Everybody's finding their seat. Just a reminder of the schedule coming up. This coming Sunday we'll be having our Christmas Sunday service. We'll be having the Lord's Table and a focus on a Christmas message. Then there will not be Bible class next Tuesday night because it's Christmas Day. And then the Next week it will be New Year's Day, and we will have Bible class on that night. I leave for Kiev on January the 9th, so we will not have class next week, but we will the two, and the whole time I'm gone we have some special, special things for everybody during the time that I'm gone, so you do not want to miss that. How shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed thereto according to thy word. Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against thee. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. Jesus prayed to the Father, sanctify them in truth. Thy word is truth, for the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God shall stand forever. Before we get started, we'll have a few moments of silent prayer. We need to know again and again the emphases that we have in Scripture on spiritual preparation means cleansing from sin and forgiveness, and that we are forgiven and positionally, legally cleansed at salvation, we still sin, and we still need to confess sin. So we'll have a few moments of silent prayer, and then I will open in prayer. Let's pray. Our Father, we're so thankful we can be here tonight. We live in a country where there's no government persecution, there's no opposition, and yet, Father, we know that the forces against the church and the truth of your Word are getting stronger, that they are energized ultimately by Satan, and all of this is part of the angelic conflict and rebellion, and our role is to stand firm, to put on the armor, your armor, and to continue to grow and mature as believers that we may learn exactly how to communicate the gospel to others. and how to apply your word in our life so that we can be a witness in not only to those around us, but also to the angels for eternity. Father, we pray too for persecution that takes place around the world against Christians, especially in Muslim countries. But we know that the persecution in China is just overt and intense and extreme. And it's not, hasn't been getting much press in the U.S., but it is getting more and more, and the opposition, in fact, the president of China said that it is Christianity that's holding back communism in China. And so there is a dedicated attack against Christians, and horrible things are happening to the Christians there, and we pray that they would be steadfast and faithful witnesses to the gospel. Father, we pray for us that as we study tonight, you'd help us have a great understanding of worship, that as we come towards the end of this series, on worship that we would have a greater appreciation of our own personal worship of you as well as our corporate worship. And we pray this in Christ's name, amen. All right, last time we went through much of the Old Testament, much of the history of Israel in relation to worship. And so tonight what we're going to look at is worship following the exile. By the exile I refer to that period from 586 B.C. until 536 when Cyrus tells the Jews to go back to the land, authorizes their return to the land to rebuild the temple. And so we need to look at that last time. We began this list of five things to go through. We looked first sort of thematically through the Old Testament. We looked at the corruption of worship. And in one sense, the corruption of worship is always idolatry. It may have, may appear, as it did in the Old Testament, as the worship of images that are made out of wood or stone or metal. But there's also the abstract, abstract idols of the mind, the things we put in front of God where we rob God's glory. We take away from him his central role of importance and significance in our lives and give our time and our attention and our energy and our money and our resources to something that supplants God. And so this was depicted in the Old Testament idolatry and the horrible, horrible abominations that occurred under Manasseh, who is towards the end one of the last kings of Judah. He's followed by two or three kings. And then God brings the hammer down and Israel is destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar. Jerusalem is sacked and the temple is destroyed. We looked at those themes, and then we looked at the themes of the Reformation of worship, and there were some great revivals in a biblical sense of the term. Most that, in the church age, most of these things that go by revivals are not in the same vein as that which occurred in the Old Testament. We looked at what took place there, especially under Joash, King Joash, King Hezekiah, and King Josiah. And at the centerpiece of each of these is the restoration of the Word of God. And if you have genuine revivals, and I think there are genuine revivals that break out on occasion through church history, and it's always the preaching of the Word. It is the availability of the Word. You go back to the 1500s and you look at the Protestant Reformation, And this is truly energized by the fact that the printing press was invented in the 15th century, and now Bibles can be printed so that every person can have their own personal copy of the Scriptures. There are translations that are now made available by early to mid-1500s in the vernacular of the people, so they can get a German copy of the scriptures or French or English. And as a result of that, people are reading the Bible and talking about it on the streets and arguing and debating theological points. And sometimes it was a life-and-death matter, because if you didn't hold the same views as the monarch, then you could be guilty of treason and then you were taken out and you might be hung or burned at the stake or something worse. But these kinds of things happen in the history of Israel and with each of these you have a restoration of the focus on the Word of God and we saw that last time. Then we saw the judgment that came on Israel because of idolatry, because of corrupt worship, They're putting everything first instead of God and giving their attention to all these pagan idols. And that's as far as we got last time. And tonight what I want to do is take us through the restoration and return, the return of the Jews to the land following the exile. the 70 years, and spending a little time to see what happens during the initial return with Zerubbabel, and then what we learned from Ezra, and we learned from Nehemiah, and the importance of the focus on Scripture at that time. And then we'll conclude with a transition going from the end of the Old Testament with Malachi, what happens with during the intertestamental period with the rise of the synagogue, and while it starts off, as most