Learning to Live in the Story of Ezra–Nehemiah
Please pray with me. Heavenly Father, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, our great God and our redeemer. Amen.
Why We Are Starting Here
This morning we won't be continuing in Andy's series in First Timothy; we'll be starting another series in Ezra and Nehemiah instead. Sharing different series is a decision Andy and I made because we think it will be better for you as the congregation. It provides extra continuity in the series since the same preacher is going through the entire thing, and it provides us as preachers a helpful flexibility to break up the text even the week beforehand without messing up the other preacher who may have already done preparation.
Maybe you're curious how often each of your pastors will be preaching this year. Andy will be preaching about 75% of the time, I'll preach about 12 times this year, Tom will preach three times, and Dustin will preach for us once. The purpose of this sermon is to introduce our series in Ezra and Nehemiah. I don't have one specific text to unfold for you; I want the whole story to get laid out in front of us so that we can understand the entire thing from beginning to end.
The Pattern of Scripture
I hope that Nehemiah chapter 9, which we just read, has helped you get the context of this story back in your head. You remember that the people of God were in slavery in Egypt, and God called them out in the Exodus, sending plagues on the Egyptians, bringing his people out with a strong hand through the Red Sea, and destroying their enemies. But the first generation of Israelites did not have the faith to take the promised land, and so they wandered in the wilderness until the next generation. God raised up Joshua to lead them in the conquest of Canaan, and they took the land and settled in it.
Then came the period of the judges and of the kings—of Saul, David, and Solomon. After the days of Solomon, the kingdom was split in two because of his faithlessness, becoming the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom. Their kings became worse and worse and worse until God sent both kingdoms into exile: first the northern kingdom to Assyria, and then the southern kingdom to Babylon. You can read in Daniel how the kingdom of Babylon was eventually turned over to the kingdom of Persia after the faithlessness and pride of their king. That is exactly how we find ourselves in Ezra—the people of God are in exile to the Persians, and God is preparing to bring them back to the land according to his word.
I wonder if you noticed the repeating pattern of scripture as we read Nehemiah 9, or if you've seen it in your own Old Testament reading. This pattern starts with a decree from God that his kingdom should be built—a gracious decree that he will gather his people and set up his kingdom. Then, he provides everything that they need. He calls them as his people at Mount Sinai and provides them his word; he calls them to live in the land and provides them with the army to take it.
Next, God's enemies attack them. Pharaoh comes riding in on his chariots as they try to cross the Red Sea; the Edomites refuse to help them as they enter the land; all of the Canaanites attack God's people as they try to take the promised land. But as God's people are attacked, God fights for them so that they win. God's people are victorious over their enemies—the Red Sea comes crashing down on the armies of Pharaoh, the promised land is taken, and the walls of Jericho come crashing down. God's people win.
In the grace of victory, they consecrate themselves to God. They make a covenant or renew a covenant with him, as they did at Mount Sinai, or at the end of Deuteronomy as they prepared to conquer the land, or at the end of Joshua after they conquered it. Then God blesses them because of their faith as they've renewed covenant with him. Finally, the cycle ends as God's people, fat on the food that he has provided, forget God, turn from him, and act faithlessly.
Well, Ezra-Nehemiah, which is actually one book in two scrolls (that's why you're hearing me say Ezra-Nehemiah rather than the book of Ezra and the book of Nehemiah), tells this story, this repeating tragedy, twice. It is the tragedy of a God so gracious that he goes running after his prodigal son and receives back his wayward bride over and over and over, but the faith of the fathers never takes root in their sons. It never lasts more than a generation or two before they return to other gods.
I want you to see this narrative cycle in Ezra and Nehemiah, so please open your Bibles to Ezra 1 so that you can see this story play out across the pages in your lap. This is crucial for us so that we can understand how their story is quite similar to the chapter of God's story that we are living in today.
In Ezra chapter 1, God's gracious decree comes in verse 1. It comes from Cyrus, whom God stirs in his heart so that he would send the people back out of Persia to the land to rebuild the temple and the city. God provides everything that they need; in verse 5, Cyrus provides for them an expense account so that they have everything necessary to build the city. When they arrive and have begun the work of rebuilding, God's enemies attack. Turn to the right to chapter 4, verse 1. At first, they try to butt into the rebuilding project so that they can compromise it from within, and when that doesn't work, they start bribing counselors and writing letters back to the king so that the work comes to a halt. It looks like this project, this reformation they've set out on, won't succeed because the king's favor has been retracted.
