Building for God

I have loved you with an everlasting love and have continued to love you with an everlasting love and have continued to love you with an everlasting love and have continued to love you with an everlasting love and have continued to love you with an everlasting love and have continued to love you with an everlasting love and have continued to love you with an everlasting love and have continued to love you with an everlasting love and have continued to love you with an everlasting love and have continued to love you with an everlasting love and have continued to love you with an everlasting love and have continued to love you with an everlasting love and have continued to love you with an everlasting love and have continued to love you with an everlasting love and have continued to love you with an everlasting love and have continued to love you with an everlasting love and have continued to love you with an everlasting love and have continued to love you with an everlasting love and have continued to love you with an everlasting love and have continued to love you with an everlasting love and have continued to love you with an everlasting love and have continued to love you with an everlasting love and have continued to love you with an everlasting love and have continued to love you with an everlasting love and have continued to love you with an everlasting love and have continued to love you with an everlasting love." Lord. So arise, arise and let's go up to Zion. Arise, arise and let's go up to Zion.

Arise to the Lord our God. I have loved you with an everlasting love and have continued my faithfulness to you. Again I will build you and you shall be built and I will be your God says the Lord.

So arise, arise and let's go up to Zion. Arise, arise and let's go up to Zion. Arise to the Lord our God.

Again you will adorn yourself with the timbrels and go forth in the dance of the merry makers. So plant your vineyards and you will enjoy the fruit and I will be your God says the Lord. So arise, arise and let's go up to Zion.

Arise, arise and let's go up to Zion. Arise to the Lord your God. Now the reading this morning is taken from the book of Ezra, the ninth chapter, and the heading is Ezra's prayer about intermarriage.

After these things had been done, the leaders came to me and said, the people of Israel, including the priests and the Levites, have not kept themselves separate from the neighboring peoples with their detestable practices like those of the Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, Ammonites, Moabites, Egyptians and Amorites. They have taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves and their sons and have mingled the holy race with the peoples around them. And the leaders and officials have led the way in this unfaithfulness.

When I heard this I tore my tunic and cloak, pulled hair from my head and beard and sat down appalled. Then everyone who trembled at the words of the God of Israel gathered around me because of this unfaithfulness of the exiles and I sat there appalled until the evening sacrifice. Then at the evening sacrifice I rose from my self-abasement with my tunic and cloak torn and fell on my knees with my hands spread out to the Lord my God and prayed.

Oh my God, I am too ashamed and disgraced to lift up my face to you, my God, because our sins are higher than our heads and our guilt has reached to the heavens. From the days of our forefathers until now our guilt has been great. Because of our sins we and our kings and our priests have been subjected to the sword and captivity, to pillage and humiliation at the hand of foreign kings as it is today.

But now for a brief moment the Lord our God has been gracious in leaving us a remnant and giving us a firm place in his sanctuary. And so our God gives light to our eyes and a little relief in our bondage. Though we are slaves our God has not deserted us in our bondage, he has shown us kindness in the sight of the kings of Persia.

He has granted us new life to rebuild the house of our God and repair its ruins and he has given us a wall of protection in Judah and Jerusalem. But now, oh our God, what can we say after this? For we have disregarded the commands you gave through your servants the prophets when you said the land you are entering to possess is a land polluted by the corruption of its peoples. By their detestable practices they have filled it with their impurity from one end to the other.

Therefore do not give your daughters in marriage to their sons or take their daughters for your sons. Do not further their welfare or prosperity at any time that you may be strong and eat the good things of the land and leave it to your children as an everlasting inheritance. What has happened to us is a result of our evil deeds and our great guilt.

And yet, our God, you have punished us less than our sins have deserved and have given us a remnant like this. Shall we again break your commandments and intermarry with the peoples who commit such detestable practices? Would you not be angry enough with us to destroy us, leaving us no remnant or survivor? Oh Lord God of Israel, you are righteous. We are left this day as a remnant.

