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Last week, we began a short series
out of an Old Testament book, the book of Ezra. It's probably
not one you've spent a lot of time before. And in that particular
book, we basically gave an overview of four chapters. As we looked
at that particular section of scripture, I asked the question. And what the question was is,
God had just punished Israel for 70 years of bondage, and
he promised well before that 70 years of bondage that when
the 70 years was over, he was gonna bless them in a mighty
way. And the 70 years were over, and the Lord started blessing,
and he asked Israel to do a few things, and they didn't do it.
And the question I have was, why? Why? Because the ultimate
lesson is, has God equipped us as a New Testament church? Are
there things we're supposed to be doing and we're not doing
it also? So I'm gonna take just a couple minutes and review what
we did last week and then we'll move forward. The book started
off in Ezra 1, 1 and 2. Now, in the first year of Cyrus,
king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah
might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus,
king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all
his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying, Thus saith
Cyrus, king of Persia, the Lord of God of heaven, hath given
me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he hath charged me to build
him an house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Now, if you remember,
we went to Jeremiah 29, and Jeremiah predicted that you're going to
be overrun and ruled and under bondage for 70 years. He says,
but the good news is at the end of 70 years, I'm going to return
you home and restore it. So what happened was, is as soon
as the Babylonian reign was over and they were taken over by the
Meadow Persians, King Cyrus, who was in charge of it, the
Lord put it on his heart to take these foreigners that were scattered
slaves throughout all the Middle East and say, okay, whoever wants
to go back home, you go home and I want you to rebuild your
city and your temple. And by the way, here's all the
provisions and here's all the authority and here's some funds
to help you do that. And by the way, when the temple
was overrun and Nebuchadnezzar took away all the artifacts and
stuck them in his pagan temples, he says, you can even take all
those back. I mean, that was an incredible miracle, but the
thing was is God predicted what happened 70 years before it did.
So, what we did is we moved forward and we watched him when we thought,
wow, this is a great revival. but there wasn't a revival. So
we moved forward and it turned out chapter two was nothing but
a bunch of jounce and I'm not downplaying that but the genealogy
is more for records and keeping track of people and we didn't
spend much time in there. But then we went on to chapter
three and they actually began. So let me just read a couple
verses here. I'm gonna read Ezra three, 10 and 12. And when the
builders laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord, they
set the priests and their apparel with trumpets and the Levites,
the sons of Asaph with cymbals to praise the Lord after the
ordinance of David, king of Israel. Verse 12, and all the people
shouted with great shout of the priests and the Levites and the
chief of the fathers who were ancient men that had seen the
first house. when the foundation of this house
was laid before their eyes and wept with a loud voice and many
shouted aloud for joy. So when this building finally
got started, they cleared away some of the rubble and they laid
a foundation for the new temple. And the old timers were sad. They saw the temple and last
week what we did is we were asking the question, When they were
weeping, was it because they were mourning their behavior
that caused them to be overrun? Was it tears of happiness? Or were they lamenting that,
man, this ain't nothing compared to the old days. And we asked
that question last week, and I'll let you string it along.
I wanted to know who would read ahead and find out. Well, it turned
out that, well, right there, we asked that question, and I
kinda left that hanging. Why? Now, they laid the foundation,
but the problem is, it stopped there. After the foundation was
laid, the building never got built, okay? Real quickly, an
overview, chapter four. Read a couple of words and a
couple of verses in Chapter 4. Let me read this, Chapter 4,
23 and 24. Now, when the copy of King Artaxerxes' letter was
read before Raham and Shemshi, the scribe and their companions,
they went to haste to Jerusalem unto the Jews and made them cease
by force in power. Then ceased the work of the house
of God, which is at Jerusalem. So it ceased in the second year
in the reign of Darius the king. So some adversaries jumped up
and they were mad that the house was getting rebuilt and they
started doing their politicking and they got a decree from the
king to stop. building the house. So, and I
left it with you with a question. Why didn't the house get built?
