Waiting for Ezra | Ezra 7 (Mark Evans)

The sermon is about the man named Ezra in the book of Ezra. It highlights his role as a priest, scribe, and teacher of God's law. The sermon emphasizes the importance of studying, doing, and teaching God's word. It also mentions the mission of Ezra to ensure that God's law is being followed in Jerusalem. The sermon encourages Christians to be students of Scripture, obedient to God's commands, and to testify of God's word. If you have your Bibles do make your way to the book of Ezra As we continue our sermon series through this wonderful book and we are in chapter 7 today of the book of Ezra and To get us going. I will read the first six verses of chapter 7 And these are the words of the true and the Living God Now after this in the reign of Artaxerxes king of Persia Ezra the son of Sariah son of Azariah son of Hilkiah Son of Shalom son of Zadok son of Ahitub son of Amariah son of Azariah Son of Merioth son of Zehariah son of Uzzi son of Bukai son of Abishua Son of Phineas son of Eliezer son of Aaron the chief priest This Ezra went up from Babylonia he was a scribe a skilled in the law of Moses that the Lord the God of Israel had given and The king granted him all that he asked for the hand of the Lord His God was on him and the grass withers and the flower fades Let's pray Heavenly Father we do praise you that your word does indeed endure forever And we do not and so we pray that we would be a people who know what it is to read your word To do your word and only then to testify of your word Grant us a heart for this for we cannot do it of ourselves We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ and by the power of your spirit. Amen Maybe seated Oh Well Samuel Beckett's waiting for Godot is one of the most interesting plays of the 20th century And it's interesting for several reasons but one of the quirkier things about waiting for Godot is that the play really only has three characters and A man named Godot is himself the main character But what's rather quirky is that he never actually shows up he never makes an appearance in the play and so Hence the title waiting for Godot because these characters just stand around waiting for him to show up and he never does And up to this point in the book of Ezra. It may well be titled waiting for Ezra Because you may have noticed if not, feel free to notice it now That we are well over halfway through the book of Ezra and yet the man Ezra has not made an appearance In fact, his name has not even been mentioned a single time And so maybe at some point you've wondered if not, feel free to wonder now Why is it we are seven chapters in and I really have no idea. Who is this man named Ezra? Well fear not because today your anxiety is relieved because we meet today this man named Ezra and in meeting him we encounter something far greater and that is the God of Ezra who is going to work through Ezra to shape his people to be the holy nation that they were once called to be And so we'll walk through this rather a lengthy chapter, but just looking at three simple parts We're gonna look at the man. Secondly, we're gonna look at his mission and thirdly We're gonna look at his method, but through it all we'll see how it is that we are to approach God's Word How are Christians to think about? Use and relate to God's most holy word And so with that let's firstly dive in and let's look at this man Ezra and this is where we'll spend the majority of our time And so verse 1 sets the scene for us notice it reads quote now after this To which we should all say now after what and so just as a refresher We witnessed last week that God prospered Israel such that Israel finally after much toil much tribulation Completed her one and only goal and that was to build God's house That is the temple and we saw it erupted in this festive and joyous celebration upon completion So you might think well close the curtain, right? That's the end of the story and they all lived happily ever after As you read Ezra we find out their work is only just begun We are actually entering now part two of Ezra part one was build the temple Part two you're gonna start to see very much a shift in emphasis And that shift is all about instituting and keeping God's word keeping God's law So, of course mirrors the Christian life, doesn't it? We are a never simply restored from exile That is to say we are never simply set free from We are also set free to right Christians are not merely set free from sin We are also set free to walk in God's ways how many Christians hold the faulty idea that to be forgiven is the fullness of the Christian life and Certainly, yes and amen to that. It is glorious and God's glorious grace that we are forgiven But God's work is not done there No, God has also set you free to walk in his ways and to keep his commandments And Ezra follows exactly that pattern of this freedom from paired with a freedom toward obedience And so to our younger adults, I would just encourage you to notice how that phrase free to obey is so contrary to the world concept of freedom this world that thinks of freedom as self-expression as Being true to yourself The scripture says no no authentic freedom true freedom is to belong to Jesus Christ for freedom Christ has set you free Now you see also in verse 1 we are in the reign of a new King King Artaxerxes and that'll be relevant later on But we can notice now in verse 1 is that we are finally introduced to the man of the hour to Ezra himself and what leaps out in verses 2 through 5 in this lengthy genealogy is that this man is a priest and He's no ordinary priest verse 5 capitalizes the truth that he