Ezra and Recovery

I want to read with you please a few verses from the book of Ezra and we'll read in chapter 9. The book of Ezra and chapter 9. Ezra chapter 9 and we'll read in verse 1. Now when these things were done the princes came to me saying the people of Israel and the priests and the Levites have not separated themselves from the people of the lands. Verse 3. And when I heard this thing I rent my garment and my mantle and plucked off the hair of my head and of my beard and sat down astonished. Then were assembled unto me everyone that trembled at the words of the God of Israel because of the transgression of those that had been carried away and I sat astonished until the evening sacrifice and at the evening sacrifice I arose up from my heaviness and having rent my garment and my mantle I fell upon my knees and spread out my hands unto the Lord my God and said oh my God I am ashamed and blushed to lift up my face to thee my God for our iniquities are increased over our head and our trespasses grown up unto the heavens since the days of our fathers have we been in a great trespass unto this day and for our iniquities have we our kings and our priests been delivered into the hand of the kings of the lands to the sword to captivity and to a spoil and to confusion of face as it is this day.

And now for a little space grace has been showed from the Lord our God to leave us a remnant to escape and to give us a nail in his holy place that our God may lighten our eyes and give us a little reviving in our bondage. And we do trust that God will graciously bless the reading and the consideration of his good word both tonight and over the weekend in his will. As you read the word of God it is always important to take note of time markers things which are said to indicate the passage of time and you will see in verse number one as we read together the verse begins the chapter begins now when these things were done.

And we would need to ask ourselves what things what things have been done. Well a great deal had happened in the course of Ezra and the small company relatively small company that came with him out of Babylonian captivity back to Jerusalem. You will remember that the first recovery at the end of the 70 year captivity the first recovery had taken place well about 77 or 8 years.

Interesting this is the 77th conference of the assembly here at Garnevillo. A lot happens in that kind of a time and it was exactly that kind of time span since the first recovery under the leadership of Zerubbabel and of Joshua. It was a much bigger recovery in those days.

Probably when Zerubbabel and Joshua came from Babylon to rebuild the house of God at Jerusalem about 50 or 60,000 Jews came up under that recovery and of course not everything went smoothly. They laid the foundation of the temple but then because of the work of the adversary the work ceased for the best part of 15 years. God raised up men like Haggai, Zechariah, men of God came along with the word of God and that had an impact upon the people of God and they rose up and they worked again and eventually the house was complete.

But then God was working in the heart of Ezra a scribe. He was a priestly man and he was also a scribe but above all else he was a man we read earlier in the book who had prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord and to do it and to teach it to the people of Israel. Good when God raises up men who have a burden and a desire for the well-being of God's people.

But what I'm more interested in this evening, what I'm thinking about more in the passage we have read is not so much the responsibility of the men God raised up to lead and to preach, great though that work was, but the opening verse we read this evening says now when these things were done. Not so much the actual journey that was undertaken by Ezra and those who came with him, not so much the things they brought with them to Jerusalem, interesting though those things were, but the thing is Ezra's heart was ultimately toward the people of God. That was his real burden.

Sure for the last four or five months of necessity he had been involved in the practicalities of them coming from Babylon to Jerusalem and bringing with them many tons of precious gold and silver, but once those things had been done, once those responsibilities had been discharged, his original burden of heart was still there to seek the law of the Lord, to do it, and to teach others. And so for four or five months since he'd been in Jerusalem, he'd been doing that. He'd been teaching the people of God.

And now at the beginning of chapter nine, there was a breakthrough. After these things, when these things were done, when Ezra had been patiently and faithfully bringing the word of God to the people of God, when these things were done, there was a result. And the princes of the people came to Ezra and they said, you know, we've been wrong.

We've been wrong because, well, both we and the people whom we are seeking to lead have not separated themselves from the people of the land. Good, isn't it? When the word of God brings conviction to the hearts of the people of God. And if we were to be having a series of gospel meetings, and we were having prayer before those gospel meetings, we can be sure of this.

There would be a lot of very earnest prayer that God would graciously, through the spirit of God and his ministry, bring conviction to the hearts of men and women who need Christ as Savior. We know that conviction is what ultimately will bring about conversion. It's that conviction that will cause sinners to take their place as sinners before a righteous God and make confession.

All these things we believe, and if they were gospel meetings we were going to have, that's how we would be praying. But God willing, we're going to be having meetings for the teaching of the word of God. For the saints of God to be taught the word of God.

But I believe with all my heart we should have the same burden. We should have the same desire before our God that the presentation of the word of God to the people of God would bring about conviction. That there would be a genuine willingness on the part, not just of those who come to preach, but of those who come to listen.

A willingness of heart to be challenged, to be convicted, to have our lives measured against the inflexible standard and authority of the word of God. We see the need for conviction in the lost. But there's a need for conviction in the hearts of the people of God.

