Father, You are the matchless God. The King of eternity. The great and almighty I AM. And yet astoundingly, the lover of Your people. A God who was pleased even in revealing Himself to Moses Declare yourself to be the God whose loving kindness is infinite. A man who asked to see your glory was shown your glory and your goodness. And Father, we marvel at that goodness. A faithfulness. A commitment. A devotion to your good purpose. to see all things be blessed and be a blessing by being summed up in the Lord Jesus Christ. Father, how we're bowed before you in the knowledge of that truth. The great privilege that is ours. A privilege that is greater than we can even imagine or speak. The glory of your great salvation in Christ. That is not just the recovery of the human race, but the recovery of all things. A recovery even as we've been reminded already this morning. A recovery that is not simply back to the way things were, but to the fullness, to the perfection that the original creation portrayed. Father, we are so blessed to be those upon whom the ends of the ages have come. As we come again to consider this promise and the very precise, unwavering, purposeful accomplishment of it in Your Son. Father, build us up in this faith, build us up in the faith and in our individual faith that we would live as children of our Heavenly Father. We give you this time, even as we have done to this point, continue our worship, no longer in song, but in the praise and the meditations of our heart as we consider again this great work as you have unfolded it to us in your words. Lead us now in worship, in praise, that you would be glorified. We ask in Christ's name, Amen. Nearly a thousand years after God first spoke in a very direct way to Moses and told him that covenant unfaithfulness was going to bring desolation, that it was going to bring cursing, that it was going to bring a destruction that would transcend anything that had happened to that time in the life of his people. And nearly a thousand years later, starving, eating their own children, being overcome with disease, filled with hopelessness. The last vestige of David's kingdom was overcome. Jerusalem fell in a spectacular destruction that left not just the city of Jerusalem, but the whole land of Judah desolate. The northern kingdom had gone some 140 years earlier. And now it was time for David's throne, David's kingdom in the south to be overcome. Judah was no more. Jerusalem was no more. And the epitomizing reality of Israel as the kingdom of God, God's dwelling place in Jerusalem, the physical sanctuary that bore witness to his presence with his people was leveled. burned and torn to the ground. The sanctuary land had become the haunt of jackals. All was gone. This had been God's Word to Abraham's seed from the time of Moses. It was the Word of God through his prophets through all of the intervening centuries. Turn, turn, turn. Desolation is coming if you will not return to me." And the people would not listen. They would not turn. And the word of the prophets throughout that whole pre-exile period was, as soon as the writing prophets, the prophets whose words, whose prophecies are recorded in the Scripture, as soon as they emerged, there was a transition in the prophetic message. All of the prophets the non-writing ones as well, Elijah, Elisha, others, had said, this is coming if you don't turn. But with the emergence of the writing prophets, the message became more solidified. Desolation had been decreed. We saw the point of decision on Mount Carmel with Elijah. And from that point forward, God had determined that the end was coming. And the prophets said, the end is coming. And the prophets who said, no, God will relent, God will not do this, were shown to be false prophets. Desolations had been decreed. But the prophets also amazingly spoke of the fact that desolation would come. David's kingdom would be overthrown. David's house would be overthrown. And yet, God would not forget His mercies to David. God would fulfill His promise. And tied to that promise of God in the midst of desolation was the promise of restoration. A remnant would return. But much more than a remnant returning would be a final restoration that that small return of a Jewish remnant back to Judah in 537 only portrayed and prefigured. And what I would like to do in finishing out our consideration of the Old Testament revelation of this promise of the recovery of sacred space as we then move to the coming of Christ, is to consider this issue of the exile and the promise of God as it revealed itself in the restoration of this small remnant out of Babylon, of the Judean exiles. not next week, but the week after that, I want to finish off then by considering how the prophets used that recovery. What came in that period, those three returns, first in 538, ordained by Cyrus, and then later associated with Ezra and Nehemiah, some half century later. Those three waves of returning exiles. how what happened during that period was used by the prophets of those times to speak of the great restoration that was yet to come as we set the stage then finally for the emergence of the promised one, the son of David, the one who was to come. As God had promised desolation, He had promised recovery. And I want to begin by having you turn to Isaiah chapter 44. Isaiah is a pre-exile prophet. Basically, you can put the writing prophets into three categories associated with their time frame. The pre-exile prophets are the prophets who prophesied, whose prophecies are recorded for us, pertaining to or written in the time and dealing with the time preceding the exile. of either the northern kingdom or the southern kingdom. You have some prophets such as Jeremiah who exist after the exile of the northern kingdom but before the exile of the southern kingdom. But the pre-exile prophets are those whose messages came before the destruction of the kingdom. Then we have the exile prophets, the prophets who spoke during the time of the exile, the period of the 70 year captivity in Babylon. They would include Zechariah and Haggai. Then we have also the prophets who were post-exile prophets. The prophets whose ministry to the remnant that returned took place after, again, you began to have exiles returning to Jerusalem. They would be Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi. The exile prophets, the ones in the exile, would be Ezekiel and Daniel primarily. I misspoke. So you have those three categories, pre-exile, exile, and post-exile. Isaiah is writing somewhere around the middle of the 8th century, 750-730 BC, right before the captivity of the Northern Kingdom. But here he's dealing specifically with the captivity that is to come as it pertains to the desolation of Jerusalem. which yet lies out in the future. At this time Assyria is the major world empire to be replaced by Babylon. But Babylon itself will be conquered and replaced in an empirical sense by the Medo-Persian alliance. And it's that alliance that Isaiah is referring to in this particular context. Beginning in chapter 44, I'd like to pick this up at verse 24, The prophets spoke, and Isaiah is certainly speaking of the desolation of David's house and kingdom, and we've seen that happen historically. But he's also speaking of the fact of a recovery. that this would not be the final end of all things. Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, and the One who formed you from the womb, I, Yahweh, am the Maker of all things, stretching out the heavens by Myself and spreading out the earth all alone, causing the omens of boasters to fail, making fools out of diviners, causing wise men to draw back and turning their knowledge into foolishness, confirming, on the other hand, the word of His servant and performing the purpose of his messengers. It is I who says of Jerusalem, she shall be inhabited. Now this is speaking in the context of the desolation that is coming. And of the cities of Judah, they shall be built. And I will raise up her ruins again. It is I who says to the depth of the sea, be dried up. And I will make your rivers dry. It is I who says of Cyrus, Cyrus is this Medo-Persian king who hasn't even been born yet. He's yet to come. Isaiah is speaking here. The Lord is speaking through Isaiah of something that is about 200 years into the future. It is I who says of Cyrus, he is my shepherd and he will perform all my desire. He will say of Jerusalem, she shall be built and of the temple your foundation will be laid. Thus says the Lord to Cyrus, his Mashiach, his Messiah, his anointed one, whom I have taken by the right hand to subdue nations before him and to loose the loins of kings, to open doors before him so that gates will not be shut. I will go before you and I will make the rough places smooth. This is God speaking to his anointed Cyrus, the Medo-Persian king. I will go before you. I will open doors for you. I will give you victory. I will give you triumph. I will shatter the doors of bronze and cut through their iron bars. I will give you the treasures of darkness and hidden wealth of secret places in order that you may know that it is I, Yahweh, the God of Israel, who calls you by your name. For the sake of Jacob, my servant, and Israel, my chosen one, I have also called you by name. I have given you a title of honor, though you have not known me. I have called you for the sake of Jacob, my servant, for the sake of Israel. You are my Mashiach, my Messiah, my anointed one. You will be the instrument for the deliverance of my people, to bring them back. That's what he's talking about. Even though you personally have not known me, But in order that men may know from the rising to the setting of the sun that there is no one besides me, I am Yahweh, I am the Lord, there is no other, the one forming light and creating darkness, causing well-being and creating calamity. I am the Lord who does all of these." So the promise even here, just in Isaiah, is that even though David's house and kingdom are going away, And Jerusalem is to be destroyed. And the temple is to be destroyed. And the cities of Judah are to be wiped out. The Holy Land is to become desolate. The haunt of jackals and vultures. The bodies of the dead strewn across the ground. God says, yet I will raise up a servant who will restore my people. He will be my Messiah to deliver my people from their captivity. And He will say of Jerusalem, it is to be built. Let it be built again. And He will say of the temple, let it be built. He will be the instrument of restoration. Well, this is the promise of restoration that is to come. And I want to consider that today. But I want to consider it also in the light of the fact of what God has done. the tension of impossibility that God has set up. We've seen over and over again that the ground of faith is believing God in the context of impossibility. There's no way to figure it out when sight doesn't support God's insistence that faith becomes truly faith. And God has said, I'm bringing desolation, I'm bringing destruction, but I promise restoration. Well, on the face of it, that may not seem like an impossibility. What's the big deal in terms of desolating Jerusalem and slaughtering both houses of Israel, taking them both out of the Holy Land and sending them into captivity? They can be brought back. The city can be rebuilt. The temple can be rebuilt. Why is that an issue of impossibility? Well, Jeremiah, as another pre-exile prophet, shows us why at least the way in which God made his promise to David becomes a matter of impossibility. And Jason touched on this earlier. God promised to David that he would establish David's throne in David's house forever, beginning with David himself. And in Jeremiah the prophet, we see not only again the pronouncement of desolation and the promise of recovery, but we also see God bringing another piece of decree or judgment to bear, which is that David's line is to be cut off. And historically, we saw that was cut off in Jehoiakim. He was the last of the line of David to sit on the throne of Israel. Yes, there was one other king after him, Zedekiah, before the desolation of Jerusalem. But Zedekiah wasn't a son of Jehoiakim. He was his uncle. And so, since the time of the desolation, since the time of the Babylonian siege, there has not been a son of David on the throne. And God has promised that Jerusalem will be rebuilt, and the temple will be rebuilt, and the exiles will return. But He has established a curse on David's house that still stands. A curse on David's line. And so how can God fulfill His promise to David that His throne and His kingdom will exist perpetually when David's line has been cut off? How can this restoration be David's kingdom? How can it be the continuation or the re-enlivening of David's kingdom when David's line has been cut off? Without a Davidic king, there can't be a Davidic kingdom. Well, one answer is to say, okay, well that particular line of David was cut off, but David had other sons. God could raise up another son of David and start a new dynasty for him. But then at least the promise would have been misstated because then God would be saying, I will start a new dynasty, David. In other words, another form of your kingdom will be resurrected in the future. But God couldn't say, your throne, your kingdom will be established forever. Because David's throne and kingdom was moved through this one particular line. And now that line has been severed. How can God keep his promise to David? How can he keep this word of covenant with David in the context of the desolating of David's house in the sense of his royal line? Yes, a temple can be rebuilt. Yes, a city can be restored. Yes, exiles can be brought back. But does that mean the recovery of the kingdom? And that's what I'd like to consider today as we look at those events. The recovery of the kingdom. I've called this in the sermon notes, in the