Win the World Through the Word

God sends reinforcements to help his people and temple so that his people can rebuild a society that honors God by devoting themselves to studying, doing, and teaching God's law.

In Ezra 7–8, God sends reinforcements in the form of Ezra and those who return with him. And they bring gifts from the king for the temple and they bolster the people already there. God is continuing to pour out favor on his people, and especially on Ezra, because he has devoted his heart to God's ways (7:10). God's goal is to create a society that honors God. The temple at his hill in Jerusalem should overflow so that God's law is followed in all of life. And toward this end the king gives Ezra permission to install magistrates and judges in the land who will enforce God's law for the society (7:25-26). Finally, God shows us how a society can be transformed to faithfully live according to his ways: by consecrating ourselves to study, do, and teach God's Word from our station in life.

So this morning we'll take those three pieces one at a time:

1. God sends reinforcements to help his people and temple
2. So that his people can rebuild a society that honors God
3. By devoting themselves (after the example of Ezra) to studying, doing, and teaching God's law.

God Sends Reinforcements

At the beginning of Ezra 7, God conspires to continue blessing them by giving Ezra favor in the sight of the king. You can see in 7:7 that it is the 7th year of Artaxerxes and 6:15 says that the temple was completed in the 6th year of Darius. You'll remember from the last time I preached that I believe Darius and Artaxerxes are the same king. That means that when word reached Ezra that the temple was complete, he asked the king to return to Jerusalem to assist in their efforts to rebuild the temple and reform the nation. And the king obliges and sends him with anyone who wants to join him, the freewill offerings of the Jews and citizens of Persia, the temple vessels to use in service to Yahweh, and a blank check to get anything else they need. He also exempts the servants at the house of God from taxation. A tradition our government continues via tax-exempt status for churches and by allowing ministers to opt out of some taxation. The principle is that the king doesn't believe he has the authority to take what has been given to God, which is absolutely correct.

So the temple is blessed by sending a law expert with more Levites, many offerings, and precious vessels to use in service at the temple.

Ezra's return with more help blesses the people. Ezra returns with a little more than 1700 men, presumably with their families and children, carrying significant resources that will be used in the rebuilding effort.

God's favor is further poured on them in that they made it safely to Jerusalem. This was not guaranteed. Ezra says in 8:22 that he didn't want to ask for a security detail because he told the king that God was their security, that his hand was on them for good and would protect them. So they fast and pray before they set out, and God answers their prayer. Verse 31 suggests that they were ambushed and attacked on the way, but God protected them and delivered them safely to Jerusalem where they weighed out the full amount of the gold they set out with and offered sacrifices.

The sacrifices they offer in 8:35 are the same animals in the same order and many of the same amounts as when the tabernacle was dedicated. God is writing a repeating story of redemption, and Ezra and the others see it. They know they are like Israel coming out of Egypt to the tabernacle.

You probably noticed that a repeating refrain of this section is, "the good hand of God was upon me." 7:10 tells us why God's hand was on Ezra for good. It was because he devoted himself wholly to the service of God according to his word. The whole group fasts, asking for God's hand to protect them, and he does. "In all your ways, acknowledge him, and he will make your path straight" (Prov 3:6). God's blessings are not random. As we saw last week, God loves to bless the faithfulness of his people. And, of course, our faithfulness never deserves his blessings.

We should take a moment and praise God that he has enabled our faithfulness as we've planted this church so that his good hand has been on us all the way. He gathered four like-minded pastors who work well together as a team. He brought a congregation together and has bound us together in love for one another. He provided a location to meet which we can afford. He's provided a faithful Christian school nearby. Glorify God for his kindness to us. We implore God for these things, and he listened to our entreaty (8:23).

So we can praise God for his steadfast love like Ezra does in 7:27-28. "Blessed be the LORD, the God of our fathers, who put such a thing as this into the heart of the king, to beautify the house of the LORD that is in Jerusalem, and who extended to me his steadfast love before the king and his counselors, and before all the king's mighty officers."