They had a king. Was it because they dilly-dallyed
and they didn't strike when the iron was hot? We asked all the
questions, okay? So this is something interesting
because on Wednesday night, and those of you that joined us on
Wednesday night, we had a little bit of a sneak preview. I'm gonna
go to chapter five. Let me read chapter five, verses
one and two. Then the prophets Haggai, the
prophet, and Zechariah, the son of Edo, prophesied unto the Jews
that were in Judah and Jerusalem in the name of the Lord, in the
name of the God of Israel, even unto them. Then rose up Zerubbabel,
the son of Shittael, and Jeshua, the son of Josedach, and began
to build the house of God, which is in Jerusalem, and with them
were the prophets of God helping them. So a long period of time
went by, and God sent two prophets, Haggai and Zechariah, and they
went and preached to the people, and after they got done preaching,
the people started building again. So again, here's Darius, he decrees
and says, build this house, they lay a foundation, and then it
stops and it stalls out. And I'm guessing it stalled out
for about 46 years. Okay, and I'll give you the reason
why in just a second. 46 years, and God said, listen,
I decreed that my house get built. Get it going, and he sent two
prophets. So, on Wednesday night, we looked
at this passage right here in chapter five, one and two. And
God sent two prophets, and it says they spoke to him, and we're
sitting there scratching our heads and saying, it sure would
be nice to understand what they said. I wish we had a record
of it. And lo and behold, do you recognize
these two guys, Haggai and Zechariah? Well, they're two of the minor
prophets. And what they said is recorded in the book of Haggai
and the book of Zechariah. So that's what we looked at on
Wednesday night. And I'm not going to go re-preach that sermon,
but I want to hit some of the high points just to show you.
So in Haggai chapter one, the first couple of verses, this
is what it says. The Lord's, I mean, thus speaketh the Lord
of hosts, saying, This people say, The time is not come, the
time that the Lord's house should be built. Then came the word
of the Lord by Haggai, the prophet saying, is it time for you, O
ye, to dwell in your sealed houses, and this house lie waste? Now
therefore, thus saith the Lord, the host, consider your ways.
Haggai came back and looked at him, and he says, some of you
saying the time's not right. But God's looking and says, you're
building up your houses really nice. You've finished it all
off, you've got it all finished out, you got all the extras,
but mine is just a bunch of stones here lying on the ground with
a foundation and no walls and no ceiling. And he says, consider
your ways. So they start building. Zachariah
said, The first couple of, now we're not gonna read these whole
books. It seems like Haggai's about, oh, 10 chapters long,
and I think Zechariah's about 14 chapters long, but basically
he gets after them pretty good. But this is the beginning of
that book. The Lord hath been sore displeased with your fathers.
Therefore say thou unto them, thus saith the Lord of hosts,
turn ye unto me, saith the Lord, and I will turn unto you, saith
the Lord. Be ye not as your fathers, and
to the former prophets cried, saying, thus saith the Lord of
hosts, turn ye now from your ways and from your evil doings.
But they did not hear, nor hearken unto me. So the two prophets,
Haggai and Zechariah, told them, start building my house. As a
matter of fact, start obeying me. So with that being said, let's go back to the book of
Ezra and let's see what's happening here. Now ultimately, this is
just not a history lesson. This is not us just looking down
our noses at a bunch of Israelites a couple thousand years ago and
saying, I would never do that. This is the lesson where we learn
from them. You know what old Winston Churchill used to say,
those who don't learn from history are cursed to repeat it. Well,
we wanna know what they did or what they didn't do. And then
we wanna hold up a mirror and say, are we doing the same thing?
What is it? So last week's sermon was called
God Did His Part. He got a mighty king named Cyrus,
and he moved him to fund it, and to authorize it, and to get
his house built. But the people didn't do it. And here it is 46 years later,
so Lord sends him some more prophets, and says start building, and
they do. But even then, it takes a little bit of time. Why? Why? Today's message, last week's
was the Lord did his part. Today's message is the priesthood
did their part, eventually. They didn't do it when Cyrus
made the decree. It took them 46 years, but then they got going. And then if the Lord would have
his way and we'd continue studying this, it's the people's part
would be next week. So you're thinking, wow, I'm
off the hook for one more week. This is all in Brother Dolph. No, I think
y'all are priesthood in a way and every head of household is
too. So we'll see this. I want to
kind of shed this blame and not get all in my toe stepped on
today. But I took this lesson very, very, very much to heart.