things do, with a focus on the Word, this becomes an idolatry of legalism. That is what Jesus faces when he comes. So we're just gonna walk our way through these various facets. One of the things that we will see is that when we get into the New Testament, we don't find a significant emphasis on worship. Worship is used a few times. The word worship is used several times, a number of times in the Gospels. It's around 24, 25 times in the Gospels. Most of it relate to somebody worshiping Jesus at his birth, or later it's those who are worshiping the idols of their worshiping at the temple, things of that nature. Then when you get into the period of the epistles that are written for the church age believer, The word for worship is only used eight times. So the question is, why is so little said about worship in the epistles? So mull that over for a while. It's going to be an important observation to make. So we've seen five different characteristics of worship that get emphasized over and over again, and one of the things that I'm bringing out as we go through this whole sort of survey of worship in the Old Testament is that we don't have We have commands in the Old Testament in the law for the worship of Israel, the corporate worship of Israel in the tabernacle and in the temple, but we don't have that level of specificity when we get into the New Testament. But what we do have is over and over again, there's a tremendous amount describing worship in the Old Testament. And so there are principles that we derive from that, that we see that are the characteristics of worship. So when we get to the New Testament and you don't have a lot said, it's because a lot has already been said. We are to look at the scriptures and derive principles from what was there in the Old Testament and bring that over into the New Testament. And one of the first things that we see is the centrality of a sacrifice, a substitutionary sacrifice, where an animal is killed as a substitute, as a depiction of the payment for sin. And so man must come to God on the basis of what God says. And that is there must be cleansing of sin, there must be a payment for sin. And even though the blood of bulls and goats could not permanently provide that sacrifice, they were necessary for there to be real spiritual cleansing in the Old Testament. And the Day of Atonement just lasts for a year. You have to do it again and again and again. Second thing that we saw is that there is the proclamation of God's character and his works, who he is and what he has done. And this we see from the end of Genesis chapter 4, that with Seth at his time, men began to call on the name of the Lord. And we studied what that meant, that it means to talk about and make proclamation about who God is and what he has done. Third, we've seen the necessity of having sin cleansed. There must be, there is something about worshiping this holy, unique, distinct God that what we do in worship is different from what happens anywhere else and in other places. There is something that has to do with God being distinct, When Moses went up to the mountain to see why the burning bush did not become consumed by the fire, God first told him, take off your shoes for you're on holy ground. It wasn't special ground. We saw that it was what made it special and different was that that's where God was. And so we see an important principle here that what was going on inside the sanctuary, wherever that was, was not what was going on in the culture at large. And I think that's an important principle because what we see today as part of what goes on in most evangelical churches is that what goes on inside the church is a mirror and reflection of what's outside the church, And it's even been articulated by the church growth advocates that we need to sing the same kind of music, dress the same way, do everything the same way inside the church as people are used to outside the church so they don't feel uncomfortable when they come to church. And my question is, when you come into the presence of God and the presence of His Word, if you don't feel uncomfortable because of what is communicated by God's Word, not because the people are somewhat rude to you or make you feel uncomfortable or something like that, but because you're exposed to a biblical culture, if you don't feel uncomfortable, then maybe something is wrong, that that is a false criterion, false standard. Fourth thing that we've seen is that there's organization and training for worship. that when David is preparing Solomon to build the temple, God has revealed everything to him. Solomon didn't generate this on his own. It wasn't something David woke up one day and said, I'm going to build an architectural masterpiece. God revealed everything to him, including The music and the structure of the worship and the organization of the choirs, the Levitical choirs and the Levitical orchestras, this wasn't something that was just sort of spontaneously developed on the basis of human genius. There is a divine pattern for worship, which is what we see again and again as we go through the Old Testament. And then the focus, the centerpiece of all worship is on Scripture and our response to what God says. That is the focal point. And so we looked at the fact that the big problem in the Old Testament, and still today, we have made idols of our own sin nature. Exodus 20 verse 3 God said you shall have no other gods before me and Deuteronomy 6 5 you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul and with all your strength God and God alone commands that centerpiece in our lives and nothing else so what happens is After the corruption that enters into the temple, I pointed out that under Manasseh they put images of Baal, images of the Asherah, and all of the fertility rites, all that sexual perversion and everything that was going on happened inside the temple. They have totally desecrated the temple. Of course, Ezekiel saw the Shekinah or the dwelling presence of God depart the temple some 20 years before the temple is destroyed, but this sexual perversion, this idolatry has taken hold, and so God now destroys the temple. It's a function of cleansing. That's part of what divine discipline does. It's a function of cleansing from sin and recognition of that. But what happens to the people? Because now the centerpiece, the focal point of their worship is this glorious temple, and it's not there anymore. Where are they going to sacrifice? How are they going to have forgiveness for sin? If there is no observance and sacrifice on the Day of Atonement, how is the nation cleansed from sin? What do you do about sin if there is no no temple. And this same question is going to be a big question at the end of the first century when the second temple is destroyed in A.D. 70. How are you going to have cleansing? That's when you get the sort