Here we are before you in our guilt, though because of it not one of us can stand in your presence. Amen. I turn in the Word of God to the book of Ezra and let's spend some moments coming to grips with the message of this rather important book which has something to say to Christian people like ourselves, although it is written many centuries before the birth of our Lord Jesus.

I want to direct your attention particularly to the ninth and tenth verses, or rather the ninth verse exclusively of chapter nine. Let me read it again in the NIV. It's also a wonderful translation in the authorized version.

Though we are slaves, our God has not deserted us in our bondage. He has shown us kindness in the sight of the kings of Persia. He has granted us new life to rebuild the house of our God and repair its ruins.

And he has given us a wall of protection in Judah and Jerusalem. It's not often, alas, that preachers direct the attention of congregations to these little books, Ezra and Nehemiah and Esther, but this little triplet of volumes that you find encased in our Old Testament, they have a great deal to say to people like ourselves. Maybe today you've come into the tab and not only have you found it difficult to engage in praise, but you've found it perhaps difficult to take your moorings as a Christian because, well, things haven't gone right with you in your discipleship.

To quote the lovely, though perhaps sad words of the Book of Common Prayer, you have done those things you ought not to have done and you have left undone those things you ought to have done, and you find that within yourself there's no good thing. Well, if that's your problem, I'm glad you came this morning because I think that you can gain some aid from the book of Ezra. You see, Ezra is a man whose name literally in the Hebrew means help, and his concern was to bring help to a congregation which so desperately needed direction and encouragement in those days many centuries ago.

And Ezra is a helper who can direct his message to aid the people that come within the compass of his ministry. And what I want by God's grace this morning, and I say this humbly and sincerely, is to be God's Ezra to you, to offer you help if you find yourself in the circumstances that I've already described. There's a reason for us today to look into the book of Ezra.

Ezra was one of the leading characters as far as Jewish assessment was concerned in Old Testament history, second only to Moses, and he left his stamp upon the children of Israel. And he has to say things that were not only applicable in those days, but as I shall seek to show you for us today. So, let's have a look directly at the first couple of sentences in that verse that I've just brought to your attention, and let's think through what I would call facts which are inescapable.

Facts which are inescapable, and actually there are many, but there are two that spring into focus in the opening part of the ninth verse. Though we are slaves, our God has not deserted us in our bondage. Yes, they were slaves.

And there are two things that Ezra brings together in this opening statement, the servitude of the people of God and the fortitude of the God of the people. We are slaves. Any preacher whose worth is salt, any preacher whose help to his congregation is an honest preacher.

Now, one of the problems in the days of the ministry of our Lord Jesus is that the preachers were culpably dishonest. I say that with due measure to the words that I'm using, but it is quite true. I mean, here you find the men who denied the ministry of the Lord Jesus, and they take Him to task in regard to them ever being enslaved in the history of the Jews.

In the eighth chapter of John's Gospel, for example, in the thirty-third verse, they answered the Lord Jesus, We are Abraham's descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free? Well, I mean, that was one of the daftest comments in the whole of history, wasn't it? We're not enslaved by anyone. What were the Romans doing? They weren't exactly guests in Jerusalem.

The Jews were under the jackboot of Rome. But you see, a preacher can become so fooled in wanting to be optimistic, he can be so patriotic that he moves away, he veers away from the truth, but not a man like Ezra. And so he engages in a prayer of confession and contrition before the Lord God, Jehovah, and he brings together facts which are inescapable.

The servitude of the people. We are slaves. Aye, and indeed they were.

Slaves to the Babylonian Empire. Slaves now to the empire that had taken over the Persian Empire, as they had been slaves in the day of Moses, when a pharaoh had come into prominence who did not know Joseph. And these people, they smartered under their slavery.

And in one sense, my friend, that describes your condition. It either describes it as it is now, or it reminds you what it used to be. You see, the gospel is addressed to slave people, to people who are under the tyranny of sin.

That's the reason why the gospel message is so unacceptable to modern man. He doesn't like to be reminded of this. He likes to feel in the philosophy of the twentieth century that he's the master of his fate, the captain of his own soul.