But God fights for his people. In chapter 5, he sends them prophets, Haggai and Zechariah, who speak the word of the Lord to them, so they begin building the temple again. As they begin, their enemies reach back out to the king, now King Darius. When they write a letter to King Darius to see if they actually get to rebuild the temple, not only does Darius allow them to keep rebuilding, he renews their expense account and pays for it out of the royal revenue. In fact, he threatens anyone who would get in the way of rebuilding. God's people are victorious because God fights for them. So, they consecrate themselves to God; in chapter 6, verse 19, they celebrate the Passover. In response to their faithfulness, God richly blesses them. In chapter 7, he sends them Ezra to teach the law, alongside many other people who return as reinforcements with gifts for the temple. Yet, no sooner does Ezra arrive than he finds that the people have rejected God. In chapter 9, they've intermarried with the people of the land, and so the cycle comes in for its landing as God's people, fat from his blessings, forget him and go their own way.
The book of Nehemiah begins the cycle all over again. There is a decree from God, and this time it comes in chapter 2 from Artaxerxes. Nehemiah wants to go back and help them in the project of rebuilding. He asks Artaxerxes for permission, and God stirs in his heart so that Artaxerxes provides permission for him to go. God sends them provision; in chapter 2, verse 8, Artaxerxes opens the royal forest so that they have all the timber that they will need to do the rebuilding. When they arrive, God's people are attacked by their enemies. In chapter 4, verse 1, there is a plot to defeat them by military campaign. In chapter 5, verse 1, we find enemies within the gates: rich Israelites who are extorting their brothers and sisters so that some are even having to sell their daughters into slavery to pay debts to their kinsmen. In chapter 6, they've bribed prophets against Nehemiah, trying to discredit God's leader.
But despite all of these attacks, God fights for his people and they are victorious. In chapter 6, verse 15, the wall is set up, and they consecrate themselves to God. At the end of chapter 7, we have a list of the rich gifts that they provide for the worship of God at the temple. In chapter 8, they read the law. In chapter 9, they confess their sins, and in chapter 10, they make a solemn covenant. They say, "It will be different this time, God. We know that our fathers had hard hearts and stiff necks, but not this time. This time we will provide for the temple so that the worship will continue. We will worship you on your Sabbath and honor it like you command."
And so, his work finished, Nehemiah returns home when he gains leave from the king. When he comes back, what does he find in chapter 13? God's people have rejected him again. They've allowed Tobiah the Ammonite, their enemy, to set up his household in the courts of God. They haven't given the Levites their portions, and so the temple isn't functioning as it should. They're desecrating the Sabbath, inviting foreigners to come in and trade on it, treading the winepresses themselves, and they've even intermarried with the people of the land again. Ezra-Nehemiah is a double-act tragedy that ends right where it started. It's the same story the Old Testament has been telling over and over again: a gracious God who redeems his people, and a stubborn people who will not turn to him.
The Bible as a Story
This is the story that, in our series in Ezra and Nehemiah, we need to learn to receive from God. It's crucial that we understand we need to receive a story. Much of the Bible that God gives us is propositional truth. It's truth statements one after another related by logic, and those parts of the Bible are glorious. That's how we know that we are saved by grace through faith, and that faith is the instrument for our salvation and not the reason or cause. We should thank God for the propositional truth he's provided in his word. But most fundamentally, our Bible is a story supported by letters and prophets who explain it to us, and so we must be able to receive it as a story.
God could have given us a systematic theology as his good and perfect word. He could have given us a bulleted list of every theological fact we were supposed to know. He could have given it to us as flashcards so we could quiz ourselves and know them. Instead, he gave us 66 books by over a dozen authors written over a thousand years telling the epic of redemption, and that's what we are to understand and come and live in. He didn't give us an outline of theology because he didn't make us as databases to store theological facts; he made us characters in his story, made to live in the world that he's created. So we're not just supposed to receive this double-act tragedy from Ezra and Nehemiah as a historical fact. It means more than simply that this happened at that place at that time. Like all of God's doctrine, it's supposed to be lived, incarnated. We're supposed to be able to come and live in their story.
That sounds complicated, but we do it really naturally. Let me give you an example from C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia, from the book Prince Caspian. There's a point where Peter comes to fight Miraz sword-to-sword instead of their armies clashing. At one point, the much younger Peter believes he's going to lose; he thinks he's going to be slain. They've taken a break from the fighting, and he's on the sideline with his brother Edmund. There, as Peter believes he's going to die, we don't find him blubbering, cowering, or even complaining. He stands there tall, tells Edmund to say goodbye to those he loves, puts his helmet on, and marches back to the fight. It's an astonishing moment of mental fortitude.