Now, imagine with me for a moment that a magistrate today came to us and said, "I want to beautify the house of Yahweh. I want to play my part in God's plan to rebuild and restore the ruins of this formerly Christian country. What should I do?" If a king wanted to act like Artaxerxes, what would we tell him? That brings us to the second piece of my sermon today. The purpose of God's help for his people and temple: so that his people can rebuild a society that honors God.

A Society That Honors God

The first thing to note about Artaxerxes, and any king today who purposefully wants to show favor to God's build and build up his temple, is that their desire is good. It's not a bad project.

The version of religious freedom and separation of church and state that has been taught in our country for a long while makes it sound as though the government should be neutral regarding God. But we know that's impossible because God instituted magistrates to approve the good and punish the wicked (Rom 13:4). The government can't say, "I'll take God's definition of goodness and then leave God out of the picture." Jesus would say, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone." The first precept of goodness is that God is good. The question is not whether the kings of the world will have a god, but which God they will worship. Something must provide them a standard of right and wrong. And whatever that something is, is their god.

After we've established that it is, in fact, a good thing for the king to rule on God's behalf with God's standard, I see three things in this story that Artaxerxes does to build up the temple, and that magistrates today could enact as well.

1. He gets out of the way. He does not detain Jews in Susa. He doesn't exorbitantly tax them. He makes sure they are not hampered by litigation again. He gets Tattenai, their enemy, out of the way. In our context, it means we can pray for rulers who will stop hindering the cause of Christ. For instance, by not making Christians who send their kids to a private Christian school pay for the public school system via property taxes. Or by ensuring proper legal protections are in place so that we are not persecuted for acting consistently with our convictions and refusing to bake a cake.

2. He enforces God's standard. In 7:25-26 Artaxerxes authorizes Ezra to appoint magistrates and judges in the whole province who know God's law so that God's law will be enforced—even with legal penalties including death, banishment, or confiscation.

This idea, that God's law would be enforced, is sometimes called theonomy (theos = God, nomos = law). It's the position of many of the authors you're listening to on Canon. And they are essentially right. However, Baptists need to get there a little differently. Our church loves God-fearing, Bible-loving Presbyterians just as much as our Baptist brothers and sisters. But the elders are all Baptists, and since, if you've listened to anything about theonomy, it's probably been from a Presbyterian perspective, I'll take just a minute to show how Baptists can get to the same place in a different way.

Presbyterians believe that the Mosaic Covenant and the New Covenant are both part of the same overarching Covenant of Grace. So the Mosaic Covenant and New Covenant are essentially, at root, the same thing; the New Covenant is just stronger. Since they are the same thing, Presbyterians can say, "There's one covenant, and one law," and that law should be applied now (Gentry, He Shall Have Dominion, 141).

Baptists disagree with the idea of an overarching Covenant of Grace and the inference that the New Covenant and Mosaic Covenant are at root the same. Instead, we say that unlike the Mosaic Covenant, the only way to be in the New Covenant is to be in Christ. And to be in Christ you need to be reborn and have faith. That's why we teach that the New Covenant is made of believers only, and not the baptized and their children. So instead of saying, "One covenant, one law," we can say, "One God, one standard." Although we are not under the Mosaic law (because it has been entirely fulfilled in Christ), God's standards have not changed because God has not changed. And his standards were impressed in the Mosaic Law.

A few examples:

• The Mosaic law distinguished between sins and crimes. Deut 22:1-4 says you should help your brother by returning his animal if you find it running away. But there's no penalty if you don't. It's what you ought to do according to God. But it's not a crime if you don't. This is a crucial distinction for us to have. Right now, just because it's legal doesn't mean it's not sin. We're so far gone that murdering pre-born babies is legal. And, if God was kind and our country returned to the law of God, there are plenty of things that are sins that should not be punishable by law (especially thought crimes).
• Deut 22:8 says that Israelites must build a parapet around their roof so that people don't fall off and get hurt or die. The principle there means that employers should provide safe working conditions for their employees, and you should do the same for guests who come to your property.
• Deut 22:5 says women should not wear men's clothing and vice versa. The principle there means that we should dress according to our cultural gender norms. If a school has a dress code or uniforms, they should not be exactly the same for boys and girls.
• Deut 24:14-15 says that you should pay your hired workers promptly. And so we should today. Employers ought not hold on to the wages of their workers for an unnecessarily long time.