But the Bible says he's not. He's in servitude. Here are facts which are inescapable in the twentieth century.

But not only the servitude of man is something that we need to latch onto, but the fortitude of God. You see, here Ezra brings both things into play. On the one hand, we're slaves.

On the other hand, there's God who hasn't deserted us in our bondage. He's not dealt with us according to the way that we have dealt with Him. Now, the interesting thing about God is this, that when He sees people who are slaves and who recognize the terrible situation in which they find themselves and they ask for His help, He responds.

You remember, and I was reading it earlier on this morning in my private devotions, you remember how in Exodus and chapter 2 you get these verses recording God's reaction to the groanings of the people of Israel as they are slaves in Egypt. God heard their groanings and He remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them.

You see the two being brought together again, the servitude of the people and the fortitude of God. Now, that's not just in Old Testament, Maxim. You discover it in the New Testament.

Here is our Lord and He delineates. He tells a story of two people going into the temple. One is a Pharisee, a professional, a clergyman, and the other is a tax collector.

In those days, a crook, one who was a compromiser, a quizzling, one who identified himself with the Roman authorities, though he be of Jewish blood. And Jesus said of the latter that as he went into the temple and he didn't feel that he had any right to be there and stayed right at the back, not approaching the holy place at all, he beat his fists upon his breast as though he loathed the sin that was there, and he said, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. And Jesus said that contrasting his prayer and the one of the clergyman, it was the former and the latter that was heard.

You see, as a man, he recognizes his servitude. He also has some understanding, meager though it be, that God's ears are not deaf to someone who is in the slavery of sin. And once again, you see, these two facts that are found in this verse of Scripture are brought together.

Though we are slaves, our God has not deserted us in our bondage. Now, you say, well, it's all right, preacher, you saying that, but you see, my problem is not that I'm a sinner. I recognize that, but it's not that I'm a new Christian.

My problem is this, and therefore I'm arguing that your statement can't help me this morning. My problem is that I've been a Christian for decades, and I've let him down, and I find myself like the prodigal son. I'm out in the far city, and I don't feel that I'll ever get back to spiritual health.

Now, let me remind you of this, and it's a precious word, that these people on whose behalf Ezra is praying are in similar condition. You see, it's not that they've just responded to the evangelists. They understood it in those days.

These were the people of God, referred to in the second verse in almost a unique reference in the Old Testament, referred to as the holy race, and they had done anything but run that race. They'd been anything but what that adjective indicates, holy. And as Ezra is praying on their behalf, he's praying for people like you and me, those who were believers but have fallen short of what God intended them to be.

These are the inescapable facts, my friend, that in the ninth chapter, whether you like it or not, there is a mirror of many of us here at the tab. And yet in one sense, I say whether you like it or not, in one sense I like it very much. Why? Because here is hope.

Do you remember the story of Jonah, the sort of reluctant preacher who eventually finds himself in the belly of a great fish and then discovers once more that as the fish regurgitates him and he's back on the seashore, he's got a new ministry. And in the book of Jonah you get these remarkable words for which one thanks God that they're included in the sacred canon of Scripture. The Word of God came to Jonah the second time.

As Peter heard the Word of Jesus, as Jesus approached him on the seashore of Galilee and said, Peter, follow me, and Peter denies the Lord Jesus in that terrible evening when he's accosted by three of the servants of the high priest. But you remember that on the seashore of Galilee, some weeks later, Jesus has another encounter with Peter and the Word of God comes to Peter a second time. These are the facts that are inescapable.

Not just the servitude of the people of God when they often go into a sort of bondage, but the fortitude of the God of the people who has not deserted us in our bondage. So here you see I've got something that helps you. In the book of Ezra, here is this man in a prayer of intercession, one of the best in the Bible, and his prayer is concentrated with good teaching that's applicable for you and for me.

