Refocus
Pastor Zach Pummill • May 23, 2021
Sermon Overview
EZRA 7:1–10
We're given a detailed profile of Ezra and what makes him so necessary for the people of God. This passage presents Ezra's passion for God's word and dependence upon God as what made him so special and needed.
Sermon Transcript
When I was in college, I was the type of student that before every big exam, and especially finals week, I had to clean my entire dorm room. I had to clean my apartment, top to bottom, vacuum, and all of that. My wife is wondering what happened to that guy. But I'd get everything in order, and then it allowed me to just bring peace to my environment, kind of bring order to my physical space around me. So then I can focus on the real work. Now, cleaning my apartment, history would show did not always guarantee that I would do well on the exam. But it did allow me to focus on the real work.
And in today's passage, God begins a new phase in this rebuilding project. Up to this point, the focus of the work has been on physically rebuilding a place. But now God shifts his attention to spiritually rebuilding his people. The physical surroundings of the altar and the temple have been established. There's been order from the chaos.
But now God wants to rebuild his people by refocusing them on the foundation of His word. And so where are we at in this story? Where we've seen Israel return, they rebuilt the altar, and then they immediately move in to establishing the foundation of the temple. But then they stop. They were afraid of the opposition, they were afraid of the governing authorities. And so the temple sat unfinished for 15 years and everybody just kind of looked after their own lives. As we saw last week, God sent them two prophets, Haggai and Zechariah. And those prophets called the people to renew their commitment to the work and to trust that God is with them. And what do you know? They listened.
It says at the end of chapter 6 that they listened to Haggai and Zachariah and they prospered. They finished the temple despite the opposition. And then they threw a huge party to celebrate the completion of this incredible, magnificent work. Now, that just leads us to another question. Why doesn't the story just end here? The temple is completed, so isn't the work all done? Well, no, the real work is just beginning. Now the real test begins. Because the temple was originally built so that Israel would have a place where God would dwell with them. But that was just supposed to be the beginning. A new chapter was supposed to be written, where Israel would become a new kind of people that displayed the goodness and beauty and glory of God to the world. So that the world, the nations, would draw near and come to them and say, "Who is this your God? Tell us of your God."
And Israel would then be able to introduce the nations, to their Creator and to their God. Because God doesn't want to just dwell at the center of a little small piece of land. He wants to dwell at the center of the whole world so that the earth might be filled with his glory. And the only way that that could possibly happen, the only way that that would occur, is if Israel centered their lives upon God's word. But it never happened. Because once the temple was built, the first time, Israel thought their work was done. They could sit back, they can relax, and they lived as though they'd arrived.
But God tells them a different story in Jeremiah 2. He gives them a picture of what's really going on, because they would go around and they would look at the temple and they would say, "See, God dwells with us." But then God says, "Yeah, but none of you seek after me. None of you desire to find me." And then he says in Jeremiah 44, at the end, he says, "I'm sending you into exile. Why? Because you don't obey my voice. You don't listen to my words. In your life, amidst all your busyness, there's no room for my voice in your life, you don't want what I have to offer."
Now, fast forward to our passage today and the temple is rebuilt, and now it's time for a fresh start. But if Israel thinks that the work is done, not only does it ignore their history, it also completely ignores God's words and His desires for them. God doesn't want them to make the same mistake again. So it gives them an opportunity to learn from their past and embrace the future that He has for them by refocusing them on His word, which means Israel needs a shepherd. They need someone to lead them in the way that they should go. What Israel needs is a teacher. So God sends them Ezra.
He calls Ezra out of exile in Babylon, and he leads a second wave of returning exiles home to Jerusalem. And up to this point, Ezra hasn't even been mentioned yet. But he has an incredibly profound place in this story and well into Israel's future. And he's introduced to us in a very special way, because this passage gives us a detailed profile of Ezra, both outside and inside. It's because God wants us to slow down and take a long look at his man. He wants us to take a long look at Ezra, because we're supposed to ask - what did this teacher look like that Israel so desperately needed? What was he like? What about him do we need to notice?
And the first thing it tells us is about his pedigree. Ezra is a big deal. His ancestry reads like a who's who, of influential Israelites that Mark so eloquently read this morning. Ezra is from the priestly line. He's descended from the line of Aaron, the first high priest of Israel. To give you a picture of his position, the only person that would have been more influential in Israel than Ezra would have been the king if Israel had one. So Ezra came from a great family, but with that came great responsibility. He's to be a servant of the people of God. But there were many that came before him that occupied the same position that never lived up to that responsibility. They only led the people of God away from God, and not to God.