is downstream from even the very first high priest Aaron himself and you remember the high priest had very unique privileges among other things He was the only person the only priest who was allowed to enter into the most holy place of the temple But you see he's not only a priest Ezra is also a scribe as you see in verse 6 with this good description Notice a scribe as someone stilled in the law of Moses a kind of subject matter expert in God's law Now why it would that be important? Well, remember God's people have been in exile for 70 years seven decades of a very mediocre practice of God's law seven decades of a near famine of hearing the word of the Lord and they Desperately need instruction without God's Word they will become infected with paganism and So too is our great need How did Christ come and how did he teach when he looked upon the people as sheep without a shepherd? Sheep with no guidance no instruction. No help. What did Christ do he? Responded with a teaching that far surpassed the authority of any scribe You remember the conclusion of the Sermon of the Mount that we just read the crowds were astonished the he taught as one having authority not the way their scribes taught and That friends is our great need to sit at the feet of Christ and to hear from him And of course Christ still does that right now today Through his word and by the power of the Spirit and you get this preview of that power in verse 6 with Ezra You see in verse 6 the hand of the Lord God was upon him God carved him out and set him out for that very purpose And so he's going home and you see he's not returning alone He's bringing with him priests Levites singers gatekeepers temple servants as verse 7 says Now just to clarify. This is the second wave of returnees Chapters 1 through 6 you saw the first wave of people who returned home, but not everyone made that trip back to Jerusalem Remember Cyrus gave an open invitation whoever wants to go home You can go home, but not everyone went home and so now here's this second wave of people making that long journey from Babylon all the way back to Jerusalem and Ezra is out in front leading the pack But really where we need to spend our time is in verse 10 and tells us the most important thing About this man Ezra who he is as a man What is his character that we have much to learn from and we find in Ezra three very simple But very profound things that we must aspire to it's this three-quart strand not easily formed But not easily broken and you see those three things in verse 10 firstly He studies the law of the Lord secondly, he does the law of the Lord and only then thirdly he teaches the law of the Lord and So you have this great pattern of godliness for us to follow and for us to imitate Of course chiefly this applies to pastors and elders but secondarily most certainly applies to the heads of a house and Thirdly it of course applies to all Christians in General and so let's just explore these one by one in verse 10. So firstly Ezra studies the Word of the Lord That verb to study means to search to seek out to carefully inquire to examine Ezra did not just wake up one day and have God's law downloaded to his brain No as a scribe he had to diligently repeatedly consistently seek out Understanding from God's Word as my wrestling coach used to tell us there is no shortcut to learning That's true with wrestling. That's so much more true with God's Word So we've got this great model first see for elders as a set of pastors They must keep a close watch on their doctrine. They must be students of Scripture I was surprised to hear the great St. Sinclair Ferguson Once advised young pastors to quote read their Bibles and that may seem pretty obvious But he noted how neglected that actually is the pastors are much more inclined to skim the Bible Find some few feel-good verses to give the warm fuzzies that will tickle the ears of their listeners And so he said no. No, you must take up and read and devour Scripture It was said of John Bunyan the author of pilgrims progress That if you pricked him with a needle his blood would bleed out the Bible So infused was Bunyan with God's Word And so we have here this example for church leaders pastors elders But secondly, it's an example a model for the heads of a house As 1st Corinthians 14 says the head of the house is kind of like a resident theologian Right Paul counsels wives if you have a question go home and you can ask your husband Presumably because your husband has a measure of biblical competence biblical wisdom to answer the question now certainly to be clear teachers are held to a higher standard and So it does not lay the same expectation on a husband as it does say a pastor or an elder But the point very much still remains that if a man Desires to be a good and godly leader of his home of his family. He must be a student of Scripture you must have God's Word stored up in your heart and that further means You must take the many many excuses that will come your way such as I don't have time My job is to provide not to study or I'm just not a reader or I'm too far behind Anyways, I will never catch up and so on and so forth and you must take those excuses Bundle them up and send them back to the hell from which they came and be a student of Scripture and know That God will bless your efforts. God is on your side as it were and he delights and wants to equip you Thirdly, this is of course a great model for all Christians young and old right all Christians are to seek out and to study God's Word Ezra is a unique priest, but remember as Protestants we confess the priesthood of all believers Which means among many things