Seventy-seven or eight years before, there'd been a great recovery. Tremendous jubilation, tremendous praise had been offered to God when the foundation of this replacement temple had been laid. But over the years, complacency had set in.

There might have been those old enough to look back and say, you know, we can remember the days when Haggai came. Boy, that, you know, he spoke straight from the hip. There was no misunderstanding.

You know, when Haggai preached, he hit you right between the eyes. And there'll be those who remember that. And others might chip into the conversation and say, do you remember though when Zachariah came? Do you remember his ministry? Do you remember how he had presented to us the thought of a coming kingdom? Of the Messiah in glory? Of the one whose right it is to rule and to reign, establishing his kingdom upon earth? Do you remember how he taught us how the Gentiles would be blessed? And to think we had a part in this.

We had been part of that recovery from Babylon. We've rebuilt the house of God. And this man came and he gave us ministry about the future of the whole thing.

But the nature of the heart being what it is, complacency had set in again. And though things seemed to be going on okay there in Jerusalem, the temple was finished. There was still going to be a need for a wall to be built and for the city to be rebuilt.

And that would all happen 13 or 14 years after Ezra had come up. Nehemiah would be stirred up in heart to come up and rebuild these things. But so far so good.

The house was there. The priesthood had been re-established. And the sacrifices were being made.

But Ezra had a burden. And he simply taught the Word of God. And when he taught the Word of God, the people of God were convicted.

And their conviction was this. We have not separated ourselves from the people of the lands. To become like the people of the lands, as far as the Jew was concerned, was to have forgotten the distinctiveness of their calling.

To have forgotten the practical implications of being God's chosen people. We could have gone into Jerusalem at that time and spoken to any of those people there and said, are you a Jew? Yes, I'm a Jew. Tell me about your history.

Tell me about your calling. And he would have had it all there at his fingertips. Oh, we're very, very special.

We're God's chosen people. We're the ones of whom God said through Moses to Pharaoh, Israel is my son. Oh, they knew position.

It was all there at their fingertips. But what they had lost was the sense of how that that which was true by position, that which belonged to them by birth, how that that was intended to be worked out in practice. And as a consequence, they had become increasingly more and more like the people whom God had driven out of the land that they had occupied.

The distinctiveness in practice was lost. Are we prepared to be challenged about that, brethren and sisters? Are we prepared to be challenged about that this weekend before our God? We come to conferences for a whole variety of reasons. You can think of them as easily as I can.

I don't need to go through them. But may God genuinely exercise our hearts this weekend and of those who, God willing, will still come. To exercise our hearts that we might not only genuinely hear the voice of God through the word of God, but that we might have a heart willing to respond practically to that which we hear.

Not to go away and kind of grade the ministry and mentally award it points out of 10. But to recognize that in the goodness of God, this is an historic occasion. For the saints at Garnevillo, clearly there is a a feeling of the weight of some history, the weight of heritage.

That is important, isn't it? Do we feel that weight? Younger ones feel the weight of the heritage that has been passed to us? So as God in his goodness gathers us together this weekend, we expect the preachers to be prepared. Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the law of the Lord. But forgive me for speaking bluntly.

I tend to do that from time to time. The preachers expect the audience to be prepared as well. Prepared to give the word of God its due weight, due consideration, so that the word of God which is so wonderfully wonderfully able through the ministry of the Holy Spirit to meet the immediate needs of all who are gathered.

Let's give it its place. Let's individually wait upon God that he might speak to us, speak to me this weekend through the ministry of the word. When these men came to Ezra and said, your ministries had an effect upon us, you know that that dear man, he didn't go away and beat his chest, but he went away and he rent his garment and his mantle, plucked off the hair of his head and of his beard, and sat down astonished.

Not so much at the fact that the word of God had had an effect, that's why he had preached it. But something, something wonderful was happening here in Jerusalem. There was coming into place a collective acknowledgement of sin against God.

Something they had looked upon lightly. Something they had not really given consideration to. After all, they were God's people.

They were in God's place. They had God's house. They were the people of the recovery.

But gradually over the years, sin had come in and it hadn't been recognized as such until on this day the word of God was brought to bear upon it. And the word of God exposed the failings of the people of God and the enormity of it dawned upon them. And this godly leader, under whose ministry the thing had been exposed, he didn't strut around saying, look at the effect of my ministry.

Not at all. He prostrated himself before God. And I like the fact that he said in verse four, he sat astonished until the evening sacrifice.

The way it appeals to me is this. Genesis chapter one says the evening and the morning were the first day. The evening and the morning were the second day.

We tend to think of evenings as the end of something. But the Bible says no, they're the beginning of something. An evening and a morning makes up a day.

The evening is the beginning of something. And the evening sacrifice, that burnt offering placed upon the altar for the pleasure of God. It speaks about the beginning of something new.