sermon outline, a symbolic recovery. What happens, what Isaiah is speaking of, and what happens under Cyrus is a symbolic recovery in the sense that it really doesn't accomplish the great promise that God made. And we're going to see this more the next time. But as God promised a restoration, that he would bring back a remnant, that he would rebuild Jerusalem, that he would have the temple rebuilt again, that was a platform for him to stretch it out to an ultimate restoration. And what I want you to see today is that God showed very clearly that what happened with the recovery of these exiles and the events associated with that, the text is very clear that was not the beginning of the restoration of David's kingdom or the continuation of David's kingdom. The great promise lay still out in the future. And that's what we'll address the next time as we finish up our consideration of the Old Testament. I'd like to consider in three ways, and there are probably more, but three ways in which this restoration that was prophesied and that occurred under Cyrus did not, or three ways in which that restoration was shown to not be the beginning of the recovery of David's kingdom. In other words, it wasn't just judgment and punishment and now we'll get back to this again. It's time to restore David's kingdom. It's time to restore the theocracy. If you were to take simply the words of Isaiah and others of the prophets who promised this recovery, who promised this restoration, again it would be very easy, and certainly for the Jews of that day, it would be very easy for them to be hopeful that David's kingdom was coming back. As they began to have these things manifested to them, Jeremiah was reminded of this 70 year captivity. Daniel was reminded of Jeremiah's promise of a 70 year captivity. After 70 years, I'm going to bring my people back. I'm going to have the temple rebuilt. I'm going to have the city rebuilt. It would be easy for the Jewish people to think David's kingdom isn't gone. It's not utterly gone. It's been punished. But we're coming back. We're coming back. We're going to see the theocracy restored. And I want you to see today that the text is very clear that that was not to be the case. This is where the message of the post-exile prophets becomes very important. In other words, what Isaiah is speaking of happened. Jerusalem fell in 586. Babylon was the world empire. Well, around 540 thereabouts, you have the conquest of Babylon, the defeat of Babylon in a very swift siege the capital city of Babylon by the Medo-Persian alliance. And Medo-Persian now becomes the holder of Babylonian conquests or Babylonian provincial holdings. So now Canaan and certainly the Israelite people are under the control, the Judah people are under the control of the Medo-Persian Empire. Without going into all the history of it, you can read it for yourself, but one of the first things that the text says that Cyrus did after his kingdom was established, after the conquest of Babylon, is he issued a decree, as God said he would, though he didn't know God, he issued a decree that allowed anyone, any of the Jewish people throughout his kingdom who wanted to, to return to Jerusalem. And he authorized them to rebuild the temple. That was the first task that they undertook. Now, they did it under great duress and they did it with a lot of discouragement, but he ordered that they be allowed to do that. And in fact, he even ordered the governors of his provinces to fund the task. The second house, as with the first house, as with the tabernacle, the second temple was to be built with the wealth of the nations. So the people return and they begin this process of rebuilding around 520 BC and it takes four years for them to rebuild this temple. Well it's in that post exile period when these exiles begin returning to Judah it's now that you see these prophets arise and their prophecies are very important And particularly we're going to look at Haggai and Zechariah. They're very important in the sense that they are interpreting to these Jews that have returned to Jerusalem from Babylon, they're interpreting to them the significance of what's happening, what they're doing, the significance of the fact that they're back in the land, that they're back in Jerusalem, that they're building houses for themselves, that they're reestablishing themselves, and that they're rebuilding the temple. They become the interpreters of the significance of that. And that's where we begin to see how it is that this is not the recovery that God has promised. This is not the restoration of David's kingdom. Well, the first thing tied to that, three things I want to consider today in that regard. The first is one that we've already talked a lot about, which is the fact that there is no Davidic king. The exiles return to Jerusalem and they begin to build the temple. But they're kind of a loosely connected group of people living in a city in a land that is under Medo-Persian control. There is no throne of David. There is no throne in Jerusalem. There is no Davidic king. And Zechariah and Haggai are absolutely emphatic in that regard, as well as in others, that what is happening at that time is only a prefiguration of what the Lord had promised, not the fulfillment of that. If you look in Haggai chapter 2, what is happening here is the returned exiles are in the process of rebuilding the temple and they're discouraged. Some of them are old enough to remember the glory of Solomon's temple. And they see what they're building and they look at it and they say, this is nothing. The glory of Solomon's temple is not being recovered by this building process. And God sends His prophet Haggai to them to encourage them for the work. But listen how they're encouraged. Haggai chapter 2, on the 21st of the seventh month the word of the Lord came by Haggai the prophet saying speak now to Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel. Zerubbabel was effectively acting as the governor or the ruler over these returned exiles. He wasn't really the king in any sense because again Israel was still under Medo-Persian control. But he's kind of acting as a governing person within this community of returned exiles. speak to Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua, the son of Jehoshaphat, the high priest." They have a new high priest, they have ordained him, he's functioning, and these two men are fundamental in the process of rebuilding the temple. And also, to the remnant of the people saying, who is left among you who saw this temple in its former glory? The first temple. And how do you now see it in its rebuilt form? How does it appear to you? Does it not seem to you like nothing in comparison with the glory of Solomon's temple? But now take courage, Zerubbabel, declares the Lord. Take courage also, Joshua, son of Jehozadek, the high priest. And all you people of the land, take courage, declares Yahweh, and work, for I am with you, says