Now, you can't read that to your kids at 7:00 p.m. as you get ready to put them to bed, and then at 8:00 p.m. start complaining to your wife about how hard your day at work was. That won't work. If you're doing that, you've not truly received the story. You see, stories teach us, but they teach us differently than arguments do. Arguments give us answers and questions, and direct commands pointed right at us. Stories are different; they capture our imagination with plots to follow, dangers to avoid, and characters to admire or despise. That's how we need to approach this story from Ezra and Nehemiah.
To help us with the rest of my time this morning, we're going to go through three prominent themes from the book of Ezra and Nehemiah. These themes will help us see how similar their story is to ours, and how similar their point in God's story is to ours, albeit with a glorious twist because of where we live in God's epic of redemption.
Three Themes
God’s Steadfast Love and Absolute Power
First, this story displays God's steadfast love and absolute power. The narrative from Ezra-Nehemiah only begins because of God's steadfast, covenant-keeping love. In chapter 1, verse 1, at the very outset, the reason God is stirring up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, is to fulfill the word that he had spoken to the prophet Jeremiah. The whole reason the story begins is because God is being faithful to his word, steadfast in his love, even though his people find themselves in exile because of their faithlessness.
The steadfast love of God is their song when they complete the foundation of the temple. It's on display when God doesn't shut the whole thing down at the end of Ezra when they've intermarried with the people of the land; instead, he keeps sending blessings. The steadfast love of God is what keeps the story moving forward, and brothers and sisters, we serve the same God, for he is the same yesterday, today, and forever. We serve the God who dances when prodigal sons return home and rejoices when he finds his wayward bride. We serve the God who, though we are faithless, remains faithful, so that with our God there is real forgiveness of sins.
He's not this morning holding your sins over your head. Instead, he has separated you from them as far as the east is from the west because of the sacrifice of Jesus. He's not putting an asterisk by every one of your good works because of your mixed motives. No, our God knows that we are far worse than even we realize, and yet what did he do at 10:15 this morning but call us to his presence to worship? He has spoken to us his word and soon will invite us to sit down at peace with him at his table because he is the God of steadfast love. He is more committed to us than we are to him. Though we wander, he remains; though we waver, he is steadfast; when we doubt, he remains; when we sin, he forgives. He has chosen in his free grace to set his favor on you, and now nothing can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus.
In the story of Ezra and Nehemiah, this steadfast love isn't just an abstract principle or a truth floating in the air; it's concrete. This steadfast love shows itself as God's people receive political support and godly leaders. They don't want for timber, and they don't want for gold. The steadfast love of God is tangible for them. So, Ezra-Nehemiah notes often: "The hand of the Lord was on them for good." And church, the hand of the Lord is on you for good. The steadfast love of God is still tangible. This is why, as we come Sunday by Sunday to consecrate our whole selves to God, when we wake up Monday we find business success and sales deals going through. We find parenting help—patience after a long day of disobedience, and just the right words for our daughter's hard question. We find mental fortitude for periods of pain, just enough money to pay the bills again this month, love for a hard season of marriage, a roof over our heads, and food in our bellies. This is the steadfast love of God. If it were any thicker, you'd have to swim through it.
Not only is this God the God of steadfast love, he is the God of absolute power. Ezra and Nehemiah show us that he is the king over all the earth. That's evident as well in chapter 1, verse 1, when he stirs up Cyrus, who thinks he is the king of the world. He stirs up Cyrus to do his will since He is the real king of the world. He helps himself to the king's royal revenue, he helps himself to the king's forests, and he helps himself to the king's citizens. When he doesn't feel like overthrowing the kingdom, as he does in the book of Daniel, he does what he does in Ezra—he just turns the king's heart to do his bidding. He is the real king of the world, and he still is.
It may feel to us like we are in such volatile times that nobody's in control. It looks like for the next four years, boys will stay boys and girls will stay girls, praise God. Who knows what will happen after that? It might feel to us like we're on a rickety carnival roller coaster ride, just praying that they actually put the whole thing together and we're not going to go flying off the end of it. But that's not the real story. The real story is that we serve and know the God of the ages, who not only planned what will happen in 2025, he's planned everything that will happen until 3025. He holds the whole world in his hands.