Okay, so I'm going to do a little bit of summarizing here. In chapters
five and six, here's an overview of these chapters. Cyrus's decrees
were finally upheld and enforced by Darius and Artaxerxes. Judas
adversaries wrote Darius and said, hey, they're building again.
Darius researched the matter and he got an old scroll. He
dusted off the cobwebs and went into the archives and he found,
he says, you know what? The Jews are right. Cyrus actually
did tell them to build it and they're doing exactly what Cyrus
did. So Darius says, okay, let them build it. Which is kind
of a miracle in itself. And then not only did he grant
permission, but you know what he did? He sent letters all the
way across the Jordan, and he says, don't you dare hinder them. Matter of fact, if you hinder
them, you're gonna have trouble with me. Matter of fact, whatever
they ask for, you give them. Matter of fact, I don't even
want you to tax them anymore. You can tax your people, but
don't tax them. Darius really got that ball rolling
again. And then four years later, the
building was complete. So finally we see a completed
temple in chapter six, 14 and 15. Yay, finally. Okay, the Lord
decreed it in chapter one, in chapter six, which I believe
is about 46 years later. You're thinking, why do you think
that's 46 years? Let me kind of give you this.
I'll go forward here. I had to go to the New Testament
to figure this out, and I'll tell you why I couldn't figure
it out. Well, first, let me give it to you right here. I went
in the history books, and I got all the Persian kings. Look at
them names up there. Do you see how many Darius's
there are? Do you see how many Artaxerxes there are? It was
hard. And some of them have nicknames,
and some of them in history are known by two or three names.
So it was really hard to figure out who was what. I couldn't
figure out when Haggai was writing, when Zechariah was writing, when
Ezra was writing, and they were naming people like Artaxerxes
and Xerxes, and they name Artaxerxes, then they name a Darius, and
then another Artaxerxes. I couldn't figure out who they're
talking about. But I think this is really slick. In John 2, Jesus
Christ made a comment. He says, when you kill me, He
says, I will raise it up again in three days. Well, the Pharisees
misunderstood Jesus Christ. And look what they say. This
is recorded in John 2, 18 through 21. The Jews said unto him, what
sign showest thou unto us? Jesus answered and said, destroy
this temple. He was talking about his body.
And in three days I will raise it up. Then said the Jews, 40
and six years was this temple in building. And wilt thou rear
it up in three days? But he spake of the temple of
his body. So I'm guessing from the time that the temple was
laid to the finally they finally finished it was 46 years and
we got scripture to go by that. And I don't have to rely on a
history book with a whole bunch of names. Okay. And then once
I have the scripture and the 46 lines up, we can go over there
and we can figure out which Darius it was and we can go with all
that. But that's not the point of my lesson. The point of my
lesson was a decree was made and God said, build my house.
In 46 years, they finally got roundabout with a kick in the
seat of the pants along the way. I hope that's not us. Amen. But the priesthood finally
got their act together. And that's what I wanna spend
my time on. So I've got those, I'm gonna skip forward and I
just wanna go to the good part. What did the priesthood do? This is the first thing they
did. This is in Ezra six, 16 through 22. This was immediately
after the temple was built. This is what the priesthood did.
In verse 17, they sacrificed Bullocks and rams and lambs and
sin offerings for themselves and for every tribe of Israel.
The first thing they did was they made sin offerings, they
repented, they confessed their sins, and they made the sacrifices. That's the first thing they did.
The second thing they did is they set themselves apart to
serve God. Before, they were too interested
in their farms and their businesses and all those other things, and
they finally says, okay, I'm gonna put that way, and we're
gonna be full-time preachers. Okay? This is an important work,
and I can't be a half a soldier. And then what they did is they
purified themselves. They made themselves ready to
worship. And then finally they separated themselves from the
heathen. They said, okay, I'm entangled
enough in the world, I need to separate myself, and I need to
dedicate myself to the Lord and his work. That's the fourth thing
the priesthood finally did. And they finally got themselves
in a place where they could lead. Before, when they were entangled
up in all these other things, the people followed them, and
their priorities were there. So ultimately, God became their
first thoughts, their affections, their work, and their ambitions.