The law of God as expressed in the Mosaic commands is built on God's standards for right and wrong. Since God is unchanging, those standards have not changed.

3. Directly help God's people. He gives them resources to further their mission. In the early American period, it wasn't terribly uncommon. For instance, in 1770 the governor of Louisiana granted substantial land to St. Charles Parish.

It's also crucial that the magistrate understand what he can and cannot accomplish. If the OT taught us anything, it's that if the law is not written on the hearts of the people, efforts to force them into living by the law will fail. Coercion is not an effective means to conversion. But the magistrate can and should help create cultural conditions conducive for Christianity.

What's crucial is that we know that we don't just have a legal problem causing our immorality. If that was our issue, politics could save us. We have a sin problem. And only God can save us from our sins. And when he does, he writes his laws on our hearts so that we can live as the new assembly who walks faithfully in his ways where Israel failed.

So how will this happen? How does God transform societies to fear him? We can see that some government action will be helpful. But the central place of transformation and effort is the temple. And it's the worship from the temple which ought to spill over into all of the city. But how will it happen? Through the word.

Study, Do, and Teach

Look at Ezra 7:10. It says that "Ezra set his heart to study the Law of the LORD, and to do and to teach his statutes and rules in Israel." This is what will transform the world. God's word was understood, applied, and taught. In the next two chapters we'll see the people follow Ezra's teaching. Ezra learns they married people from the land. He teaches them God's standard so they understand God's law. And they do God's law by putting away their foreign idol-worshiping wives. And so, Israel repents of serious sin and honors God.

This pattern is crucial for us to see. Let's dig into each part.

First, Ezra set his heart, or devoted himself. He resolved himself, committed himself to his role in God's mission and made it, one commentary says, "the chief end of all his business" (New Treasury). Let's learn from Ezra's example. He sees God's mission to be glorified by a people who worship him in all of life, and he embraces the role God gave him in that mission as a priest. He devotes himself to learning God's word and understanding it deeply. He commits to live it out himself. And then to teach others to live out God's word as well.

Are you devoted to your role in God's mission? I think most of us would say that we are devoted to God's mission. How could we say otherwise? Of course we want God to be glorified by us in all of life. But, like Ezra did, have you embraced your calling, your station, your charge? You see, it's possible to say you care a lot about God's mission, but when it comes to making the contribution he's asking from you shrink away.

For many of you, God has very clearly shown what your calling is in support of his mission either for a long time, like mom and dads, or for a season, like students. But have you embraced it?

• If you're a student, have you devoted yourself wholly to the role God has given you for now? Or are you procrastinating and leaving your best work for later?
• Moms, have you devoted yourself wholly to your work? Or is looking at and listening about the incredible home-making of others stealing your time to build up your own home?
• Husbands and fathers, have you devoted yourself wholly to your work? Are you gladly carrying the responsibility to lead your household to green pastures? Spiritually, physically, financially, emotionally?
• Men, have you devoted yourself wholly to your work, the vocation God has given you? Or is it "just a job?" Since, as we've seen already, all of life is sacred, the work of a financial analyst, a waiter, a computer programmer, a carpenter, and a janitor is all just as sacred as the work of a pastor or missionary. So, for the same reason that it would be awful for a pastor to think of his work as "just a job," no one ought to! It is your God-given role, your assigned station for the battle. And if it's not, if you're thinking, "I don't actually think this is where God wants me to stay stationed," then devote yourself wholly to the task of finding that place.