of the reinvention of Judaism and the new Judaism that comes along that is based on the rabbinical teaching. So you have this defeat by Nebuchadnezzar in 586. You have prior to that a large number who fled and they went to Egypt and they settled in several places and they took Jeremiah with him. This is described in Jeremiah chapter 42 as well as Jeremiah 43 7 and 44 1. So a huge group goes to Egypt. Then there are others that were taken captives by the Babylonians, and they are taken off in chains, and they are marched to Babylon. And then you have those who still stayed in the land. Israel has never been left without a Jewish presence since the conquest. There's always some Jews who stay behind and who are in the land. Those who were in the land no longer had a place to sacrifice, but Mount Moriah is still a holy place. The temple may be gone, the altar may have been destroyed, but it is still the place that God has set his name. It is the place where he has been worshipped. It is the place where the Ark of the Covenant was located and sat on the foundation stone. That foundation stone is in the center of that monstrosity that's up there now that's called the Dome of the Rock. The rock is that foundation stone on which the Ark of the Covenant rested inside the Holy of Holies. But all of that is gone. Nevertheless, during this period, people would still come and sacrifice up on the Temple Mount. But it was a time of incredible sorrow and sadness. We get hints of it from the laments that are in Jeremiah, from the book of Lamentations. We get hints of it as we look at Daniel and read also in the books that deal with the post-exilic period. But when you look at the Jewish community in Babylon, they have no sacrifice for sin, there's no place to make public proclamation, there's no annual pilgrimages to Jerusalem, there's no festival days, there's no feast times, there's no singing of the hymns, there's no place to really rejoice and talk about what God has done and to praise Him. Israel, the land, has been abandoned. to the pagan gods. And so there's this sense of defeat and despair on the part of the Jews that God has abandoned them. But into that spiritual darkness, God speaks through his word, through the prophets and others telling them that this is not the end. It is a pause of discipline in God's plan for Israel, and there will be a future regathering and restoration. In fact, it gets specific in Jeremiah 25, verses 11 and 12, as Daniel reads this, and that's described in Daniel 9, verse 2. He reads this section of Daniel, I mean of Jeremiah, excuse me, which says, And this whole land shall be a desolation and an astonishment, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years. Then it will come to pass, when seventy years are completed, that I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation, the land of the Chaldeans, for their iniquity, says the Lord, and I will make it a perpetual desolation." And so there's this promise that the Babylonians are going to be judged by God and that there will be a restoration to the land. So what does Daniel do? This is part of worship. This is Daniel's worship. Daniel reads this. He takes out his abacus or whatever. iPad, and he starts making some calculations, and he figures out that those 70 years are just about up. So as the spiritual leader of the remnant that's in Babylon, he begins to pray about this, that, God, you made a promise. You said after 70 years we're going to go home, 70 years are almost up. and he confesses the sin of the people to God. Again, a great example of that worship entails confession, and you should read that sometime. Read through the first part of Daniel 9 and Daniel's prayer, because this helps us to understand. We'll look at a prayer of confession today as well, but it helps us to understand what a prayer of confession entails. that it's, you know, sometimes I hear some people talk about, well, I confess sin, and they just have like a grocery list, and they just basically repeat ten sins, whatever they are, arrogance, anger, hatred, gossip, jealousy, and they think that's confession. That's just running through a list. When you read the biblical accounts what you have is in prayer I acknowledge that I have sinned against you God. I have been angry. I have been spiteful. I have gossiped. I have done these things. It's personal and it is an admission of guilt. If you were to stand up in a court of law and a judge were to read out an indictment, that your response is to say either, no, I did not do that or yes, I did that. Yes, I robbed that person. It's not, if you're confessing your guilt, you're just not going to say robbery third degree. That would be meaningless. That's not what we find in the scriptures. There's not a single example of anybody confessing sin like that. And so Daniel, as a representative, the spiritual leader of his people, Daniel rehearses what the people have done, their idolatry, their disobedience to God, their failure to obey Him, and that God was perfectly righteous and just to take them out of the land. And so he goes through that, and then he ends with a petition that God would restore them, and it's at that time that the angel appears to him to tell him that God is going to restore his prayer, and gives him this vision of the 70 weeks. There are those promises. That gives hope. Also, as central to worship is this idea of hope, that all is not lost, even though we're living in a fallen, corrupt world. When we worship God, there is a sense in which we come under conviction of our sin, just as Isaiah did when we started this series in Isaiah chapter 6. when Isaiah comes into the presence of God and he says, woe is me, a man of unclean lips. Again, that's confession. It is what I have done. I'm a man of unclean lips. There's a picture there of cleansing, and then there is this response of hope in there, that there is a future because God is not a God of simple condemnation, but a God of restoration and a God of forgiveness. So you have these messages from the prophets also focusing on the promises of the coming Messiah. And you have chapters like Isaiah 53 that's all about the future suffering Messiah who's going to be a substitutionary sacrifice for sin. And by him, my people will be declared righteous. You have prophecies like Micah 5-2 that the Messiah will be born in Bethlehem. Isaiah 7-14, he's born of a virgin. Isaiah 9-6, the titles of the Lord and his name is Emmanuel, God with us. all of these things, and in the midst of that you have also promises, for example, in Isaiah 40, that they are to wait on the Lord, that this isn't going to change quickly, that they are to wait on the Lord and for His restoration, but in the meantime, as things look pretty chaotic and destructive, and you just don't know what's going to happen, there's the promise not to be afraid. Fear