That was the priesthood. And the way the priesthood went
was the way the people followed. Amen? Okay. It's real interesting. What I would encourage you to
do, if you go home this week, and sometime you think, what
should I read? Do me a favor, read Ezra 1, and
then read Ezra 7. And you know what, you're gonna
find that they're almost identical. What happens is, is in chapter
one, God works on Cyrus, and the people did nothing for 46
years, and then he works on another Persian king, and they do almost
the exact same thing. Cyrus says, build my temple.
The 46 year later, the Persian king says, send my people home. He says, let them do their work.
Let them worship their God. Here's some money, I'm gonna
even give them their money. The people that don't wanna go home,
let them make the offering so they can take them home and keep
this going. And this was something remarkable. He said, and let them govern
themselves. Whatever their spiritual laws
are, let them judge themselves, let them punish themselves, let
them take care of their own, and he gave them complete autonomy,
which is absolutely incredible. You just leave them alone. Think
of a foreign power that's willing to do that with a segment of
his people. And that's exactly what he did. Cyrus did it, and
then in chapter seven, 46 years later, the new Persian king does
it. It's absolutely incredible, the parallel there. But this
time, it took, stuff started happening. But there was a difference
from the first six chapters to the last four chapters. The priesthood
did something different, but the people did something different,
and that's what we're here to learn from, amen? And this is
what I wanna spend the rest of my time doing. Here it is. In Ezra seven, here's
two of my favorite verses in the whole book. Ezra seven in
verse six and Ezra seven in verse 10. If you have your Bibles,
you go to it, you underline it. I've got them up here for you.
You can read it from here, but these are important verses. Okay,
number one, or actually number six, verse six. Ezra went from
Babylon. This is in the seventh year of
Darius. And notice what he calls him. He calls him a ready scribe. What do you think that means?
A ready scribe in the law of Moses, and the king granted him
all his requests. So they went, and the first time
Cyrus made the decree, he made the decree throughout all the
land, and he says, whoever wants to go back to Judah can go back
to Judah. Here it is 46 years later, you got the new king,
Darius. Darius says, whoever wants to go back to Judah can
go. This time he's talking to Babylon, and in Babylon there's
this young buck named Ezra. He wasn't on the scene. Ezra
chapter one, but now here's in Ezra seven, here he is, and scripture
calls him a ready scribe. What do you think that means?
I think verse 10's gonna tell us what it means. Verse 10. And
he prepared himself to preach, this is my paraphrase, so I could
fit it in the screen. but did not know when, where,
or to whom he was gonna preach. The only thing he knew is the
what. That's not scripture. You're gonna need it in reading
scripture. That's my paraphrase of it. Ezra was a ready scribe. You know what he did? He says,
you know what? I got a burden to preach. I don't know when
I'm gonna preach. I don't know where I'm gonna preach. I don't
even know who I'm gonna preach to. But he started studying his
Bible. And he started getting his sermons
ready. And as he started getting his
sermons ready, he says, boy, this is a good sermon. I wish
I had someone to preach it to. I wonder when it's gonna happen. And he kept studying God's word,
and he was preparing himself for this preaching service, this
revival service. He had no idea what, when, or
where, but he knew what the subject matter was gonna be. That's the
difference from the first time Cyrus made the decree to the
second time they had a teaching priest. Don't get me wrong, Israel
always had priests, but they didn't always have teaching priests. There's a difference. I'm gonna try to go through that. Let me show you that this is
a scriptural principle. Leviticus 10 in verse 11. God's
given the law through Moses. And he says to the priesthood,
he says, your job is to make the people know the difference
of what's holy and unholy, what's clean and unclean. He says, I
want you to teach Israel everything Moses said. And you know who
this commandment was given to? It was Moses who was giving it
to Aaron. Aaron was a priest. He says,
Aaron, your job is just not to lead people through ceremonies.
Yeah, you're going to observe the feast, but your job is to
teach them. Notice that, teach. Second Chronicles 15.3, this
was under King Asa. Look at the language here. This
time, this is scripture. For a long season, Israel hath
been without the true God, a teaching priest, and the law. They had priests, and they had
religion, but they didn't have the true God. They didn't have
a teaching priest. They had a guy up there in a
robe doing all the ceremonies. He wasn't teaching the law. What
do you think he was teaching? Do you think he was teaching
the traditions of man? Do you understand? Underneath King Ezra and Asa,
there was a revival. And the difference was, they
had a teaching priest. They were still going to church.