Psalm 2 is still true. Yes, the kings of the earth set themselves against the Lord and his anointed; yes, they try to burst his bonds apart and cast away their cords from him. Do you remember what God does? He still laughs big, mocking belly laughs, and when he catches his breath, he reminds them that he has handed all of their kingdoms over to his beloved son with full permission to smash them like a clay pot with a rod of iron. When Ezra-Nehemiah says something like, "God stirred up the heart of Cyrus, king of Persia," it invites us to come live in the real story of the world, where the Most High rules over the kingdoms of men and does whatever he pleases. And so, we should stand in awe of this God this morning. We should be amazed, humbled before him, and fear him. What kind of God calls his treacherous people back, providing for them everything they need to rebuild his capital? What God is it that is the true king over every king of the world? The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. He is our God.
The Kingdom’s Need for the New Covenant
The second theme from Ezra and Nehemiah is that this story, this repeating tragedy, reveals that God's kingdom needs the new covenant. The first theme about God and his character is true everywhere in the Bible because God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. This second theme is true everywhere in the Old Testament, but it's especially true of Ezra and Nehemiah because we're here at the end, at the final plot point before Jesus comes on the scene. We watch in Ezra-Nehemiah as God's kingdom is restored, and then we watch it crumble.
God provided for every external need that they had, didn't he? Think back through the story: he provided for them political support so that the kings of the world were providing what they needed; he provided for them money and timber; he provided for them godly leaders who sure looked good after the period of the kings. He provided for every external need that they had, and still, the reformation fails. What does that show you? It shows that the need was not on the outside. Ezra and Nehemiah are teaching us that God's people were not a sick people who needed healing; they were not a weak people who needed help; they were a dead people who needed to be reborn—a valley of dry bones that needed God's breath to blow over them so that they would come back to life.
Well, this is our story, isn't it? We were dead in our trespasses and sins in which we once walked, following the course of the world and the prince of the power of the air. But God, rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, called us out of exile. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. He has transferred us from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of his beloved son. The old covenant wasn't meant to remake them, but God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do, so that the new creation has come. In fact, it's here in this room, and it's sitting in your seat. The king has said he is making all things new, and he's started with us.
I want you to see how similar of a position we sit in at the beginning of the chapter and how much hope we should have, given where we are in God's story. In Ezra and Nehemiah, God calls them out of exile in Persia to set up the temple and the city; he calls them out of Babylon, but he still needs to take Babylon out of his people. In our day, he's setting up a temple and a city again. First Peter chapter 2 tells us that God is building his spiritual house and we are the living stones. God is building another temple at this part of the story, and we are that temple. Revelation 21 shows us the New Jerusalem, the new city of God, coming down out of heaven as a bride for the lamb; the foundation is the apostles, it's the church. We are the new temple, and we are the new city that God is building.
But this time, he's given us a new covenant. He's caused us to be reborn. He has fixed what made their reformation fail, so that this time the story doesn't have to end in tragedy. In fact, he's promised that it won't. This time the story will not end with compromising intermarriages between the seed of God and the seed of the serpent. It will end at the marriage supper of the lamb when all things are made new, with every enemy as a footstool for God, and even death swallowed up in victory.
Many Christians act and talk as though we are still living in our chapter of the story in a period of exile or wilderness wandering—as though we're still waiting away from the promised land over in Babylon under the curse of God for our disobedience. But that's misreading our part of the story. We aren't in exile. Jesus led us out of exile through the waters of baptism, bringing us to the land so that we could build and fight. He's brought us out of exile to set up his new temple and his new city. That's why Paul is so concerned in his writing that we would edify one another—that we would build each other up in love so that God's temple and God's city would be formed. In our chapter of the story, we are here to build and fight amidst opposition under the protection of God, in a chapter of the story that will not end in tragedy.
I want to make a quick clarification before we go to the last theme, and that's to ensure you see for sure that as I show you how similar your point in the story is to Ezra and Nehemiah's, I am not encouraging you to allegorize scripture. An allegory is like Pilgrim's Progress, where every character and plot point represents an abstract idea or something in the real world. God's word didn't come to us as an allegory, and so we shouldn't interpret it as one. We're not going to wonder exactly what the vessels of the temple represent, and we're not going to say that your four pastors represent the four leaders from Ezra and Nehemiah. That's not the point at all. What we see is a repeating story from all of scripture, and then specifically we see in Ezra and Nehemiah that they were called out of exile to set up a temple and a city. We go to the New Testament and we see First Peter chapter 2—there we are, God setting up a temple. Revelation 21—there he is, setting up a city after calling us out of exile. We know that we will be oppressed, we're supposed to expect persecution, and we know that our God has promised to never leave us or forsake us. So we're not allegorizing scripture; we're looking to live in the story of scripture, reading and understanding the times that we are in.