thou not, for I am with thee. Be not dismayed, for I am thy God. I will strengthen thee. Yea, I will help thee. Yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness. That's a promise given to Israel in the midst of this, in the prediction of this future national calamity when they will be destroyed. But they are not to fear that God has a plan for them. And his plan is a plan of hope and a plan of restoration. So those who are in the land are having to deal with the after effects of the destruction. The economy is a wreck. The land has been devastated. Jerusalem has been destroyed. It looks hopeless. The prophets are saying, don't give in to hopelessness. God's mercies are new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness. Then we have those who are in the land. Excuse me. Then we have those who went to Egypt. And they developed a major center for Judaism in Alexandria. And they attempted to preserve, to some degree, the practices of the temple, but without the temple. They've put a focus on the word. And so what happened some generations later, as the Jews in Alexandria lost their facility of Hebrew, they could no longer read the Hebrew scriptures, They brought in rabbis who knew Hebrew and also Greek, and they translated the Torah into Greek, and that's the Septuagint. So we see that the Word of God, the Scripture, the message from the prophets is still at the very center. There was another group that were assimilationists. They assimilated to the pagan idolatry of the Egyptians, and they settled down the Nile at the first cataract. at an island called Elephantine. Elephantine and there were various papyri, a huge number of papyri discovered there that gave us a lot of insight into that Jewish community and what had happened to them. By the way, DBM is working on a plan. We've got the announcement up on the website that we are planning a trip to Egypt next year, leaving after Christmas on December the 26th, and we'll be gone for about eight or nine days, and we're going to Egypt. and doing this in conjunction with Wayne House. Wayne has led various groups to Egypt, but not recently, so he hasn't been there in a number of years, but we keep hearing very, very positive reports from people that it is very safe. I had two or three pastors I got to know when I was in Israel in 2016 at the Yad Vashem course who had taken the time to go to Egypt before they came to Israel for the Yad Vashem course, and they just had a tremendous time, insightful time, but they just had two or three days so they didn't see a lot. And this will have, you'll get a lot of information on this. One of the things we're hoping to do is if we have a total of 30 people, 15 for me, 15 for Wayne, then we can charter our own boat. and take a boat trip from Cairo up the Nile to Luxor and the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens and there'll be lots of other things that we'll do as well as a study of Exodus along the way. So, those are just some of the things we have in mind. But there was a center for Judaism there in Alexandria, but of course the major center for Judaism took place in Babylon. And it was there in Babylon that you had the Babylonian Talmud eventually gets written, of course many centuries later, as a reflection of what develops there. And the prophet that goes to Babylon, other than Daniel, is the prophet Ezekiel. And of those who were taken as captives to Babylon, there were a number of the Levitical priests and others who had scrolls with them and who had copies of part or all of the scripture. And so it was there that they began to copy these texts and distribute them to people. Because without the temple, without the temple ritual, without sacrifice, they had to be refreshed and encouraged and taught by the by the people, by the leaders, and by the Scripture. So the Scripture became very central to this. And it was at this time that we're told in Ezekiel chapter 33 that they began to meet in the house of Ezekiel. And this is often thought to have been the prototype of the synagogue. This is when that idea began, is that they would come together to study Torah, to study scripture in the house of Ezekiel. In Ezekiel 33, 30 to 32, we read, As for you, son of man, God always addresses Ezekiel as son of man. As for you, son of man, the children of your people are talking about you beside the walls and in the doors of the houses." See, he's got everybody talking about what's going on at his house. He says, and they speak to one another, everyone saying to his brother, please come and hear what the word is that comes from the Lord. See, if you're going to have any kind of impact, people have to be excited about the Word of God and telling other people about it and inviting them to Bible class, as it were. So God continues in verse 31. So they come to you as people do. They sit before you as my people and they hear your words. But here comes the condemnation. Here's the indictment. They hear your words, they go through, they're still going through the motions. There's still this formalism that had destroyed their relationship with God before the exile. He said, but they do not do them. They hear your words, but they don't do them. They amass notebooks of Bible doctrine. They have all kinds of notes. They have this and that, but they're not applying it. It's not changing their life. You know, the word that is often abused today for changing the life is really the word repent. It means to turn, to turn away from disobedience and turn to obedience, to walk with the Lord. And so what we see here is they're coming to Bible class, they're going through all of the outward formalities, but they're not letting the words enter into their soul and transform their lives. They do not do them, for with their mouth they show much love, but their hearts pursue their own gain." We should nail that sign on every politician, almost every politician, because they have so much lip service. They say one thing, and yet their hearts are focused in another direction. And then verse 32, Indeed, you are to them as a very lovely song of one who has a pleasant voice and can play well on an instrument, for they hear your words, but they don't do them. They really like listening to you. I had one person who came for a while, he was an unsaved Jew, and he said, I really enjoy coming to Bible class and listening to you, but people think I want to become a believer, so I'm going to quit. But I just wanted you to know why I'm not showing up anymore. And so that was back in the days when we were meeting at White Oak. So that's the idea here. They loved to hear the ideas and to talk about them. I remember a number of years ago, back in the 90s, there was a family that would often have parties and gatherings at their home. And I was frequently invited to that. And they always invited a good friend of theirs who