Lessons from the book of Ezra/Nehemiah
July 07, 2019      |     By: Jonathan Brickley      |      Category: Sermons      |      Location: El Dorado
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Three Key Leaders
- Zerubbabel: Persian King Cyrus sends out Zerubbabel to rebuild the temple
- Ezra: (60 years later) Persian King Artaxerxes sends out Ezra to Jerusalem to bring spiritual renewal
- Nehemiah: Persian King Artaxerxes sends out Nehemiah to rebuild the walls

There is great success!
Public Reading of Scripture
House church Movement - Ezra & priests
Celebration of the Feast of Booths
Confession of Sin
Covenant renewal
Vow to follow the Torah
Great Celebration
Noble sacrifice in repenting from foreign marriage

BUT….

Each leader ends in disappointment

Zerubbabel's work undone: temple work slacking
Ezra’s work undone: violation of Sabbath
Nehemiah’s work undone: problems with violation of law by walls (ends badly)

The story ends in disappointment
WHY?

Zerubbabel / Ezra / Nehemiah - their very best efforts did not produce the fruit they labored for
WHY?

To keep us moving forward toward the LIVING HOPE who will fix the real problem which is our hearts

Jeremiah 31:33-34 (NIV)
33 “This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.
34 No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the Lord. “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”

Ezekiel 36: 25-27 (NIV)
25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols.
26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.
27 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.

To Love & Obey God - we must have a new heart, new motives and new NATURE

The Real Problem: What I am - a wretch

Romans 7:18, 24-25 (NIV)
18 For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.
24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?
25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.

The Cross of Christ delivers me from this body subject to death!

CS Lewis - Mere Christianity
That when we go to confess our sins against charity / love for our fellow man - where we "snapped, or sneered or snubbed or stormed" we usually have some excuse about how we were caught off guard - that the provocation was sudden or unexpected and we didn’t have time to think it through and collect ourselves.

What comes out of us WHEN we are taken off guard unexpectedly is the BEST EVIDENCE for what sort of person we are.

"What pops out before we have time to put on a disguise is the truth."

"If there are Rats in the Cellar you’ll most likely see them if you go in suddenly.  But the SUDDENNESS does NOT produce the rats - it only prevents them from hiding."

“I cannot, by direct moral effort, give myself new motives.  After the first few steps in the Christian life we realize that EVERYTHING which really needs to be done in our souls can be done ONLY by God.”

… we are “a bundle of self-centered fears, hopes, greeds, jealousies and self-conceit, all doomed to death.”

“We are no longer thinking simply about right and wrong: you are trying to catch the good infection from a Person….The real Son of God is at your side. He is beginning to turn you into the same kind of thing as Himself. He is beginning, so to speak, to ‘inject’ His kind of life and thought, his Zoe, into you, beginning to turn the tin soldier into a live man.  The part of you that does not like it is the part that is still tin.”

“And now we begin to see what it is that the New Testament is always talking about. It talks about Christians being ‘born again’ - it talks about them ‘putting on Christ’ - about Christ ‘being formed in us’ - about our coming to ‘have the mind of Christ’.

"Put right out of your head the idea that these are only fancy ways of saying that Christians are to read what Christ said and TRY to carry it out… A real Person, Christ, here are now, in the very room where you are saying your prayers is DOING things to you…. It is a living Man, still as much a man as you, and still as much God as He was when he created the world, really coming and interfering with your very self; killing the old natural self in you and replacing it with the kind of self He has.” 

1 Peter 1:3 & 6 (NIV)
3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
6 In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.

Is Your Hope in something Dead or Alive?

Trials can strengthen or burden us - depending on what we do with them.

Ecclesiastes 5:2 (NIV)
2 Do not be quick with your mouth, do not be hasty in your heart to utter anything before God. God is in heaven and you are on earth, so let your words be few.

Job 40:4-5 & 42:3 (NIV)
4 “I am unworthy—how can I reply to you? I put my hand over my mouth. 
5 I spoke once, but I have no answer— twice, but I will say no more.”
42:3 You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?' Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know.

Romans 15:18 (NIV)
18 I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me in leading the Gentiles to obey God by what I have said and done—