Facts which are inescapable. And that brings me to say something else, to direct your attention to founts that are inexhaustible. What do I mean? Well, look towards the heart of my verse, will you? He has shown us kindness in the sight of the kings of Persia, the kindness or the mercy of God.

He has granted us new life, or as the Authorized Version puts it, He has granted us a reviving. What are these deep, never-failing wells of God's blessing? Well, I've indicated two. There are more.

The Lord God has a fount where He deals with sin. There is a fount where sins are washed away. There is a place where night is turned to day.

Now what these people need is not only confronting with facts which are inescapable, but they need to be taken to the source of supplies of blessings which are inexhaustible and which are appropriate to their need. He has shown us kindness in the sight of the kings of Persia. Kindness and mercy are synonymous terms.

The one means the other. It's as simple as that. Somebody has said that God has two hands.

His right hand is the hand of mercy, and His left hand is the hand of justice. And I thank God that His bias is towards His right hand. You see, I don't want God to grip me with His hand of justice.

Why not? Well, you see, the stimulus of justice is the law. I cannot object to someone applying the law if I've broken the law, and I have broken the law of God. So if I say to this great God, Lord, show me justice, He answers, that's precisely what I'm prepared to show and will show to every son of Adam.

But I'm scared of the justice of God. Why? Because I have broken the thing that stimulates His justice, law. No, I don't want the left hand of God, I want the right hand of God.

And this is what He directs to the people in Ezra's day, and He directs to us. He has shown us kindness, mercy. Mercy is stimulated by grace.

You see, justice is what I deserve. I can't argue against the justice of God. It's what He ought to, on the basis of His law, direct towards me.

But mercy has got nothing to do with justice. Mercy is stimulated by grace. It's got nothing to do with what I deserve, but it's got everything to do with the personality of the one who dispenses it.

Now, here is Ezra, and he's praying for these people, and he's reminding himself of the unusual, the uncommon grace of God. He has shown us mercy in the sight of the kings of Persia. What a position, what a place to direct your mercy.

But this is what God does, you see. In a flash of His grace, He demonstrates His kindliness towards the chosen people, the elect of God, in most unlikely circumstances. You see, the kings of Persia, they've now been at the forefront of political history for some decades.

There's been Darius, now there's Xerxes, and these men, they're on the throne. And God has done something remarkable. You see, here is His enslaved people, not just enslaved because they've been removed from the Promised Land, but enslaved because they're under the tyranny of their self-inflicted sin.

I mean by that that they have chosen to go against God, and as a result, well, they are receiving the due reward of their infidelity, of their unfaithfulness. But it's in the sight of these kings that God shows kindness. And so He changes the heart of Darius.

He changes the heart of Xerxes, the one who succeeded from Darius. You say, what do you mean? I don't understand you. Well, no you don't, because, well, perhaps you're not so knowledgeable of political history at this time.

You see, the Babylonian Empire, that's gone the way of the predictions of the prophets. Nebuchadnezzar and his bunch then, well, they've just faded into history. They felt that they were as God, and God just eclipsed them.

He just wiped them right out. And the religious policy of the Babylonian Empire was to take people from their homelands and to stop them worshiping the God of their fathers. That was completely reversed by the Persians who took over from the Babylonians.

With the knock-on effect, with the consequence that was beneficial for the Jews, that at this time, Darius and Xerxes allowed the Hebrews to come back from bondage to the land of Palestine, to Jerusalem, and moreover, gave these people the wherewithal to reconstruct the temple and the city that had been brought to ruins by the Babylonians. Now, this wasn't just capriciousness on the part of the kings. It wasn't that they decided to change their policy.

No, the Bible tells us that the whole bunch of politicians of today and yesteryear are still within the sovereign power of God. I find that tremendous. Thank God that the lot who are controlling our world, so to speak, in the United Nations are not fully in control, that behind that there is God.

I speak with respect, but having read some of the backgrounds of the lives of some of these men and women, I have very little confidence in their abilities at the human level, even though they be very good people, some of them. But it's within the providence of God that kings reign, as Jesus said to Pilate when he had to pull him short, if it was not by God's grace, you wouldn't even be here, the idea that you rule, that Rome is supreme. That, Jesus indicates, is an utter nonsense.