And Ezra sat in this state of astonishment and heaviness and affliction of soul until the evening sacrifice. Until that burnt offering was offered and its fragrance ascended for the pleasure of God. And at that point, he said, I arose and having rent my garment and my mantle, I fell upon my knees and spread out my hands unto the Lord my God.

He stood up simply to fall on his knees again. And he did all this about the time of the evening sacrifice. What does the burnt offering of Leviticus one teach us most? Surely it teaches us this, that Calvary and the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus was first and foremost for God.

For God's honor, for God's pleasure, for God's glory, to meet God's claims. And as this time of recovery under Ezra's ministry began, he takes us back to the beginning of it all. He takes us back to the evening sacrifice.

Very practical lesson there for you and for me, isn't there? Because times of recovery in my Christian life, times when I'm caused under the hand of God to recognize that complacency has come in, maybe sin has come in in the sense of omission to do that which ought to be done. But as soon as the word of God has its effect and I'm brought to realize I'm not before my God as I should be, where does the true recovery begin? The true recovery begins when I get back to the beginning of it all. And the beginning of it all, for you and for me, was at Calvary.

It was at the cross. The beginning of recovery for Peter. When the Lord said to him, Satan has desired you, you and your brethren, that he may sift you as wheat, but I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not.

And when thou art recovered, strengthen thy brethren. When thou art recovered, recovered to what? Well, Peter made two great confessions recorded there in scripture. And the first of them in Luke chapter 5, when he saw that miraculous draft of fish and the nets were breaking and so forth.

And Peter fell down before his Lord and he said, depart from me for I am a sinful man. But that was a great confession. And the second great confession was in Matthew chapter 16.

Thou art the Christ, the son of the living God. And the Lord says, Peter, when you're recovered, when you come back to the truth of those two things, when you come back to a practical recognition, Peter, that you are a sinful man and I am the Christ of God, then recovery can commence. Would it not be a great conference weekend, my brother, my sister, if it were one where the word of God was brought to effect upon our hearts and our lives so that we were prepared once again to go back to the beginning of it, to see the enormity of divine grace and mercy and love toward us in Christ at Calvary, and to recognize that that's where things began for us.

That's where God in mercy reached us. That's when he set every one of us as members in the body according as it has pleased him. It's a great thing to be saved, isn't it? Great thing to know the Lord Jesus as Savior.

But maybe complacency is set in. This was a remnant that had come back. I don't know what Ezra had been preaching to them.

I know what Haggai and Zechariah preached to them. It's there in their books. And you know, we might have said to Haggai and Zechariah, go easy on these folk.

These are the ones who've come out of Babylon. Don't beat up the good guys. You know, maybe some of your ministry, Haggai and Zechariah, maybe some of your ministry would be better suited to those who didn't bother coming back from Babylon.

But you know, God will never settle for mediocrity. God will never settle for being second best. And if God has put it in our hearts to seek to be faithful, you may well say, well, brother, we're the ones coming to the conference.

We don't need being beaten up. Well, no more you do, of course. And there isn't a preacher here this weekend, God willing, who's any intention at all of beating up the saints.

But it is those who have the desire to do something for God and to make a difference sometimes need to be brought out of complacency, just brought back to the beginning of things and encouraged about it all. So that was a remarkable prayer. I'm just finishing now.

A remarkable prayer on the part of Ezra, where he bowed his head and said, oh my God, I'm ashamed and blushed to lift up my face to thee, my God, for our inequities are increased over our head. Our trespass is grown up unto the heavens. What's he doing? He's doing what Daniel did before him.

He's doing what Nehemiah would do after him. He's identifying himself with the failure and the sins of God's people. He's not taking the place of someone who's aloof and separate from it all.

He's not preaching at the people of God as someone who's arrived. He's bringing the word of God to the people as someone whose heart is prepared and who's prepared to identify himself with the sins of God's people and to make confession and to acknowledge before God that the situation they were in was due to the governmental dealings of God. But he thanks God that for a little moment, grace has been showed from the Lord our God to leave us a remnant to escape, to give us a constant abiding place in his holy place that our God may lighten our eyes and give us a little reviving in our bondage.

Is that not what we want from the conference this weekend, dear saints of God? Genuinely now, it's great to meet the Lord's people, great to have another conference, but oh that we might really feel a burden before our God that he would speak to us, a sense of genuine dependence upon him. And this cry go up from our hearts that our God may lighten our eyes and give us a little reviving. And it was very clear that God was prepared to do that.

What he needed was a response from the people. And as soon as he got that response from the people of humbling themselves, acknowledging their dependence upon him, then God was swift to give them the reviving for which they had prayed. May the Lord grant us these things.

And may we enter the conference weekend genuinely prayerfully. Lord, speak to me. May God bless his word.