We all should follow the example of Ezra, who devoted himself wholly to his role in God's mission. And since he was excellent in his work, he stood before kings (Prov 22:29) and was used by God to bring reinforcements to his brothers doing the good work in Jerusalem.

Ezra devoted himself to study God's law, do it, and teach it to Israel. He did this as a priest. You and I must study and do and teach God's law as the role God placed us in. If you're a lawyer, you need to study God's word to understand it as it relates to your calling. If you're a home-maker you need to study God's word and understand it as it relates to your calling (and all the more since our world has all but entirely lost sight of what is possible). And the same goes for students and fathers and grandparents and everyone else. If we are going to build our actual lives on the firm foundation of God's word, then we need to actually go study that word to see how it tells us to build our lives.

An example: Proverbs 22:3 says, "The prudent sees danger and hides himself, / but the simple go on and suffer for it." When a business leader reads this, they should start applying it to their own work. When I see business dangers, it would be foolish to just keep charging ahead. The mom of a 2 year old will read it and apply it to her situation. Yep, my 2 year old is a fool and will keep charging into danger. I need to teach them to be prudent. The teenager who is about to make a decision their parents warned them against should think, Huh, maybe I should slow down and consider the dangers more.

That is how we build our actual lives on God's Word. One decision, one action at a time is brought into submission to the wisdom of God our Father as we commit ourselves to our role in God's mission and study what his word demands of us.

Study God's Law

So first, let's talk about studying God's word.

God's word requires study. There's lots of it. Answering the question, "What does God's word tell me about how to..." requires diligent study because God was so kind he gave us a library of inspired literature to help us. But it won't help you unless you're reading it. Steeping in it. Not only is there a lot of it; it's sometimes hard to understand. It requires careful, deep thought to discern God's thoughts.

As you study, read whole books, in one go, right through. Read them that way over and over again. Look up cross-references and keep chasing them down to shed more and more light on the topic you're studying. Write out the passage you're studying. Mark it up. Think it over as hard as you can.

But studying the Bible is mostly an exercise in understanding abstract truth. God didn't write a theology textbook to be stored in our mental databases. He gave us his living and active word. God's word is pointed at you and reading it is a dialog where he speaks and you ought to respond. Don't read without response. Let your reading come to confession, and prayer, and praise. Scripture reading should cut us open and break us down and save us. It should be a light illuminating the path we should go when we aren't sure. It should delight our souls and convict our consciences. Studying God's Word isn't about studying so that you could write an effective position paper or debate a doubter (as good as those things might be). Studying God's Word starts with God speaking to you, and with you responding to him.

I recall sitting in Greek class my first day of college. It was 7:40 in the morning, I was jittery excited about the start of a new adventure and everything I was there to learn. I was seated with my pencils sharpened and my textbook open when Dr. Stevenson walked into class, sat down at the front, looked up at us and said, "Who wants to hear from God this morning?"

Everything in me screamed, "Me! I do! I want to hear from God!" But I just sat silently waiting to see what would happen next. He turned around and wrote John 1:1 on the white board. His point was not that God spoke better in Greek than our English Bibles. His point is that now, today, God speaks in his word. We can hear him, and respond to him, and learn from him, and praise him.

This is what the spiritual discipline of meditation is for. We need to recognize that God's word is such that we can't take its full truth and import it all at once. We need to keep coming back to it, mulling it over, taking it deeper and deeper into our hearts. Consider meditation the process of personalizing God's word, of seeing its importance and application to you. And in this way you'll come to see that Jesus isn't just talking about "those other Christians" who want to be the greatest. He's not only disappointed with the disciples "way back then" who had little faith. He doesn't think the Pharisees were the last ones to have hard hearts. His words are pointed at all of us to internalize and be tested and refined by God's word.

In his helpful short book on the Puritan practice of meditation, David Saxton summarizes how the Puritans meditated (and if you've ever read their works or prayed their prayers, you want to be able to meditate like them).