The power of this world is still invested in the authority of God, even though there seems to be evidence to the contrary at a superficial level. And so this great God, he bends the hearts of the kings, and in so doing, he shows great kindness to his own people in the sight of the kings of Persia, and he brings them back unto their own land. You see, the mercy of God is quite incredible.

Don't you find it yourself? Amazing grace, how sweet the sound. How does that hymn continue? That saved a wretch like me. Do you really believe that hymn? It saved a wretch like you? That's precisely what you are, that's precisely what I am, and the amazing grace of God is the way that he reaches out his right hand of mercy, and he brings us to himself, the fount of God's mercy, a fount that's inexhaustible.

But not only the fount of his mercy is open to those Hebrew people, he has shown us kindness in the sight of the kings of Persia, and he has granted us new life to rebuild the house of our God, granted us new life. Now, isn't that what you want? As the Authorized Version so brilliantly puts it, he gives us a reviving. He gives us a reviving.

Don't you want to be revived? Some of you, you were, you belonged to the Lord years ago, but the first blush of enthusiasm and spirituality has long since been spent. Some of you perhaps knew some rejuvenation more recently, but what you really want as you've moved into 1986 is a reviving. And there is a fount, not only where mercy is inexhaustible, but the powers of rejuvenation, they always bubble and there is available to you as was the water by, for the woman by Syke as well.

There is a reviving. Oh, breath of life comes sweeping through us. Revive thy church with grace and power.

Revive thy church, the world is waiting. Equip thy church to meet this hour. Now, how do you get a reviving? Now, Ezra should know, shouldn't he, because he's no academic theologian.

A plague on academic theologians, the Bible gives no credibility to them whatsoever. It must be theology in practice or else it falls short of the biblical norm. Well, you see, if you want a reviving, you've got to be desperate.

And Ezra was desperate. He was desperate for the repentance of the people, you see. They'd come back to Israel and they weren't living as they ought to live.

They were engaged in practices which were prohibited in those days. There were marriages that they entered into with those who were not Jews and that was against the determined policy of God at that time. So how does Ezra react? Well, in a very painful fashion as far as he's concerned.

Look at verse three. When I heard this, I tore my tunic and cloak, pulled hair from my head and beard and sat down appalled. I've never had a beard to pull my hair from it, but I imagine those who have would find it rather an uncomfortable thing to engage in.

But my jesting aside, here is a man who means business with the Lord. He prostrates himself on the ground before God. At times he'll lift up his hands before the Lord.

He'll stretch them out in horror as he thinks of the sins of the people. And he doesn't just think of the sins in terms of what that lot are doing. He identifies himself.

He uses a plural pronoun to speak of our sins. Look at verse six in the latter part. Oh my God, I'm too ashamed and disgraced to lift up my face to you, my God, because our sins are higher than our heads and our guilt has reached to the heavens.

Look at the last part of the prayer right in the final verse. Here we are before you in our guilt, though because of it not one of us can stand in your presence. You see, here's a man who's desperate.

He wants to know the continuing of the reviving hand of God upon him. And this sort of thing does not come easily. As Roy Hessian says, revival is not going down the street with a big drum, but going to Calvary with a big sob.

Revival does not come by going down a street with a big drum. In other words, it's not getting jolly. You know, there are occasions when perhaps Christian people feel that simply because there's a release of emotion in the service that the revival has hit us.

Now, it may well be in an accompaniment because I don't see how God can pour out His Spirit upon us without Him in some way enlivening our emotions, but there's more to it than that. For us to know God's power, we are to follow His purity. We are to give Him what He deserves in this area, and this is what Ezra is praying for.

Though we are slaves, our God has not deserted us in our bondage. He has shown us kindness in the sight of the kings of Persia. He has granted us new life to rebuild the house of our God.