A Warning for Uncompromising Loyalty
The last theme I want to talk to us about is that it's no guarantee that because this broad chapter of the story does not end in tragedy, our individual story won't. God always demands faithfulness from his covenant partners. So this story provides us a warning that we must remain loyal to God because compromise kills a reformation. If we are a compromising, mixed, faithless people, then God will punish us and raise someone else up for his work. So we must be a pure and uncompromising people. In Ezra and Nehemiah, they don't work through the world like leaven through a loaf; they are infected by the world like mold working through bread.
Our God will always receive us back. Jesus is the one who met God's demand for perfection. He will always receive us back, but we must keep coming back. And when we come back, we can't come back with pockets full of idols; we must return to him with all our heart and all our soul. We've said that we want to see the whole Stillwater area bow the knee to Jesus, and so it must begin with us. We must be unceasingly loyal in all of life.
Perhaps in your listening to Canon Plus you've heard them talk about the idea of the antithesis. The antithesis is the great separation there is between the sons of God and their beliefs and culture, and the seed of the serpent and their beliefs and culture. The antithesis teaches us that light has no fellowship with darkness; they don't mix any more than oil and water. In our day, the secular lie is what is most dangerous for us to compromise with. The secular lie is that deep down we're actually all the same. Deep down, if you just push to what we really want, we want all the same things, right? We just want our nice house with a two-stall garage and two and a half kids; we just want to live 'Hakuna Matata' with no worries. No, that is not what I want. That is not the life that God is calling his people towards.
The secular lie tries to tell us that if you just push past our religious differences, if you just brush aside our political opinions, deep down really we're all good, we're all on the same team. And it's not true. It's a lie. There are two teams in the world: the sons of God and the sons of the serpent, and they have no fellowship with one another. Our religious differences aren't something we can just push aside; it's what is most core about us. And so, if we will be a pure people, we need to ask God to use his word to burn off every vestige of compromise that's left on us from living in this culture. We need him to burn off any remaining materialism, secularism, feminism, or Marxism. It's all got to go. And it has especially got to get out of our parenting. If we want to raise a generation of children who will carry on in the battle long after we're dead and cheering them on from the bleachers of heaven, we need to show them that there's a real battle—that light has no fellowship with darkness. We need to give them the example of uncompromising parents.
The secular lie is so effective because it starts by disarming you. After you believe that we're all the same and we're all on the same team, you put your weapons down and you're no longer a danger to the enemy; you just become a distraction to your comrades. And so this morning, we need to choose this day whom we will serve. You can serve your comfort and live in the secular lie, and you will be comfortable and lose your soul. Or, you can pick up a shovel and a sword and come and build and fight, building up God's temple and city. Choose this day whom you will serve, and then let it show. Let your uncompromising commitment to God show in your parenting and your discipline; let it show in your work ethic; let your commitment to God be obvious in the music you listen to, the movies you watch, and the books you read. Let your wholehearted devotion to God show with your household budget and the love in your marriage—all of life invaded by our glorious God so that there's no compromise left. That's what we're aiming for.
Let me conclude here by reviewing. As I preach through Ezra and Nehemiah across the next 12 to 14 months, I want us to learn to come and live in the story of Ezra and Nehemiah. We've been called out of exile to sin and death, just as they were called out of Persia. We've been called to set up the worship of God as his living temple, just as they were called to rebuild the temple. We've been called to rebuild the city of God, just as they were called to rebuild the city of Jerusalem. They were attacked by their enemies, and we should expect it as well; they were protected by their God, as we will be. But God has made us new, taking out our heart of stone and putting in a heart of flesh, so that though we can't live perfectly with him, we can live faithfully with him. We can keep repenting and believing; we can keep returning and trusting.
So, love and trust the God of steadfast love and absolute power. Give him praise for the new covenant, and keep yourself unstained from the world—living in the world and not of the world. Amen.
Let me pray for us. Heavenly Father, we praise you and we thank you for who you are. We thank you for setting your steadfast love on us. We thank you for your wholehearted commitment to us, and we ask you to make it more true in our hearts. We ask you to help us to image your unceasing, unwavering love so that we could be your faithful people. We ask for this in the great name of Jesus. Amen.