the Lord of hosts. And as for the promise which I made you when you came out of Egypt, my Spirit is abiding in your midst. Do not fear. When God called Israel out of Egypt, He took Israel to be His Son, and He said, I'm taking you to a land, not just because it's a nice land by a nice sea, but this is My sanctuary. I'm taking you to be with Me. And I'm sending My Spirit with you. My Spirit will go with you and be in your midst and deliver you and strengthen you. And God is saying that promise still stands. As I've recovered you, my spirit is abiding in your midst. For thus says the Lord of hosts, once more in a little while I'm going to shake the heavens, the earth, the sea, and the dry land. And I will shake all the nations, and they will come with the wealth of all the nations, and I will fill this house with glory. It appears inglorious to you now. It appears like nothing. And really, from a physical, you know, architectural standpoint, it is nothing in comparison. But God says that there will be glory in this house. And the glory in this house will be when I shake the nations, like shaking a sieve, and the precious value of the nations will be brought in. And there will be the glory of this house. So the silver is mine and the gold is mine, declares the Lord. And the latter glory of this house will be greater than the former, says the Lord of hosts. In this place I shall give peace. So here you see the exiles being encouraged to build the house because God is with them. but also to recognize, and we'll see this more when we look at Zechariah, also the contemporary, exact same time frame, also to recognize that what they're doing there is not the ultimate thing. What they're doing in building that house, the ingloriousness of this temple, is really indicative of the fact that it is inglorious. This is not the restoration, the great prophetic restoration that the prophets had spoken of. That is coming, but it's coming in the future when God again shakes the heavens, the earth, the sea, and the dry land. It's when He brings in the precious value of the nation that that glory will come. It's not going to come just because they finished building the temple. So He pushes it out into the future. The Davidic covenant had promised, what? That David's seed would build the house. Now, in one sense, this remnant of Judah is David's seed in the sense that they are David's house, they are David's royal household, not descended from him, but they're a part, they're subjects of his kingdom, or they were subjects of his kingdom. But God says, a son to come from you will build the house for me. And Solomon had done that before. So the glory of this house is going to be realized still in connection with the Davidic Covenant. There is to be the coming of a son. In other words, they're rebuilding the temple. God says the glory lies off in the future and he's still remembering the Davidic Covenant where he said, a son of yours will build a house for me. Not the exiles are not going to build the house, the true house. A son to come from you will do that. There is no king of David. There is no son of David, no royal son at that time. So the exiles are building the house, but God says David's son will build the house. This can't be the fulfillment of that restoration. It can't be. There is no Davidic son. And based on what God swore to Jehoiakim, there won't be a Davidic son in the future. So here again, God is requiring faith on the part of these people. He said to them, take courage and build this house. There will be glory in it in the future. But the glory of it is again to be associated with the fact that the seed of David will build the house. But how can there be a seed of David? God has cut off that line. There certainly isn't one then. But how can there even be one in the future? Well, in spite of that seeming impossibility, God has not forsaken his word to David and he expects the people to believe it. So Haggai says, take courage and be strong. Don't be discouraged. Because the people were looking and they're saying, why are we wasting our time? We're putting all this labor into building this temple and it's nothing. And we're being opposed. We're being resisted. This is a lot of work. It's not worth the trouble. Let's just stop. And God says, stay with it. There will be glory in my house again. And Zechariah picks up the same theme. He is told by God, turn to Zechariah chapter 6, exact same period of time, and when I say exact same, I mean even at the same point of that four year period where the temple's being rebuilt. The people are rebuilding the house. Haggai's given him one kind of encouragement, but he's also said the glory lies out in the future, so don't be looking for it now. Now, Zechariah is told by God Take some of the gold and the silver that the exiles brought back from Babylon, this precious value that will build the house of God. Take some of that gold and silver, the resource that Cyrus has given, and make a crown. And set that crown on the head of the high priest. Crown the priest as a king. Now that alone should tell us if we understand, and I don't want to go too far down this path, we'll deal more with it later on. But this alone should have told the exiles at that time that really when God fulfills his promise to David regarding a house, it's not going to be in the context of David's former kingdom, the old covenant Israelite theocracy. Because under that system, kingship and priesthood were separate. They could not be together because they were different tribes. You couldn't have a king-priest in Israel. Priests were taken from Levi. Kings were taken from Judah. Brothers. You couldn't be descended from two brothers. But God now says, crown the high priest. And then in the sight of all the exiles, remember, they're building the house. And He says, in the sight of all the exiles, crown this man with this ornate crown and then say to him, behold, branch. This crowned priest is Branch. Let's look at verse 9. Zechariah 6. The word of the Lord came to me, saying, Take an offering from the exiles, Heldi, Tobiah, Jediah, and go the same day, enter the house of Josiah the son of Zephaniah, where they have arrived from Babylon, and take silver and gold, make an ornate crown, and set it on the head of Joshua the son of Jehozadak, same man that was mentioned in Haggai, the high priest, and say to him, thus says Yahweh the Lord of hosts, behold a man whose name is Branch." Now this is the branch of David. If you read in the other earlier prophets, Branch is the branch of David. So the indication here is this crowning of the high priest symbolically points to the reality of the Davidic branch, the son of David. Behold Branch. For He will branch out from where He is and He will build the house of the Lord. He will build, branch will build the house of the Lord. This is the Davidic covenant again. Yes, yes, it is He who will build the temple of the Lord. And He will bear the