They were still going to synagogue. But it was just rote, mundane
repetition. The Lord had teaching priests
and all of a sudden he raised up a teaching priest and he was
teaching them about God and the way they ought to behave. Teaching
the difference between what was holy and unholy. Teaching the
difference between what was clean and unclean. Teaching the way
and you should treat your wife. Teaching the way you should be
raising your children. Teaching the way you should be managing
your finances. That's the difference? Yeah. teaching how to forgive
your neighbor, teaching how to serve your neighbor, teaching
you how to show hospitality, teaching you how to pray for
one another. This is what they were teaching, as opposed to
just coming and going and hear the same sermon every week after
week after week. Amen? Last weekend, a week ago yesterday,
I was in Angier, North Carolina, and there was a young man that
was being ordained. He is now the pastor of Sugartree,
which is about an hour and 15 minutes south of here in Axton.
And I went to Angier for the ordination of that message, or
that messenger, that minister, and Brother Michael Goins delivered
the charge when the man was ordained. Good charge. These are the two
verses he used. One was in Acts 20 and 28. He said, take heed unto yourself
and the flock, that the Holy Ghost has made you overseers.
He said, feed them. Feed them, does that sound familiar?
Feed them? Where do you remember the feed
them? Peter, feed my sheep, feed my
lambs, remember that? He said, feed them. The second one is 1 Timothy 4,
16. Take heed to thyself and to the
doctrine. So first of all, Timothy, and Paul was talking to the preachers
at Ephesus, he says, first of all, you are a walking sermon. The way you conduct your life
is gonna mean way more to the people than what you say. You make sure you model it. and
I want you to be walking that walk because they're gonna be
watching you. It's not just your children that are gonna be watching
you, the whole congregation's gonna be watching you. Take heed
to yourself because your words and your actions and your behavior
is going to teach the people how to do it. And then he says,
take heed to the flock, but also take heed to the doctrine. Stay
into the word of God. And this is what Ezra did. He
was a ready scribe, he was preparing himself. Notice what it said
in chapter seven and verse 10. He prepared himself to preach,
but he also did it. And he prepared himself to teach
others to do it too. That was the difference. Nehemiah 8.8, if you know me,
this is one I quote a lot. This is one of my favorite sermons.
This is my favorite verses in the whole Bible. Remember when
I told you Ezra was preparing himself to preach a sermon? Nehemiah
8.8 is when he finally got to preach all those sermons. He
was sitting there and studying his Bible for all those years,
way back even in Babylon. He says, Lord's gotta put a burden
on me. I need to preach, I need to teach these people. I don't
know who, when, where, or what, you know, when this is gonna
happen and how it's gonna play out. Finally, in Nehemiah 8.8
it happened, but notice the way he preached. It says he read
in the book of, in the law of God distinctly. You know what that means? It sounds
real boring. He paid attention to verb tenses. Amen. He gave the sense. You know what
that means? Context, context, context, context. Amen? He went up to verse one
to find the who, what, when, where of the passage, and he
made sure we didn't take things out. We can make scripture say
just about anything if we ignore the above and below it. Right? But he went back and he made
sure he was handling the Word of God honestly. Did you know
you can handle the Word of God deceitfully? By taking things
out of context. And he caused them to understand
the reading. He finally got to preach those sermons. But this
is how he did it. He read distinctly, and he gave
the context, and the people understood what God's will was. That's the
difference. That's the difference. And then finally in Ezekiel 44
and 23, neither shall a priest marry a widow or one that was
put away. He was just setting apart the
priesthood, taking maidens of Israel or the priest's widow,
teach the difference between what's holy and profane, discern
but which is clean and unclean. In other words, that's what he
wanted the priesthood to do, to teach these things. Okay,
so this is what the priests were supposed to do. Let's go forward
here, and I wanna go back one more time. Let's go to the New
Testament now. Those were all Old Testament passages, for the
most part. Let's go look at the New Testament.
The New Testament's not any different. Look what it says here. When Jesus Christ began his ministry,
what did Jesus Christ do? Well, he went into the synagogues,
And do you remember what he did when he went into the synagogues?