was a Jewish lawyer. And everybody witnessed to this guy at every one of these parties. I mean, he would hear the gospel 30 times from different people. But he never trusted in the Lord. He just loved the intellectual stimulation and the discussion and the argument. And I find that that's true. That's what's going on here. People love to hear Ezekiel talk. They loved to hear the things that he said, but they weren't interested in applying them whatsoever. But what we learned from this is that the Word of God, there were those who did respond, and the Word of God was becoming the central focal point, and this will set the stage for the post-exilic worship. So that's the critical issue. It's not the ritual, It's not, but it's the will, the volition, the choices of the people, and they're choosing not to internalize, assimilate, and apply the word, even though they are going through the motions. What became more central as well during this time is this focal point on the law, because it was a realization that they had disobeyed the law by being an idolatrous, so they're going to sort of overcorrect I don't know if you know what I mean by that. This is when you're going down the highway and you took out your cell phone and you're starting to text somebody and you look up and you're about to hit somebody so then you correct to avoid hitting them and if you're not an experienced driver you'll overcorrect and hit somebody else and cause an accident. This happens a lot. So this is what happens. They're going to overcorrect against the overt idolatry, but the overcorrection is going to eventually take them into the hyper-legalism that we see at the time of Jesus. The focus on Torah, the focus on the traditions of observing the feast days in a modified way, and especially observing the Sabbath. Ezekiel 20 verse 12, God says, that they might know that I am the Lord who sanctifies them. And so they're going to become much more rigorous about observing the Sabbaths. And one of the problems that led to their being taken out of the land wasn't just idolatry, it was that they abused the Sabbath. They did not obey the Sabbath law. So as they focused on the word, then they began to shift away from overt idolatry and realizing they needed to obey the word. In 536 BC, Cyrus, the Medes and the Persians defeated the Babylonians, and Cyrus became the emperor, and he issues a decree to allow the Jews to return to the land. But it's not just the Jews. What Cyrus did was he realized the Babylonians had captured so many different people from different countries and different nations and had brought them back to Babylon that what he wanted to do was send everybody home. And he was very gracious in that, and so Ezra 1, 2 through 4 describes that. If we read it, it says, thus says Cyrus, king of Persia, all the kingdoms of the earth the Lord God of heaven has given me, and he has commanded me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judea. And so he is recognizing that these holy places, and he did that not just for the Jews, but for all the different people he spent money to rebuild all the temples. So some people think that this means that, well, he must be saved. But from what we know from archaeological discoveries is that he did this for all the different people groups. He's using the right words, but he doesn't mean that he is a believer in Yahweh or the Old Testament. He's just going along with each group, and he wants all the gods to be happy with him. So he's going to send everybody home to rebuild their temples. And so this begins the return. And when you have the first return, it goes back under Zerubbabel, and he takes about 45,000 Jews back to the land. Now, that's not a big number. And they're not coming from Egypt, and they're not coming from those who had been scattered to the north, or those who were scattered in the dispersion that occurred from the Assyrians. back in 722 BC. So you have a lot of Jews that have been dispersed. That's the English from diaspora. You have a lot of Jews that have been dispersed throughout North Africa, Asia Minor, or what we call Turkey today, as well as the deeper Middle East in the areas of what we would today refer to as Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran. And so he is just sending back and authorizing those under his authority to go back to the land, and Zerubbabel takes a group of about 45,000 back, and it is a time of incredible joy I mean, how many times do we feel this excited just because we get to get up on Sunday morning and go learn about the Lord in church? This is from the first five verses of Psalm 126. Psalm 126, when the Lord brought back the captivity of Zion, we were like those who dream. I mean, they couldn't believe it was happening. Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue was singing. Then they said among the nations, the Lord has done great things for them. The Lord has done great things for us, and we are glad to bring back our captivity, O Lord, as the streams in the south." That's the desert, streams in the Negev. Those who sow in tears shall reap in joy. And so it's just a celebration as they go back, and they go back to what had been their family homes, and there's a lot of work that has to be done, and a lot of rebuilding that will have to take place, and they're going to have to restore the temple and sacrificial worship. And we see some of this described in Ezra chapter 3. And if you look down, turn with me and turn with me to Ezra. We're going to be bouncing around a lot in Ezra here reading some different key verses that are here. If you go down to verse 10, we read, When the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord. This was about 534, a couple of years after they returned. So they laid the foundation. But this isn't just like a bunch of construction workers going out laying the foundation, there is a lot of pomp and circumstance with this. There's a lot of celebration that goes on. The priests are all there. They're organized. They're structured. This is a worship service, to worship God as the foundation of the temple is being laid. And again, we see that worship is organized and structured. It is not random, chaotic, or at the spur of the moment. They are there, the priests are there, they are appropriately dressed for priests, they are in their apparel with trumpets, so during this time they've reorganized the orchestra, the musicians. That's not just organized, this involves training. It involves taking them and the Levites and discovering who has talent and ability on different instruments, and then teaching them and training them. I have a friend, and there have been many times in our lives we didn't connect real well. I had been in ROTC with him in college, but I first met him the summer before our seventh grade year when we both got in the band and we learned how