honor. And He will sit and rule on His throne. And thus He will be a priest on his throne. And the council of peace will be between the two. My version says the two offices, but it says between the two. So, the house is to be built by Branch. And somehow Branch will build the house in the context of his being a priest on his throne. As he assumes his kingship as a priest and rules as a priest on his throne, that's how the house of God will be built. This connects it very closely with Haggai. The glory isn't in this new structure that's being built. It's going to come later, when God brings in the precious value of the nations. And now Zechariah says it's going to come in connection with Branch, the crowned high priest. who rules as a priest on his throne. That's how the house will be built. A half century later, a second and then a third wave of Judean exiles returned to Jerusalem, associated with the reign of Artaxerxes I, who would have been Esther's stepson. Remember Esther? who was taken by Ahasuerus, the Medo-Persian king, to be his wife. This is his son, Artaxerxes I. And it's during that time that you see the return of two more waves of exiles associated with the second half of the book of Ezra and the book of Nehemiah. In the Ezra account, the concern is with the re-consecration of the people of God, the re-consecration of David's subjects. That's what Ezra is dealing with. The re-consecrating of the people. In Nehemiah, it's the re-securing or the re-consecrating of the city of Jerusalem, epitomized in the rebuilding of the walls. Right? In Nehemiah, the building of the walls of the city. The Isaiah prophecy had said, I will restore people back and the city will be rebuilt And the temple will be rebuilt. Well, the temple was rebuilt and finished in 516, 70 years after the day of the desolation of Jerusalem. And I think that's the 70-year increment, because that's the key issue, the house of God. Destroyed in 586, rebuilt in 516. 70 years of desolation. But now this is around 445, thereabouts. half century roughly later. And they come back and now it's the reconstituting and consecrating of the people to God and the rebuilding and securing of the city itself. So the people are back, the temple is rebuilt, and the city is rebuilt, reconsecrated. And yet, there is no son of David on the throne. What was promised In Isaiah 44 has happened, but there's no son of David on the throne. Judah is a vassal state. It's under Medo-Persian control. The house has been rebuilt. The city's been rebuilt. The people have been reconsecrated to God. But it's not the restoration of David's kingdom. There's no son of David on the throne. No Davidic king. is the first indication that this recovery is not what was promised. It's not the fulfillment of what was in the Davidic Covenant and what was promised by God in this overarching promise of recovery. The second one I want to deal with just very, very quickly is the fact that there was no restoration of the Northern Kingdom. Not only did just a remnant of Judah come back, Just a remnant of Judah came back. There was no formal restoration of the northern 10 tribes. We saw before that God had decreed a remnant of Judah returning, but He said Israel will not return. We saw that in Hosea 1 and 2. There would be no restoration of Israel. And so this can't be the recovery of David's kingdom, because when David had assumed the throne of Israel, he had brought together all of the twelve tribes of Israel under his own authority, under his own rule, 1 Samuel 5. He had gathered all of Israel together as a cohesive kingdom. And you don't have that now. You have a handful of people out of the southern kingdom, Judah and Benjamin, back in the land. But for the most part, even Judah is still scattered, and all of Israel is scattered. You don't have a recovery. Like the temple, and like the kingdom itself, as we'll see more next time, the restoration of the ten tribes of Israel awaited something. The coming of David. We saw that again in Hosea. We see that in Isaiah. We see that in Jeremiah 30-33. I won't take the time to read those passages, but go back and look at them. Just Isaiah 11. It's when the branch of David comes that the remnant of Judah and Israel will be restored to each other, but in connection with the ingathering of the nations. It's when the branch of David comes. In Hosea, God says, I'll preserve Judah. Israel, I will not preserve. Israel is lo chami, not my people. But yet, a day is coming when they who are not my people will be called sons of the living God. And it will be when David comes. David will again, when the son of David comes, who's called David, when he comes, he will once again reconstitute the people of God. Just as the first David did with the Old Testament covenant people. The glory of the temple awaits the future. The glory of the restoration of the people and Jerusalem awaits the future. The dwelling place of God awaits the future. The glory also of this full in-gathering awaits the future. All of them tied with the coming of David. So, restoration, as Isaiah said, has occurred. The people are back. The temple has been built. The city's been rebuilt. but it's not the fulfillment of the promise. That fulfillment, that restoration, that recovery, showed God's continued faithfulness, that He hadn't utterly rejected His purposes. He hadn't rejected His promise to David. But all it did was portray what God was going to do later. It didn't fulfill it. Long before the exile, and certainly subsequent to the exile, The prophets were proclaiming that when God brought this kingdom He had been promising that He would bring as He restored and fulfilled what He said would be to establish David's throne and kingdom and house forever, it would not be just a recovery of the Old Testament theocracy. It would be what? A comprehensive renewal. A kingdom marked by renewal, by purging, cosmic restoration. Not just in gathering and reconstituting of the houses of Israel and Judah, but the bringing in of the nations, the precious value of the nations being brought in. And ultimately Isaiah tells us the bringing in of the whole cosmos in the sense of the restoring of all things from their estrangement to God. A reconstituting of everything back into a proper relationship with God. The recovery of sacred space. That's what the prophet said the kingdom would be. And that's not happening now. That's not happening in this recovery of this remnant. First, no Davidic king. Second, no recovery of Israel. And thirdly, and this is one that tends to be overlooked a lot, there is no return of Yahweh's presence. What is the kingdom of God without God's presence? This to me is the most significant one and I think the one that the scripture deals with the most significantly. This is the great indication that the Davidic theocracy is gone forever. There is no glory cloud. There is no Shekinah in the second temple. If you read in Ezra chapter 6, after the temple