Let's look at Acts chapter 3 and verse 19 because there you find a very interesting verse of Scripture. Here is Peter and he's been engaged in a most remarkable manifestation of the power of God. A crippled man has been healed and a large congregation has come around as a result.

And Peter spins around and he addresses the congregation and verse 19 he says, Acts 3, 19, Repent then and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord. Again, you see the prerequisite to these times of refreshing, to this reviving, that your sins may be wiped out. There's no other way.

You say that you really want to know God's presence this year. All right. The answer from Scripture is that God requires of you to walk in His ways.

He can't bless the Israelites if they refuse ethnically to separate from the foreigners in their day. And the principle remains intact today. There is a separation that God calls for from people like you and me.

Not a physical separation, but a spiritual separation. In other words, there are certain things that I will not do because I am His. And if I do them, then I cannot possibly know the reviving in my spirit that I want because a prerequisite to power is purity.

So here we get this marvelous teaching coming through from old Ezra, facts which are inescapable. And then he points us to founts that are inexhaustible. And when we have known the fountain of God's mercy directed towards us, when we have known the fountain of new life, then that enables us to engage in feats which were otherwise unattainable.

Feats which were unattainable. He has granted us new life. Why? Well, to rebuild the house of our God and repair its ruins.

Now these are things that obviously the people were utterly unable to do before. The rebuilding of the house of God, that was the most important thing for the Israelites because the temple of God was a sort of headquarters of Judaism and it lay in ruins at the time of Ezra engaging in this prayer. Now you and I, let's put this through into New Testament language, you and I have been called to do what? Well, to build the house of God.

No, obviously we're not talking about a building. I'm in a plague on the English who always believe that going to church is something that you do on a Sunday. You don't go to church on a Sunday.

This building is not the church. There are still people who think that. How clearly do I have to teach this from the pulpit? This is a building and it remains a building.

It becomes a church when you come. May have nice architecture but it's pretty gloomy on a Monday morning if you're getting here early actually in this sanctuary. And the idea of being here on its own doesn't exactly give me a great thrill but the idea of being here with you, well that's marvelous.

Why? Because you're part of the church. You don't go to church, you bring the church to the building, right? And the church expands as people are brought to a knowledge of Jesus as their Lord and Savior. Now this is what we're engaged in.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians, I'm a master builder. What did he mean? That he put down the foundation of the Christian faith? Not a bit. He was a good theologian.

He wouldn't say such a nonsensical thing. The foundation is Jesus Christ and it's a great foundation. Far better foundation incidentally than these people literally knew in Ezra chapter 3 for example at the end of that chapter.

The people are in Jerusalem and they're praising the Lord, at least some of them. The young people are praising the Lord and the older people aren't. And there's reason actually.

The young people are praising the Lord because the foundation's been put for the new temple halfway through verse 11. And all the people gave a great shout of praise to the Lord because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. But not the oldies.

Not because they were doer and unable to lift a hallelujah but because they remembered what the foundation used to be of the previous building that many of the older priests and Levites and family heads who had seen the former temple wept aloud when they saw the foundations of this temple being laid. Because you see the current foundations were not comparable with the previous foundations. And so in verse 13 you've got this opposite reaction.

The shouts of joy and the shouts of weeping. But nobody really knew whether it was shouting or whether it was weeping or joyful because so much noise was being made. Now what I am saying is, my brother and sister if you follow me at this point, we don't have the same predicament because we don't put in the foundation.

The foundation is there. No other foundation can be laid than that which is laid, Jesus Christ. But we're still builders called to build a church of God here in Worthing, here in Sussex, here in England.

And how do you become a good builder? Well by doing what Ezra has been teaching us in these verses. By waiting upon the Lord, by realizing that God has come to us. He's matched his fortitude with our servitude.

He's taken us to the inescapable or the inexhaustible founts of blessing. And as a result of the reviving you see, he makes us active. We don't just have a sort of spiritual get-together, an emotional high that has got no practical throughput.