to play trombone together. And now he's a deacon over at Second Baptist Church, but there's a few of those guys that are believers and he's solid and we communicate at least two or three times a month usually. That's what has to happen, though. It's that kind of a training. They haven't done this for a while. I don't know how many of you all have ever played a musical instrument, but if you go three or four or five or ten years, you lose the musculature, it's called an embouchure, in your lips. And you've got to regain that. You've got to retrain those muscles so that you can play, whether it's any kind of wind instrument, you've got to get that back. So there's organization and there's structure and they learn to follow direction and play well, play excellently. And notice it says, and the Levites the sons of Asaph. Now Asaph was the head of the orchestra at the time of David. He's the one who organized and structured it and developed all of this training. And so he is still, his descendants are there and they still carry on this tradition. So it's a new generation, but it's not a different worship. See, this is what we get in our current generation is they misinterpret this idea of singing a new song where we're going to have our generation's music and our generation's songs, and that hasn't really happened through the years. I mean, they changed everything. What we see is in hymnody is that there are certain patterns that have always been there, whether it was the early to medieval church, which focused on singing the Psalms, or whether it was in the years of development of hymnody through the 17th, 18th, and 19th, and even some into the 20th century. So there's this training, and the purpose is to praise the Lord according to the ordinance of David, the king of Israel. They're not coming out with something new, they're sticking with that which honors God. And they sang responsively. We read responsively. And there are some songs that we, or hymns we could sing where there is, where there are different parts, usually in the chorus. And that's that same idea. They sang responsively. We've studied what looks to be one example of that. in Revelation chapter 5, where you have the 24 elders, and then you have the angels singing, and it's antiphonal. One group sings, and then the other group sings. And so this was part of what they did. They sang responsibly, praising and giving thanks to the Lord, for He is good, for His mercy endures forever towards Israel. Then all the people shouted with a great shout when they praised the Lord because the foundation of the house of the Lord was built. But there's also sorrow. But many of the priests and Levites and heads of the fathers' houses, old men, these would have been young boys in 586. They might have been five or ten years of age. It's been 70 years, so they're now in their 80s. But they remember what the first temple was like, and so they weep. They weep with a loud voice when the foundation of the temple is laid before their eyes, yet many shouted aloud with joy. It's a bittersweet time. They remember what happened, and so there's genuine sorrow and and sadness over what was lost, but at the same time they are glad of what is going on. Then in verse 13 we read, so that the people could not discern the noise of the shout of joy from the noise of the weeping of the people, for the people shouted with a loud shout and the sound was heard afar off. And so then let's just skip forward a little bit more in Ezra to look at what happens when they dedicate the temple. And they dedicate the temple in 515 BC. So they began in 534, there were lots of false starts, problems, opposition from the Arabs and Samaritans and others that had been resettled into the land. And so The temple's begun in 534, but there were these many problems. And in chapter 6, verse 15, we read about the temple being completed. And then in verse 16, we read, then, the children of Israel, the priests and the Levites, the rest of the descendants of the captivity celebrated the dedication of the house of God with joy. So it's a genuine celebration. It is serious, it is organized, it is structured, and it is great joy. And in verse 17 we read, And they offered sacrifices at the dedication of this house of God, 100 bulls, 200 rams, 400 lambs, and as a sin offering for all Israel, 12 male goats, according to the number of the tribes of Israel. So there is The sin offering is a reparation offering for forgiveness of sin. And then there is cleansing of the temple by these sacrifices. And so we see that sacrifice is still central to worship. And then they celebrate the Passover in the next month. And the descendants of the captivity kept the Passover on the 14th day of the first month. For the priests and the Levites had purified themselves. All of them were ritually clean. Okay? So they have followed the letter of the law. They're ritually clean. They slaughtered the Passover lambs for all the descendants of the captivity, for their brethren, the priests, and for themselves. This is a huge undertaking. It's not as huge as it will be later. You've got, what, 40,000, so you divide that by 10. You've got about 4,000 families, so you're only slaughtering about 4,000 lambs, perhaps. But That's what's taking place. They're doing everything right. And then the children of Israel who had returned from the captivity ate together. That's the fellowship offering. They eat together. It's a communal meal. They are at peace with God now, and they are able to have peace with one another. And so they are then able to seek the Lord God of Israel. So in chapter 7, one of my favorite verses, I just had to throw it in here, talks about the focal point of Ezra. Ezra, all up through this point, Ezra has not returned to the land. He is writing about what had happened before him, but in chapter 7 we read of Ezra entering the scene. He's a generation later, a generation after the after those who return. So he comes along in about 454, something close to that time period. But Ezra is a man for that time. He is spiritually prepared. When he was a young man, he had prepared his heart, which means he set his heart. Some translations say it that way. He determined, he set the course of his life. He made a commitment that he was going to follow the Lord. But notice what he does. He committed, he set his heart, that's a volitional statement. He's made a statement to seek the law of the Lord. So first of all, he's going to study the law and memorize it and learn it and internalize it. To seek the law, or to know the law, and to do it. So he wants to learn everything there is to know about the Torah and then to apply it all consistently and to teach statutes and ordinances in Israel. So this becomes a focal point. When he came back he had to call people to account because there were a lot of practices that were wrong. They