access is wide open for you to study the word know the word To understand the word and you don't need a priest in between you and your Bible Kids this most certainly means you too Kids, here's a great motivation Imagine if I told you kids when you get home in your backyard, there is the most amazing treasure of all It's buried in your backyard. It contains riches and candy and whatever else it is that you like. It's in your backyard What would you do when you get out your shovel? Get out your little pickaxe and you would set to searching and digging to uncover this treasure Well kids hear the truth. You already have an even better treasure. It's right by your side You have God's Word right here with you And so take the shovel of your soul and search out and read God's Word and store it up So the principle is very simple right to study and of course, of course the methods are many right quiet times Devotionals Bible reading plans listening to the God's Word on audio reading with a friend and on and on we go But the main idea is simply study God's Word Now one Discouragement to address and that is that Christians I've noticed often get very discouraged that we forget Far more than we read We don't remember nearly as much as we read Sometimes you may get to the end of the day and go I don't even remember what I read this morning But read with faith Study with faith and pray that God would make his word dwell in you and as an analogy, right? I would guess that no one here remembers what you had for lunch three Tuesdays ago I would guess that no one remembers what you had for dinner two months ago But that's the question did that food? Accomplish its purpose Did that food have nutrients did it nourish you did it help you? And how much more will God's Word not return void if we study if we read? With prayer that God would make his word dwell in our hearts and nourish us Okay, so Ezra firstly he studies God's law secondly you see in verse 10 that he does God's law, right? He's not merely a studier. He is a doer as we just read from James Woe to you if you simply hear God's Word, but do not do it. You would be like the man looks in the mirror Oh, there's a smudge on my face I should remove that turns around and forgets to wipe it off his face as James says woe to that man and woe to us if we hear but do not obey and James encourages us the doer will be blessed in his doing Sometimes out of a fear of legalism. We hesitate to pause and say oh, yes obedience brings blessing But legalism would be obedience deserves blessing obedience merits blessing obedience earns blessing But our Lord Jesus was incredibly clear wasn't he everyone who hears these words of mine and does them? He will be blessed And so one practical thing you can do in your own reading Is it upon sitting down your Bible have a moment and say to yourself? Okay. What am I going to do? What does this section this verse call out for me to do or to not do or to believe or to stop believing to repent from believing right what claim is God's Word making upon my life and summoning me to Then have a second moment and say to yourself. I cannot do this of my own strength We are not moralist we are not humanist so have a second moment to say I Must have the help of the Holy Spirit to do what God has called me to do to be a doer Okay, so our man Ezra. He's a student of Scripture Secondly Ezra is a doer of Scripture thirdly verse 10 tells us that he is a teacher of Scripture And it's no accident that you have that order there of one two three You couldn't for instance skip from step one to step three that would be like grabbing a gun Forgetting to load the gun and then think now I'm going to fire my weapon No, you cannot do that. Right? You cannot say I think I'll study God's Word skip over the submission to God's Word and then I will go on to testify of God's Word right that would be done to one's own destruction and to the peril of one's listeners And so firstly this plainly means that for anyone to teach God's Word they must first be Underneath God's Word in humble submission to its authority rather than standing over it And once again that preeminently applies to church leaders So I Paul tells Timothy persist in these things and you will save not only yourself. You'll save even your hearers Of course, I think we all know that God can and has Used men who do not follow Ezra's example, they might even be contrary to Ezra's example But all that does is establish that our God is in the heavens and he does whatever he pleases And so just as God can and did use Balaam's donkey He can absolutely use a donkey of a man to accomplish his purposes But for an authentic ministry for an authentic testimony It must come from kneeling underneath God's Word rather than standing over it And so with that said it's also knows that the teacher must teach That's the verb. That is the action right teach teach what teach God's Word? And I emphasize that because this has fallen on hard times in our day hasn't it? It said that preaching verse by verse is out of vogue That attention spans are just too short that the Bible is not inherently relevant And so it must be made relevant by man's ingenuity But that of course is to be wiser than God Right. We are God's image You are God's image and you will never be anything other than God's image And what that means is that you are made you are created to live off of Every word that proceeds from the mouth of God To live this book is to become more and more human as an image bear So there's our three-chord strand not easily broken We study the word we do the word and then only then do we testify of the word Now maybe to you you