The first thing he did was he opened up scripture. He read scripture, and then he
explained scripture. You think, that's a duh. The word, the whole word, and
nothing but the word. When I was ordained, I was given
that commandment. I was taken that oath. Do you
promise to preach the word? The whole word is nothing but
the word." And I said, I do. But this is the way we've always
done it. I get worried about a church when they start arguing
about communion cups, or carpet color, or You fill in the blanks. You know what's happening? That's
what Ezra and the church were doing for them 46 years. They
were doing all the ceremony as opposed to diving into God's
word and understanding God's will in their life and to see
how it applies to their life. That's the difference before
and after. The priest was dedicated to the
word and teaching the word of God in application to their life. And that's exactly what Jesus
Christ did. In Acts chapter six, two through four, I think this
is absolutely essential. And the New Testament church
has the office of a deacon, amen? Do you know what the office of
a deacon is for? It says it right here, but before
we read it, what do you think deacons are for? The office of deacon is to free
up the preacher so he can spend time in this. That's what the
deacon is for. Stuff needs to go on in churches.
I get it, but you know what? God gets it too. But compared
to the two, he's got someone that he created, an office that
is supposed to teach, and he says, no, the job duties. Now, Don't get me wrong, both
of them are extremely important. A church can't operate without
both of them. I'm not saying one is more important than the
other, but I'm saying one is different than the other and
the two offices have different job descriptions. So let deacons
deac and let preachers preach, okay? But this is what it says
here in Acts chapter six, verse two through four. Then the twelve
called the multitude. See what happened is this church
at Antioch was just busting at the seams. It was growing. And
that's a good problem to have. And the twelve called the multitude
and said, it is not reason that we should leave the word of God
and serve tables. There were some widows that needed
to be fed. And you know what? Feeding widows is a good thing.
And they were not saying, that's beneath me. They were saying,
I am supposed to preach the word of God, and the church is getting
so large that we need some help doing this service so the preachers
can preach. They should leave the word of
God and serve tables. Look ye out among you seven men
of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, and appoint
over this business. but we will give ourselves continually
to prayer and to the ministry of the word. When preachers get
so busy doing the things of the church, when there are not men
to step up into the office of deacon and preachers have to
do the deaconing, the church will suffer because the preachers
are supposed to be given to the ministry of the word. That's
their office. I share this story. When I was first starting to
speak, I was in Roswell, Georgia, and
the church where I was a member and starting to preach gave me
the permission, we call it liberty, a license to go preach at other
churches. It's called exercising your gift.
And at that time, I was still a widower. So I had three small
boys, and at the time they were probably, I don't know, four,
five, and six, or five, six, and eight, however the old, they
were about really, really small, all Titus' age and younger. And
here's this widower that shows up with three young boys, and
it's really hard to preach when you got three boys all over.
I used to use the four corner offense and sit one front right,
front left, and back right, but they still got in trouble and
were peeking at each other underneath the rows. And it was real trouble. So what the church did is I took
my preaching appointments, and they took turns, and the deacons
went with me on my preaching appointment. So a deacon would
go with me, and one of his wives would go. And they would watch
my three boys as I would preach. And you'd go, wow, that doesn't
look like in the job description of a deacon. The job description
of deacon is to facilitate the preaching of the Word of God.
And they were just facilitating the preaching of the Word of
God. I was doing the best I could. But that's what the office of
the deacon is for. The deacons will take care of that. And notice,
they're not schleps. It says right here, seven men
of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost, full of wisdom, and
put them over this business. So it is an important job. But at the same time, so is preaching
the word of God. So that's why he created the
two offices. That is very, very important,
okay? Notice, the qualifications of
a pastor, there's 18 qualifications, and here's one of the 18. It
says, apt to teach. In other words, well, we got
this minister, and he's really good, and he's memorized a lot
of scripture, and he's really smart, but the kids don't understand
when he speaks. Is that apt to teach? No, that's apt to teach. He's gotta be able to communicate
it. He's gotta be able to break it down so people can consume
it. 2 Timothy 2.15, this is what
ministers should be doing. Study to show thyself approved
unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing
the word of God. You know, we break it down and
we pass it out. Second Timothy four, two, preach
the word, be instant, in season, out of season, reprove, rebuke,
exhort, with all long suffering, in doctrine. I'll tell you what, I'll be honest with you. When God called me into the ministry,
I laughed, I really did. You know like when Abraham laughed
when he was really old and said he was gonna have a son, I laughed.