were disobeying the law. And many of the scribes who returned with him at that time were the forerunners of the later religious groups that we study in the New Testament. These guys were all solid, they were focused, they were grace-oriented, they were centered on the scripture, but it is their descendants many generations later that revert back to formalism. and revert to legalism. And this happened even at that time. They had to straighten out a lot of problems. For example, there was a lack of teaching of the law. That's why he has to focus on this. He has to teach the law. He has to teach the priests so that they can preach the law. And he also has to deal with a number of other problems in the land because a lot of the Jews had intermarried with the Gentiles, with the pagans in the land. And this was another problem the Jews have always had in their history is assimilating to the Gentiles instead of keeping separate as the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The priests are indicted here, Malachi 2.7, Malachi comes in about a generation or so after After Ezra and in Malachi 2.7 we read, "'For the lips of a priest should keep knowledge.'" See, it's the proverb, "'For lack of knowledge my people perish.'" Lack of vision. They don't have revelation. "'The lips of a priest should keep knowledge.' He should teach the word, and people should seek the law from his mouth, for he is messenger of the Lord of hosts.'" But you have departed from the way, you have caused many to stumble at the law, you have corrupted the covenant of Levi." That is the covenant that God made with Levi in relation to the priesthood. So we come then to Let me see, we're in chapter 7. There's a letter from Artaxerxes, his commission to Ezra. And part of that that's very interesting is Artaxerxes tells him exactly what he's supposed to do. He's supposed to go back and he gives him all this money. He says, now this is what you do. You take all this money I'm giving you and you buy bulls and rams and lambs and the grain offerings and drink offerings and offer them on the altar of the house of your God. in Jerusalem, and whatever else seems good to you and your brethren, do the rest. Do whatever you want with whatever the money is that is left over according to the will of your God." So we see that developing in chapter 7. Chapter 8 talks about what comes back are the other groups that come back to the land and then when we get into Ezra chapter 9 we see the condemnation of the people and this is we see the confession of Ezra here in Ezra chapter 9 verse 5 it's the evening sacrifice And he says, I arose from my fasting and having torn my garment and my robe, I fell on my knees and spread out my hands to the Lord my God. And I said, Oh my God, I am too ashamed and humiliated to lift up my face to you. See, he realizes the horror of his sin. Now some of us are way too comfortable with some of our sin, and that happens, but he recognizes what happened in Israel that led to this horrible destruction. And so he is confessing their sins to God. For our iniquities have risen higher than our heads. and our guilt has grown up to the heavens. Since the days of our fathers to this day we have been very guilty, and for our iniquities we, our kings and our priests, have been delivered into the hand of the kings, the lands, to the sword, to captivity, to plunder, and to humiliation as it is to this day." And then He gets to the punchline, the application when you get into chapter 10. There's confession of sin over the intermarriage with the pagans and he says, now therefore let us make a covenant with our God to put away all these wives and those who have been born to them. Confession isn't just saying, Lord, I did this. But at some point a recognition that I've got to change. I'm not going to do that anymore." And that's what he's saying is, okay, the implication of this confession of sin, of intermarriage with the pagans, is we've got to deal with it, and we've got to deal with the consequences, so we're going to put away these wives and the children that were born into these households, because that eventually will destroy us. It's a cleansing of, it's related to the immigration argument, so you can just chew on that for a while. Ezra 10.4, arise for this matter is your responsibility. We also are with you. Be of good courage and do it. Notice that we have to put away all the wives. We have to do according to the law, that's at the end of verse three, and do it in verse four. Then Ezra arose and made the leaders of the priests, the Levites and all Israel, swear an oath that they would do according to this word. There's that word to do again. It is, okay, I've taught you Bible class, now we're going to make sure we do what we said we were going to do. And they swore an oath. Now you see a little later on Ezra and Nehemiah overlap. Nehemiah is sent and commissioned by Artaxerxes to go back and to rebuild the wall. So he has to rebuild the defenses and reestablish the economy in Jerusalem. That's the decree from Artaxerxes. That is the starting point for Daniel's 70 weeks and that whole countdown. And so Daniel 8, I mean Nehemiah 8 too we read, Ezra the priest brought the law before the assembly of men and women and all who could hear with understanding on the first day of the seventh month. So this is what is happening. They're going to bring all the people together and they're going to be in the open square that's in front of the Watergate, and Ezra is going to take out the book of the law, and he's going to start reading scripture to the people. Now, I don't know if this would take place today in most churches. I can't imagine that if you went to one of the larger churches here, and you had everybody stand up, and that was what they did. They stood up, and they read the law all day long, and nobody left. And they came under conviction because they heard what God said. And so that's what we read in Nehemiah 3. He read it in the open square in front of the water gate from morning until midday. I see signs of boredom sometimes when I'm reading scripture for 30 seconds. Okay, this is for three hours. from morning until midday before the men and women and those who could understand, and the ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the law. And so they are being brought to task there, and they are going to respond. And it goes on to talk about how they were organized, and how Ezra set up a platform, and he had these other leaders that were up there on the platform. And as he read, there were secondary teachers who were out in the crowd. They didn't have a They didn't have a system to project your voice. So what happens is they're repeating. They can hear Ezra and they repeat it. And so you have this repetition of the law going out so everybody in the crowd can hear it. And then what happens, described