think man that three-step process seems a little dry seems a little formulaic And I accept your rebuke Because you'd be right we skipped over what in many ways is the most important part of all And you see that at the very start of verse 10 So we've seen what Ezra does study do teach But far more importantly look at how he goes about it Verse 10 says that he quote set his heart So the three steps are important this is the crowning achievement of them all That burps a set means to be firm to be established You could imagine concrete curing and hardening such that it cannot be moved or swayed It is to orient the whole soul all of one's being to this commitment I will study do teach God's Word The great author Ernest Hemingway once quipped Writing is easy. All you have to do is sit at your typewriter and bleed And knowing Hemingway like I do I'm sure he meant sit down and bleed out your thoughts your ideas your expressions your emotions But the Christians lot is so much better than that for it is God's Word that is taking up in one's heart and that is what is bled out and Sacrifice and obedience to God So we have an Ezra this great example But of course we always need to look past Ezra with our New Testament eyes and see how this is supremely Summed up in the Lord Jesus Christ For he was the one awakened morning by morning as one who was taught That the Lord Jesus increased in wisdom and favor not just with man But with God that never was there a heart more firmly established To do the will of the Lord that that was his very food And when he opened up to teach never was there a heart more full of love for God and love for his Bride, and so it's to him that we look at the author as the perfecter of our faith So there is Ezra the man let's now look at his mission as verses 11 and 13 Tells us we have yet another King yet another decree art of Xerxes much like Darius He throws all of his weight behind Ezra. Whoever wants to return home. You've got my permission and my backing And for our purposes you can see the essence of his mission in verse 14 It reads this you are sent by the king to make inquiries about Judah and Jerusalem According to the law of your God which is in your hand So we've seen many decrees so far, but all the decrees have been build God's house This decree is different This decree says go and make sure that God's law is being followed in Jerusalem Right. Remember the temple has been completed now comes the question. Are we keeping God's law? But of course in order to keep God's law means you must first have God's law, right? You can't keep what you don't have and so notice this phrase in verse 14 King says this law this word which is in your hand Ezra has a copy of God's law in his hand on his person and That may seem to us moderns as much to do about nothing But just to appreciate this think of what all has been lost so far in exile What did not survive what no longer remains? Well the Ark of the Covenant for instance, which despite whatever the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark says has been lost, right? It's gone The tablets of stone on which were inscribed the Ten Commandments. Those two have been lost You can even think of Aaron's rod right that rod that but that budded that was placed inside of the Ark of the Covenant likely Even before this exile that staff has been lost and did not survive so in other words Key elements of the temple what we would say very sacred elements Slowly over the course of history. They're being stripped away lost Never to be recovered and that is no accident as if God is saying let them go They serve their purposes for a time But my people do not lead need them any longer Because despite everything that was lost this asked the question what remained what endured What do we say every Lord's Day that the grass withers the flower might fade? The man who preaches will come and he will die but what remains is that the word of the Lord endures forever and That is the truth you might all too easily skip over in verse 14 The law is in Ezra's hands and know that at this time You didn't just have a copy of the Bible lying around your coffee table unless you were a millionaire right scrolls vellum papyrus Well, those things were very expensive and labor-intensive and yet you see through it all through exile through deportation through temple destruction God preserved his word from age to age it endured and so too on our day as American Christians we take for granted that we have multiple Bibles Bible at home Bible at work Bible on my phone Bible on my tablet Bible on my device Whether or not it is written on our hearts remains to be seen of the American Church Sinful man knows enough to know that he opposes God's Word and he wants it erased and blotted out And so even as we've heard from our missionaries this month You can go to another country and just having a Bible mentioning a Bible Mentioning Jesus Christ just may well cost you your life and the life of your here And so if you and I must live off of every word that proceeds from God's mouth and we must What confidence is there that I will have God's Word and that it will endure And that's why we confess what we confess this morning that God throughout every age by his singular Providence and care has kept pure his word and will do so from now until Jesus Christ returns As our God has preserved his word in verse 14, it's mission-critical for Ezra It's likely that those first wave of exiles didn't have a copy of God's law and that explains why when Ezra shows up on scene They have already been absorbed into parts of paganism. That is how dependent we are upon God's Word And so