Because all my life I was in banking and I managed money in
a trust department. I liked managing money. It didn't
talk back. It didn't act up. It didn't argue. You could measure it, it was
quantifiable. I sat in my cuticle, it was great. Because I'm an
introvert. So when Lord started calling
me, I said, Lord, you got the wrong guy. I gave every excuse
Moses did, every, you understand? Confrontation, I hate confronting
people. But this is part of the job.
Amen. And he says, but speak the things
which become sound doctrine. Okay, we're almost done, I got
one more passage, I think. Yep, this is the last passage.
At the end of Matthew 28, many people call these last five
verses the Great Commission. There's five verses, I'm gonna
read the first three, but the last two is gonna be my closing
statement. So Jesus Christ is about ready to ascend up into
heaven. Here's the disciples, the 12 apostles, or 11, and Matthias
is back in there, slipped in for the 12. But here are the
disciples, and he's about ready to turn them loose, and this
is what he says. So then the 11 disciples went
away to Galilee into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them,
and when they saw him, they worshiped him, but some doubted. And Jesus
came and spake unto them, saying, all power is given unto me in
heaven and earth. And I'm passing on that power
to you. But notice what it says here. There's three verbs. Look
at the three verbs that's coming up. See it? Teach, baptize, and teach some
more. You got it? Teach, baptize, and
teach some more. In other words, you teach them
about Jesus Christ, you get them in the water, and you move on
to the next person. No, that's not what it says. It says teach
some more. Look it. Go ye therefore and
teach all nations. And after you teach them about
Jesus Christ, and after you baptize them in the name of the Father
and the Son of the Holy Ghost, Teach them to observe all things.
All things, what's that? I've already been baptized. Aren't
I on an easy street now? No, and that's what happened
to these people in Israel. When they returned to Judah,
they were making the sacrifices. They were observing the feasts.
They observed the Feast of Tabernacles. They observed the Passover. They
were going through all the motions. But you know what? They stopped
and they weren't applying it to their lives. They weren't
treating their neighbors right. They weren't loving their neighbors.
They weren't serving their neighbors. Teaching them to observe all
things whatsoever I commanded you, and lo, I am with you always,
even into the end of the world, amen. From a preaching description,
it sure would have been easy if Jesus just said teach, baptize. You know what, in a lot of ways,
that's the easy part. But then he said, teach, baptize,
and teach them to observe all things. And that's what fell
apart in the book of Ezra, and that's why it took 46 years. And if ever you are inclined
to go read the book of Nehemiah, Nehemiah did these same things,
and you'll find out that they built the city walls, and then
he went away back because he only had leave for a piece of
time. And when he came back, he saw the people weren't doing
the second teach, and he got on them really hard. So this
is really important. So, first lesson. Last week,
God did his part. He moved in the minds of principalities
and municipalities. He moved in leaders and he moved
people to move back home. He allowed, he got permission,
he got funding, he got everything that was necessary to build this
temple, and it didn't get built. So 46 years go by and God moves
in a couple prophets named Haggai and Zechariah and he rekindles
it and the priesthood wake up. They dedicate them to serving
the Lord. They dedicate themselves to the word of God. They dedicate
themselves to teaching the word of God. And all of a sudden stuff
starts happening. And we got one more lesson after
that. The people, what did the people
do? And then when did the people stop doing it? And when did they
start doing it? And that's where we're at. So,
with that being said, I need to do three things. Take heed
to thyself. Better look at my own walk before
I open my mouth. Better be looking out at the
flock. And I better be looking at the doctrine. Nothing else,
the doctrine right there. This is my preaching material. This is my curriculum, amen? This and nothing more. And I'm
going to be more worried about this and looking at it being
applied than I'm going to look at the reputation of our ceremonies. And I pray that when we get in
this last section, it'll be profit. And then I'll tell you what,
let's bust it down and we might be breaking out that wall for
a bigger crowd, whatever it takes, whatever it takes. May the Lord
bless us. Thank you.
Ezra: The Priests' Part
Series Ezra
| Sermon ID | 331191822285847 |
| Duration | 42:19 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Ezra 5 |
| Language | English |
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