is rebuilt, after it's done, and it's consecrated to God, and the priests undertake their work, there is no mention of the glory cloud of God descending on that house. And it's consistent with something else. Go and search it for yourself. There is no mention of the Ark of the Covenant after the Babylonian captivity. You see Josiah being instructed as the last great reformer before the captivity. Josiah is instructed to reestablish the worship of God with the ark in the holy place. But the ark is not mentioned after 2 Chronicles 35, the reign of Josiah. This has led to all the speculation of what happened to the Ark. Did it go to Babylon? Because a lot of the implements and the holy things, the cups and the saucers and the dishes and all that were restored back when the exiles came back, but there is no mention of the Ark. When the tabernacle was first built, When it was finished, the last thing is they installed the Ark of the Covenant and they went in there and Moses presided over these offerings and the glory cloud of God descended on the house so that Moses couldn't even be in there. Exodus chapter 40. That's the way the book of Exodus ends. The building of the tabernacle finished off with the glory cloud of God, the Shekinah of God, the presence of God, the visible tangible presence of God in the sanctuary. And the importance of that, hopefully it's obvious by now, is that Israel wasn't just brought out of Egypt because God said, well, you're a people, let's see, there's a piece of real estate I can give to you. It's there on the Mediterranean, go take possession of it. It wasn't that. God was fulfilling his promise to Abraham. God's promise to Abraham was grounded in this idea, I'll be your God, you will be my children. I will be a father to you, you will be children to me. I'll be your God, you'll be my people. And so God brought Israel out of Egypt and constituted Israel as his son by covenant in order to bring them into his presence. Canaan he's called his sanctuary. It wasn't about a piece of real estate. It was his sanctuary. It was his dwelling place. His holy mountain. He was bringing his son to be with him. And the tabernacle localized that idea. God said, build me a sanctuary. All of Canaan is my habitation. All of Canaan is my holy place. And eventually it will be more localized in Jerusalem, the place of the central sanctuary. But for now, build me a tabernacle, a sanctuary that I can dwell with you, because that's what this is all about. And so for the glory cloud of God to descend on the tabernacle was for God to testify that he had kept his word to Abraham. He had brought out Abraham's seed and brought them to the place where he was, and now he's dwelling with them. He's dwelling with them, evident to all of them by the glory cloud of God, the supernatural luminescent manifestation of God, the Shekinah, between the wings of the cherubim. And the same thing happened later when Solomon built the temple, and they moved the ark there, the ark of God's presence. And the same thing, after the priest left the holy place, the glory cloud of God comes down on the temple. God is in the midst of His people. But when the temple is rebuilt the second time, even though God says, I am with you, and this has a purpose, don't feel like this is irrelevant. It has a purpose. This isn't it. And God showed that by the fact that there was not the restoration of the ark to that temple as far as we know. The text doesn't say anything about the ark again. And the ark, it was above the ark, the ark of God's presence, that his glory cloud resided. No mention of the ark, no mention of the glory of God. The second temple is a symbol. It's an artifact. Remember what God said through Haggai. This is inglorious. It appears inglorious to you physically, but it is inglorious spiritually. The glory will come later. The presence of God was the glory. His glory descended and filled the house. And there's no glory. It became Ichabod earlier and it's still Ichabod. So we see with the tabernacle and the temple this great culminating event of the descent of the glory of God to be present with his people and that doesn't happen with the second temple. Again, the scripture makes much of that idea of God's glory cloud because it represents His presence with His people, His faithfulness to His covenant. I am your God. You are my people. Israel is my son. I am with my son as a father. The Shekinah in the Holy of Holies testified that God had kept His promise to dwell with Abraham's seed. But it also looked beyond that to the fact that he had not forgotten or forsaken his ancient promise in Eden to end the estrangement of all things from himself. By dwelling in the midst of this people, he was saying, I haven't forsaken my creation. My purpose in reconciling estrangement still exists. I'm still working towards that goal. So this covenantal relational dynamic, the significance of the Shekinah, the glory cloud of God speaks to, again, his faithfulness to his covenant, his relational faithfulness, his chesed with his people. And you see the significance of that being the reason why God chose to reveal to Ezekiel the significance of the coming desolation and what would follow after it in terms of this phenomenon. Turn to Ezekiel chapter 10. And again, what I'm establishing is that David's kingdom is not being recovered. And the great evidence of that is that Yahweh's presence has not returned to his sanctuary. Now Ezekiel is one of the big group of individuals that was taken to Babylon in the first wave of exiles. around 605. So he spends that period of time, or I'm sorry in 598, he spends about 11 years or so, 12 years in Babylon kind of watching through messengers what's happening back in Jerusalem. He and a whole wave of exiles, the nobility, the significant people are brought to Babylon as a first captivity, but the city still stands. desolation hasn't yet come. It's about 12 years out. And Ezekiel is a priest, but he's ministering to the people, it says, by the river Chabar in Babylon. He's in Babylon. But in chapter 10, let's see, I don't want to read all of this, it's too long. He's having a vision. He's having a vision of the throne of God. He's having a vision that's similar to the vision that the book begins with, the vision of the throne of God and the attending angelic beings around the throne. But in verse 18 of chapter 10, it says, then the glory of the Lord departed. He's having a vision. He's carried away in the Spirit by vision to the temple in Jerusalem. He's not there. He's in Babylon. But he's carried in a vision by the Spirit to be, in a sense, in Jerusalem looking at the temple. And in his vision, he sees the glory of the Lord departing from the threshold of the temple and standing over the cherubim. And when the cherubim departed, they lifted their wings and rose up from the earth in my sight with the wheels beside them. And they stood still at the entrance of the east gate of