Rather he has granted us a reviving in order to rebuild the house of God and repair its ruins. My good friend George Verver, who is not known internationally for discretion, he sometimes said that there is a plague in evangelicalism of the creation of bless-me-clubs. That's people all coming together, having a whale of a time, but there's no real concern for the lost.

And he's right. He's right in using that term. The reviving is so that you can build a church, extend the church, make it better, make it bigger.

And not only to rebuild the house, but to repair what's already there. To rebuild the house of our God and repair its ruins. What's your life like, my friend? I take this personally.

You've been on the building site when there's been a lot of rain and as a result there's mud. The whole thing's in a bit of a mess. It's a quagmire, to use a word I employed when I was praying.

You know, some people, their spirituality is like that. As far as the method is concerned, it's in a mess. It's true, isn't it? Be quite honest.

I'm not saying everyone, but I am challenging you as I challenge myself. Some people, their Bible reading is a mess. They don't read their Bible as you would put up a building on a building site where there's a plan and so on and so forth.

You know, you dip in any old way. It doesn't really matter. Take pot luck, lucky dip sort of approach to the Bible.

That's not the way to repair what might go wrong in your personality. Some people's prayer life is in a mess. It's not that they don't pray, but they don't have any discipline.

They have no order about it. And as a result, spiritually they deteriorate. They're bound to.

Some people's control of finance is in a mess. You know, it just depends if there's an emotional pull from the pulpit, then well, it'll tug the strings of their wallet. I'm not speaking just about the tab itself or the tab congregation.

I'm speaking generally about the Christian church worldwide. Now, when these disciplines are awry, then the net result is that there is a ruin in the lives of people. It's not that they don't stand or count for Jesus at all.

It's that they don't stand, they don't count as they ought to be. There is a great distinction between them, as is obvious between a house that stands well and a house that is dilapidated. And Ezra is concerned that the house of God is built well and the ruins have been repaired.

For this reason, he grants the reviving. So you say you've had a spiritual experience that has really helped you. All right, I say, let's have a look at your personality and show where the ruins have been repaired.

And you don't need to speak about it yourself. We'll know. We'll know just how this recovery is going in God's grace.

And then finally, we're told that God has put a wall of protection around Judah and Jerusalem. That word wall, too late to go into the technicalities of this, is actually metaphorical. It's not a literal wall.

It can't be from the word that's used in the Hebrew. It's the idea of God having such an interest in this re-emergence of the temple and the city of Jerusalem that he protects it as he protects men and women who mean business with him, who are concerned to see their lives count for the Lord. Well, let's conclude.

Here is Ezra. What does the name Ezra mean? Help. Why do the people need help? Well, they needed help because of the way that they were living in those days.

And it was a way that was incompatible with the way that they ought to live. And so Ezra brought to them certain facts which were inescapable. You remember what I said they were? And then he directed them to founts that were inexhaustible.

And then having introduced them to these, he speaks about feats which were previously unattainable, the building of the temple, the repair of the ruins. May you work this out in your own experience as you've listened to Ezra being repeated and applied to us in 1986. And God bless you as you do so.

Let's sing. And let's sing about the church, 516? 515. Glorious things of thee are spoken, Zion, city of our God.

Let's sing this with the context that I've just found out in front of you and make each verse meaningful as we repeat it together. 515. Glorious things of thee are spoken, Zion, city of our God.

Let's sing this with the repeat it together. 515. Glorious things of thee are spoken, Zion, city of our God.

Let's sing together. 515. Glorious things of thee are spoken, Zion, city of our God.

Let's sing that we here are part of that city and our concern is to know a reviving within our own hearts. We thank you Lord for the inescapable facts that you match your faithfulness with our unfaithfulness, your ability with our impotence. We praise you Father God for the inexhaustible founts of blessing that are there for the likes of us to imbibe.

We praise you that as a result of this we are enabled by your grace to engage in feats which otherwise would have been unattainable. Now help us to do this and may we know your covering as the mountains around about Jerusalem. May the hands of God be upon us and this we ask for his sake.

Amen.