• Prepare by setting aside a quiet 30-60 minutes and creating a list of verses related to a clear, simple topic to meditate on.
• Consider the ideas and their implications. A pencil to write with is your best friend to keep yourself thinking.
• Apply the ideas to yourself with confession.
• Resolve to act on what God has shown you.
• Close with a time of unhasty prayer

Are you struggling in sin? Are you seeking God's wisdom in a difficult decision? Are you looking to grow in virtue? Consider what meditating like this once or twice a week could do for your soul.

The first step in God's word transforming our lives and culture is studying God's Word. Studying hard and deep and as a dialog where we respond to what God has said.

Do God's Word

James 1:22 says, "Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves." God's word is not only meant to be learned. It's meant to be done. Doctrine is supposed to be lived, not just learned.

This isn't complicated. If you've studied God's word so that it isn't just some abstract ideas, but it's challenging and exhorting you to grow and change, then you know what you should do. You should confess your sins to one another. You should pray. You should love your wives and honor your husbands and obey your parents. You should trust God to forgive you because of Christ. You should forgive those who sin against you. You should not lean on your own understanding. You should be hospitable. You should devote yourself to your role in God's mission and study what God's word has to say about it.

Doing God's word is really about keeping the faith. Will you be loyal to him? Is he God? Are you his servant? Then do what he says. Not complicated. You just need to keep the courage to act. Don't be passive. Don't wait. Don't put off tomorrow what can be done today. If God has told us what to do, then let's do it right away, all the way.

Kill your sins, work with all your heart, be faithful in the little things. You don't need to be a Bible expert to do God's word. Just do what you know.

Since we will inevitably do our doctrine, we must study hard. Ideas have consequences, and that includes doctrine. If you study, and you are wrong, it will affect how you live. That should be clear enough from Andy's teaching on evangelical feminism vs. biblical patriarchy. Our Bible study will change the way that we live. So study hard, and then put it into action.

Notice that the doing comes before the teaching. Don't start teaching others before you do it yourself. The world is awash in blind guides. Business consultants who are "experts" without successful or profitable businesses to show for their expertise. Marriage advice from those dissatisfied with their marriage. Don't join the ranks of those who, like the teachers in 1 Tim 1:7 desire to be teachers but don't "understand what they are saying nor the things about which they make confident assertions."

Teach God's Word

But after you have studied and are a consistent doer of God's word, please teach others! It's crucial for the body of Christ to be built up by the teaching of his word--both understanding the word and what to do. You have probably noticed that since God distributes gifting differently, often those who can best understand God's word aren't those who best understand how to do God's word (and vice versa). So we need each other. We need to teach one another.

This is the ministry Paul considers crucial for older women to perform for younger women. He says, "train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands." That's a lot to learn. Older women, please don't neglect this crucial teaching ministry. It's through your teaching that God will put each generation of moms and wives just a little ahead of the last and over time the church of God will honor God more and more and more.

In this ministry of teaching the word, evangelism is included. Teach unbelievers what to believe. Parenting is included, teaching children how to obey and show them the straight and narrow path. Being a teacher is included, teaching the hearts of children and young adults and giving them a view of the world focused through God's Word. Friendship is included, offering one another advice and help along the way.

I think we can safely see ourselves as reinforcements here in Stillwater. There's been much good rebuilding done here, and still more to do. So we need to remember what God's plan is to accomplish that rebuilding.

God's plan is to transform societies through his word. After God gives us a new heart, we devote ourselves wholly to our role in God's mission. Then we study God's word so that we can do it and teach it to others. We don't just study it abstractly as a collection of truths, we study it as a conversation where God speaks and we respond and so our lives are changed to conform to his word.

Now, having heard God's word, we have a chance to consecrate ourselves to God. If you have been half-hearted in the role God gave you in his mission, now is a good chance to repent and devote yourself to him and resolve to study his word thoroughly so that you can live it out faithfully.