eyes gouged out. And people being dragged away to captivity. They saw the horrors of war. They knew what it was like beforehand, they saw the horrors of the war, and now they're back and they see the foundation and then we they cry, they shout, because of how good God was to them. Amen. And they wept loudly because their spirit is being renewed. Their worship worshiping, they're being obedient. They're praising God. For what he's doing, good verse 13. It said it was so loud, the crying and the shouting was so loud, that the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout, from the sound of the people's weeping. For the people shouted with a great shout in the sound was heard far away when I was a young boy. And you're nine years old. My parents first actually just sold this house. They built it 30 something years ago, when I lived out in northeast Colombia, there was nothing out there but a gas station and some houses and Spring Valley High School. And on Friday nights, I could pull my window up, and I could two miles away. It was the high school maybe longer, and I can hear the band plan. I can hear the crowd. When something would happen, I can hear the crowd cheering. That's just a few 1000 people. How many people were here, when they laid the foundation, we know from future readings that that there's a lot of problems building this temple, they quit, they came back there's a lot of there was a lot of obstacles that will happen to in your life when there's spiritual new fate, you're going to face obstacles. But this little win, of, of putting the foundation down start was celebrated so much that people can hear it. From far away years, decades of being in this spiritual desert. Finally, a few drops of water on the ground. Praising God, I don't think that we celebrate enough God's people. And you don't celebrate enough maybe in your own life. When you do, do it right. You know, we know we're sinners. We're constantly being told, and we need to repent of our sin and trust the Lord. But do you celebrate? When you see God's goodness in your life, when there's obedience? We should do that more often. Amen. You should do that with people in your life, with your family, with your friends, when you see them, renewing their lives and you see them growing closer to the Lord, tell them celebrate. Because when we celebrate the little wins, when the big times come when the big problems come. We can rely on God even much more than we can and we see this happen and we've we praise God, when we're doing his work. We're going to have a time of invitation here in a minute. Maybe today you thought there's some things in my life that are not right. I'm unsure what to do or how to change. Maybe you just need to come down to the steps today and say, Lord, help me be renewed Lord, forgive me my sin. Help me trust you, Lord, help me be renewed. Maybe you just need some prayer, I'd be glad to pray for you. You don't have to go into all the details about what you need. You can if you'd like but I can pray for you. Or maybe you've never been renewed, you never experienced renewal. Because you never had no. You never been saved. In the first place. You've never trusted Jesus Christ. as your Lord and Savior you'd never turn from your sin and say, Lord, create a new heart in me feel good. Let me be born again. Maybe you've never made that decision today is the day where you can do it. Heavenly Father, we thank you so much. For being able to come in here and worship you and and to sing and shout and amen and and all these things that we do, Lord. We think that it's appropriate for us to show emotion or all across the world or the country last night 1000s of people were shouting and losing their voice over a game. Below this is real life. This is as eternal consequences. And are we shouting? Are we thanking you for what you've done for us? Let us not take for granted, Lord, that we have a place to come and worship every single Sunday. These Israelites had nowhere for decades, generations. Let's never take for granted 112 East Main Street moncks corner we're blessed people were blessed congregation. And Lord, we thank you for that. So as we close our time together today or if there's one that needs you to come into the life in a special way and in a way of renewal today. They would open their heart to you. We love you. We ask these things