the Lord's house. And the glory of the God of Israel hovered over them. He sees, as it were, the glory of God associated with his attending cherubim, who kind of attend to his throne that's portrayed like a chariot. He sees the glory of Israel, the glory of God, the God of Israel, right out at the threshold of the temple. He's moving away from the holy of holies. Then if you switch over to, or turn forward to chapter 11, Let's just pick up the last few verses for the sake of time. Chapter 11, verse 22. Continuing the same vision which God has been interpreting and speaking to Ezekiel in the context of his vision, then the cherubim lifted up their wings with the wheels beside them and the glory of the God of Israel hovered over them. And the glory of Yahweh went up from the midst of the city and stood over the mountain which is east of the city. And the Spirit lifted me up and brought me in a vision by the Spirit of God to the exiles in Chaldea." He's now brought back home. And so, the vision that I had seen left me. And I told the exiles all the things that the Lord had shown me. God has shown Ezekiel the glory departing from the temple. David's kingdom is now Jacobod. No glory. It's Ichabod. The city's still in place, still bustling. Yes, it's under Babylonian control, but it's still in place. There's still a son of David on the throne. The temple's still in place. The priests are still ministering. But shekavot. Ezekiel sees the glory depart. This is setting the stage for God's revelation to Ezekiel when the captivity and the desolation comes. What God is doing is He's allowing Ezekiel, and through Ezekiel us, He's allowing Ezekiel to understand the significance of the captivity that's coming. The significance of the destruction of Jerusalem. It's not just the end of another city. It's not just the end of a people in a captivity and, oh well, that happens in history over and over again. It's the destruction of that great experiment, as Clowney, or as Dumbrell put it, the experiment, the closest that God came to restoring sacred space, as he promised, was with Israel. That was the greatest example of that. And now it's gone. It's yakavod. God has left it. He's abandoned it. He's forsaken it. He's done. This promise hangs out there in space, but God has done. And so Ezekiel understands that God has left his people. He's forsaken them. He's forsaken the covenant, it appears. And the destruction of the city is just the physical, tangible evidence of the fact that it's no longer God's dwelling place. They are no longer his people. He's done. The gravity of Judah's captivity. And so the vision indicates that the place, the city where God had put His name is now empty of His presence. It still stands, but it's empty. His sanctuary has been reduced to a meaningless religious relic. The priests continue to offer their sacrifices. The Levites continue to carry out their responsibilities people continue to offer, come up and do their worship practices, bring their sacrifices, but it's Yechavod. It's hollow, empty, dead religion. God is gone. David's kingdom is done. The glory has departed from Israel. And that provides the irony of Judah's continuing confidence, its conviction that Jerusalem will never fall. This is, again, remember, a few years before Jerusalem falls. And the Jews that are back in Judea are still saying, they've been hearing for centuries through the prophets, this is going away, this is going away, this is going away, and they don't believe it. They don't believe that Jerusalem will fall. And the reason they don't believe it is because God has said, I'm putting my name there, and my name will be there forever. That is the place where I've put my name. And they say this can never go away, because this is the city of the great God. Jesus speaks to that, doesn't He? Swearing by the city of the great God, Jerusalem. God has put His name there. It can't fall. I don't care what it looks like. I don't care how powerful Babylon is. God will never allow His sanctuary to fall. It's His dwelling place. This is His throne. This place can never fall. The people don't understand what Ezekiel understands. It's a piece of geography. It's a piece of real estate. It's an architectural structure. God isn't there. So now you come down to chapter 24, and with this we're done. Chapter 24 of Ezekiel, verse 1. And the word of the Lord came to me in the ninth year. He's talking about the ninth year of Zedekiah's reign. The ninth year after Nebuchadnezzar has formally established his full control over Jerusalem and put his own puppet king, his own vassal king, Zedekiah, on the throne. Zedekiah served 11 years. God had told Zedekiah through Jeremiah, this is my doing. put your neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon and I'll let you stay in the land." Well, for nine years, Zedekiah does that. Then he follows counsel that tells him, we can overthrow this guy, we can regain the kingdom back. And so he leads an insurrection against Babylonian control, nine years into his reign. And Nebuchadnezzar comes back with his army and he lays siege against Jerusalem for two years. It's during that two years that he cuts off the city and the people are starving and they're becoming sick. That's the desolation that is that great desolation that ends in the final burning of the city and destruction of the temple. Well, this is now the ninth year and the word comes to Ezekiel. The word comes to him saying, Son of man, write the name of the day, this very day. Write it down. Record it. The king of Babylon has laid siege to Jerusalem this very day. Throughout all of the time, even while these exiles are in Babylon, the Jews back in Jerusalem are saying, well, they're there because they sinned against God. We're here because God has chosen us to carry on and to preserve the city. It'll never fall. And God says, speak a parable to the rebellious house and say to them, thus says the Lord God, put on the pot, put it on, pour water in it, put in it the pieces, every good piece, the thigh, the shoulder, fill it with choice bones, take the choices of the flock and pile wood under the pot, make it boil vigorously and also seethe its bones in it. God is saying as a sign to this people, take a pot, fill it with water, fill it full of all kinds of choice cuts of meat and then build a huge fire under it. And let the fire burn until it boils. And then it boils more. And then it boils more. And then the water's gone. And then it begins to smolder and to char. And finally, you have a red-hot cauldron with nothing but cinders in it. And he says, that's what I'm going to do to Jerusalem. Therefore, thus says the Lord God, woe to the bloody city, to the pot in which there is rust, and whose rust has not gone out of it. Take out of it piece after piece, without making a choice, for her blood is in her midst. She placed it on the bare rock. She did not pour it out on the ground to cover with dust, that it may