in verse 6, Then all the people answered, Amen, Amen, while lifting up their hands. And they bowed their heads and worshipped their Lord with their faces to the ground." So they understand exactly what has happened. And then we read down in verse 8, so they read distinctly from the book, the law of God, and they gave the sense and helped them to understand the reading. See, they explained what it meant along the way as Ezra read it, so it wasn't just simple reading. In fact, in the early church for about the first, starting probably in the second century, and it lasted for several years, they still, they did this to some degree even up in through the Middle Ages, especially in the Eastern churches. They would have two pulpits in the front of the church, and in one pulpit you would have the pastor or deacon or leader come out, and he would read scripture. But he didn't just read it, he would explain it, and he would make sure you understood what the words meant and what the grammar meant. And then when it came time, and see, services lasted five or six hours. And there would be singing, and there would be... When I go over to Ukraine today, and I'll be speaking at the Christ... No, no, it's not... Uyghur's not at the Christmas church now. He's at another church. But you go over there, and they will have two or three sermons in the morning service. And they will have several prayers and different types of singing. We don't have the patience for that. But that... You're dedicating your day to worshiping the Lord. And so what would happen in the early church is they would have a reading, which was sort of an explanation, a little grammatical analysis and word studies, and then they would sing some more, and then there would be a sermon that was more applicational. What we do today is we sort of merge these two things into one message. And in a lot of places they just dropped out the exegesis and the word studies and everything and they just give kind of a moral homily and that's really sad. But in the early church they did both and we sort of combined those in what I do. And so this was what was going on at this particular time and then What develops out of this in the intertestamental period is that there's a breakdown. You have the rise of the synagogue, which was just a place of teaching, because people couldn't go to Jerusalem that frequently, so they wanted to hear more of the Word, so they would start, this probably started about a hundred years before Christ. We have a couple of archaeological discoveries of synagogues from the first century. There's now one that was recently discovered at Magdala, which we went to on our last trip to Israel. There's another one that's down in the south. The one that we see at Capernaum was actually built on top of the synagogue where Jesus spoke. It's a second century synagogue. But the focal point of the synagogue was on the teaching, the explanation of the Torah, of the Scriptures. And there was a special, sometimes it was a rock seat that was called the seat of Moses. And when the teacher, the rabbi, was in the seat of Moses, Jesus said, when he speaks from the seat of Moses, do what he says. Because there he's just explaining precisely what the scripture says. When he's outside the seat of Moses, you don't have to listen to him because he's just giving his own opinions. But this is what is going on and what develops during this inter-testamental period is a desire to protect the people from doing anything that would violate the law. So they created what they called a fence around the law. And so these were all the secondary commandments that if the law says that you shouldn't work on the Sabbath, it doesn't define what that work is. So when people said, well, what constitutes work? And so they would list 10 or 15 different things that would constitute work. And so that was the fence. And that became known as the tradition of the elders. And this is what Jesus was accused of violating in Matthew 15, 2. by the Pharisees, they said, why do your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? And that has to do with the interpretation of the oral law, the halakha. And that had to do with washing hands before eating. Paul refers to this in Galatians 1.14, he says, I advanced in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries in my own nation, being more exceedingly jealous zealous for the traditions of my fathers." And so this is the introduction of legalism, and legalism is basically an idolatry of the scriptures. And adding to the scriptures the authority of the traditions of men. So it's not just scripture alone, it's scripture plus tradition. And so this becomes a major problem by the time of Jesus. They've moved from an overt idolatry to an idolatry of the traditions of men and an idolatry of the interpretations of men. And we see those same kinds of things repeated today. It happens in Protestantism and it happens in Roman Catholicism. How many times do you hear somebody say, well, this is what the Bible means, and then they quote Calvin. they can't exegete the text, they'll quote some theologian. And it may be a pastor today, or it may be some theologian from a few centuries ago, but it's the same kind of thing where you're elevating the traditions of men over the authority of Scripture itself. So what we've seen as we go through this is sacrifice is still at the center. The Word of God and the proclamation of the Word of God is still at the center. There is music, there's celebration, there's joy, there's the expression of hope, but it's not chaotic. It is organized, it's structured, the musicians train, the singers are trained. all of this because that is what brings glory to a God who has so structured and ordered the universe as we are worshiping a Creator, a Creator God. So next time, which won't be next Tuesday night, it will be New Year's night, We will get into the New Testament passages on worship, and we will bring this sub-series of 2 Samuel to a close, and then we'll begin back in 2 Samuel. Father, thank you for this time that we have had today to think about the patterns of worship, that they continue from the garden through Malachi. and that they teach us a lot about what should be part of our worship today, the proclamation of who you are and what you have done, the teaching, the instruction of your word, confession, being cleansed from sin, being prepared to serve a holy, righteous God, a God who is unique and distinct, also the organization and structure of of music and of the worship service itself, that this is not something that is just sort of random and unplanned spontaneity. It is something that is designed and structured to reflect who you are as the creator of the universe. Challenge us as we think about our own spiritual life and our own personal worship of you. And we pray this in Christ's name. Amen.