this section concludes the king says verses 15 and following bond by oish Take the gold take the silver convert it into whatever you need and the provision through these rulers continues to abound So we've seen Ezra the man we've seen Ezra's mission go and inquire about God's law Thirdly, let's look at his method in verses 21 to the end of the chapter And we're reminded that as easily as a man turns a wrench So does God turn the heart of the king once again to the benefit of his people the king says in verse 21 Whatever Ezra the priest the scribe of heaven, whatever he requires of you Let it be done with all diligence So again, whereas before the decree was to build the temple this decree invest Ezra with power with authority Ezra is like a second Moses coming down from the mountain only this time. It's a Persian mountain He's backed by the Persian Empire And this was something that God does then and this is something that God delights to do now You might know the name King Henry the eighth if you don't know much about King Henry the eighth, you know He was not a paragon of virtue Whoever did his marriage counseling definitely botched that job Because King Henry if you don't know he had six wives and just for good measure. He had two of his wives killed Yet King Henry appointed himself as quote defender of the faith he thought of himself as a defender of Protestantism and Despite himself. He appointed Thomas Cranmer as the archbishop a man who was noble and very useful in the English Reformation As if we have that here Our deserts he says to Ezra go be a reformer and I've got your back and the Persian Empire has your back And so in the following verses he commissioned him and he says whatever you need you got it I'm not even gonna impose taxes on the temple servants Verse 26 he even says that he the king Will enforce judgment for the disobedience of God's law it reads this Whoever will not obey the law of your God and the law of the king let judgment be strictly executed on him so you see we've got this great synchronicity of church and state as Americans we've all been catechized since the time that we were this high to think of the separation of church and state but of course a far better word would be the distinction between Church and state indeed they are very distinct church and state have two very distinct callings of God upon them But of course that is not nearly the same thing as saying the separation or that the church and state are Mutually exclusive or that church and state do not talk to one another as our current confused world would claim That Christianity is not to trespass into the realm of politics Now we see here this great instance of the King saying I will not bear my sword in vain I will be a punisher of evil and I will define evil according to God's Word It's just as Romans 13 says the king is appointed by God as God's servant to be a punisher a tear Not to good conduct, but unto bad conduct And so is the hope of the church this is why it is good and right for the church to implore the state to execute and maintain justice as The church once did for slavery as the church does today go into the state That it would ask that it would cease corrupting our youth with its sexual filth to cite just one example and As the church must continue to do so to be salt and light in a crooked and perverse generation And so as we close let us lay up in our hearts just two uses from Ezra chapter 7 Firstly we do see our approach to God's Word. How does the Christian? How do you approach God's Word you could summarize it in three simple questions to ask yourself Will I study the Word? Will I do the Word and then thirdly and only then would I testify of the Word? And of course before you answer those three questions the even more fundamental basic question is Do I love God's Word? Is it like honey dripping from the honeycomb to me is it more valuable than gold Do you have a heart purpose like Ezra? This has nothing is more precious to me than to guard and keep God's Word Secondly we have at last met Ezra the scribe Ezra the priest But let us meet once again Jesus Christ who is the better Ezra the better scribe For Jesus Christ is the better scribe who brought something new out of that which is old That he not only is the supreme teacher of God's Word. He is the very embodiment of God's Word He is God's Word become flesh to us That he not only obeyed the law in every part It is his righteousness and his righteousness alone that is ours by faith And so Christian when you read the Word when you hear the Word when you do the Word What you are really doing is putting on the Lord Jesus Christ Because the ultimate point of having the Word dwelling you richly is that Jesus Christ himself would dwell in your heart richly So he asked the question. Do you love God's Word? Do you love God's Son in some ways? It's one in the same question. Let us pray Our Gracious God and Heavenly Father, we do praise you that you have given us your most Holy Word And we praise you even more that you would give us a heart purposed to know your word to do your word to love your word Teach his father to be like this man Ezra teach us even more to be like the Lord Jesus Christ Who was awakened morning by morning as one who was taught? That by the Spirit his eyes were opened that he increased in wisdom and favor with God and with man And so we pray to as we are in him That we would know what it is to love the word that we would know what it is to do the word The very works that you have laid before us that by your grace and by your grace alone We might walk in them and so adorn your gospel in Christ's name. We pray. Amen