cause wrath to come up to take vengeance. I have put her blood on the bare rock, that it may not be covered. Therefore, thus says the Lord God, Woe to the bloody city! I shall make the pile great. Heap on the wood, kindle the fire, boil the flesh well, and mix in the spices, and let the bones be burned. Then set it empty on its coal, so that it may be hot, and its bronze may glow, and its filthiness may be melted in it, its rust consumed. She has wearied me with toil, yet her great rust has not gone from her, her corruption, her defilement. Let her rust be in the fire. In your filthiness is lewdness, because I would have cleansed you, yet you are not clean. You will not be cleansed from your filthiness again until I have spent my wrath on you. I, the Lord, have spoken. It is coming. I shall act. I shall not relent. I shall not have pity. I shall not be sorry. According to your ways, according to your deeds, I shall judge you, declares the Lord God. And the word of the Lord came to me, saying, Son of man, behold, I'm about to take from you the desire of your eyes with a blow. A second tangible sign. The first is the boiling pot, the burning charred pot, and now the death of Ezekiel's wife. I'm going to take from you the desire of your eyes with a blow. But you are not to mourn, and you are not to weep, and your tears shall not come. You are to groan silently. Make no mourning for the dead. Bind on your turban. He's a priest. His priestly turban. Put your shoes on your feet. Do not cover your mustache. Do not eat the bread of men. Do not show any signs of mourning at the loss of your wife. Be stoic. So I spoke to the people in the morning, and in the evening my wife died, and in the morning I did as I was commanded. And the people said, will you not tell us what these things that you are doing mean for us? And I said, the word of the Lord came to me saying, speak to the house of Israel. Thus says the Lord God, behold, I am about to profane my sanctuary. The pride of your power, the desire of your eyes, the delight of your soul, And your sons and your daughters whom you have left behind in Jerusalem will fall by the sword. And you will do as I, Ezekiel, have done. You will not cover your mustache. You will not eat the bread of men. And your turbans will be on your heads and your shoes on your feet. You will not mourn. You will not weep. But you will rot away in your iniquities and groan silently to one another. Thus Ezekiel will be assigned to you according to all that he has done, you will do. When it comes, then you will know that I am the Lord God. They did not think that the city could fall. Because God was there. But they didn't know God wasn't there. He had left. And the rebuilding of a second temple would be the rebuilding of a house. But God's presence wouldn't be there. You see, the holiness of Jerusalem, the holiness of the sanctuary was God's presence there. Without God there, Jerusalem is no different than Sodom or Babylon or any place else. Without Him there, the sanctuary is just a religious building. It's a piece of architecture. The returning exiles, yes, they rebuilt the temple. They rebuilt the city. But Yahweh wasn't there. The divine glory, as we saw in Haggai, as we saw in Zechariah, the divine glory would not return to the house until Yahweh Himself filled it with glory. Not with a glory cloud, but the glory of His literal presence. Turn to Malachi chapter 3. With this I close. The restoration of the people depended upon the coming of David. The restoration of the house depended upon the return of David. The return of God's glory to his sanctuary was going to depend upon the coming of David. Not simply a glory cloud. The coming of Yahweh Himself. Chapter 3 of Malachi, Behold, I am going to send my messenger and he will clear the way before me. Should remind us of Isaiah 40. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. Even the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight. Behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. But who can endure the day of His coming? And who can stand when He appears? For He is like a refiner's fire and like fuller's soap. And He will sit as a smelter and purifier of silver. And He will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold. He will purify those who minister in His house. Those who stand before Him is the idea. He will purify them and refine them like gold and silver so that they may present to the Lord offerings in righteousness. And then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord, as in the days of old, as in the former years. When will it be pleasing to the Lord? When the messenger of the covenant comes, when the Lord himself suddenly comes to his temple. The glory would not be restored until God himself came, until the Lord came to his temple. And then the glory would never depart, because we are the temple of the living God. There's the fulfillment of sacred space. The recovery fulfilled the word of the prophet, but it only further built the promise. The day had not yet come. Branch would build the house. Branch would bring the glory back to the house. Branch would establish the sacred city, the new Jerusalem. the cubic space. Let's pray. Father, you required of your people at that time that they live by faith. They were in desolation in Babylon and scattered throughout that Mesopotamian empire, absolutely having every reason to believe that you were finished with the seed of Abraham, that you were finished with the house of David. And yet they had your promise that you were not. And they looked forward to the day when they would be restored. Even as Daniel could understand the 70 years that had been decreed and that you would bring your people back. Jeremiah had said that the land would lie fallow for 70 years and then you would bring them back. And your city would be rebuilt. And your temple would be rebuilt. And the people probably anticipated that that would be the restoration. And yet no sooner did those works begin, then the prophets of their day told them, this is not it. You're building a mere temple. It is still Yaakovon. You are rebuilding a city, but it is not the throne of David. You are a reconsecrated people, but you are still in rebellion against God. These things only serve to show them that a day was yet coming. If you could recover a remnant from Babylon, if you could recover a remnant and cause a king that did not know you to act as your Mashiach, how much more, Father, could you restore all things in the coming day when David comes? But they needed to live by faith. They needed to wait. They needed to trust. And, Father, so it is with us. We wait for the consummation to come. We live in the context of failure, personal failure, the failure of your church, injustice, inequity on every hand. But that which you have begun, you will complete in the day of Christ Jesus. Give us grace to live by faith. We ask these things of you in Christ's name. Amen.