And so Ezra's pedigree isn't necessarily what makes him special - it's what makes him responsible. And so then what else are we supposed to see? What is it that makes Ezra so special?
Well there's two things this passage gives us.
The first thing we see is Ezra's passion. If you look at verse 10, it says, "For Ezra had set his heart to study the law of the Lord, and to do it, and to teach his statutes and rules in Israel." Ezra had a passion for the law of the Lord. He was a man who had a passion for the words of God. And so what did that passion look like? Well, it already broke it down for us. It said that he was one who set his heart to study the law of the Lord. And that language being used here doesn't translate very well into English.
But that phrase 'set his heart' is very special language that the Bible is using, but the Bible rarely uses it to describe any individual. It's special language that the Bible uses on rare occasions and this is one. Because it's language that describes a deep searching of the Scriptures with one's entire being. It's the pursuit of knowledge and understanding that comes from reading God's word at a much deeper level than just a surface reading. So more simply put, Ezra is man who searches and looks deeply into God's word to find wisdom. He desires wisdom. He doesn't just see laws, he sees life. Because Ezra recognizes that God's word isn't just a bunch of laws, it's far more than that. Those laws anchor God's people in a way of life that's pleasing to Him. Because those laws reveal the character of God.
And so Ezra understands that knowing God's word should lead to knowing God, but that takes work. That requires a deep searching of the Scriptures. Because the Bible doesn't tell you what to do in every single situation of your life. It's not an index of answers for every situation you're going to encounter. It's not going to tell you what job to take. It's not going to tell you which career to go into. It's not going to tell you when it's time to buy a new car. Those are answers that can only be found by the way of wisdom.
And wisdom requires a deep meditation on God's word. Because wisdom assumes that God's word is life. It's wisdom that comes from asking deeper questions of God's Word things like, why does God say that my pots and pans are holy? Why does God say that my cattle are holy? Why does God command that all financial debt across the entire kingdom of Israel be wiped out every 50 years? What does that teach us about God and who He is?
It's why the Psalmist says, "I meditate on your word, day and night. I want to understand how your word applies to every aspect of my life. I want wisdom, I want to know you." So this is why the priests were set to judge over the people of Israel. They were to understand the law and to seek wisdom so that they could understand how to apply it to each and every situation in the kingdom. So that justice, goodness, and peace would fill Israel according to God's word. So that the life of Israel reflected the character of God to the world. So Ezra knows God's word isn't just words, it's wisdom, it's life.
But secondly, Ezra's passion not only set his heart to study the Word, but also to do it. He's a man of integrity. He knows God's word isn't just meant to be learned, it's meant to be lived. And it's not just written for other people, it's written for him. Like James 1 tells us, "Be doers of the word and not hearers only. Otherwise you deceive yourself." He was a man who did the Word of God. And thirdly, it says that he desired to teach God's words to Israel. He knows God's desire is for all of his people to center their lives on His word. It's not just meant for some special family from some special class of people. God sent Ezra to Israel to make Israel like Ezra. So we see Ezra's passion for God's word.
We're also supposed to see something else, we need to see Ezra's dependence. In verse 21, it says that Ezra called a fast. He's leading these returning exiles home on a very dangerous four-month journey back to Jerusalem. But notice his knowledge and his understanding and his position didn't lead him to a place of boasting and arrogance. It made him humble. He knew who he was, and he knew who God was. He knew how much he needed God's presence, not just in this journey, but in all of the work that remained ahead. And so he calls a fast because fasting was about inclining one's heart towards God and saying I recognize my life is fully dependent upon you, and nothing else. He didn't trust in the king's favor. He didn't trust in the king's power. He calls for a fast to remind everyone that their lives depended fully, completely, and absolutely on God's presence and God's power. Ezra's study of the law produced a deep dependence upon God.
And both of these things together are why Ezra is so needed to refocus Israel on God's word. We see his passion, we see his dependence, and both of those things are necessary. Because when you lose one of those two things, that's when Israel got into trouble. It's also when we get into trouble.
So what happens when you remove passion for God's Word? What happens when it's no longer life to you? You get liberalism.
That was Israel's problem in the past. They fell into rampant liberalism, because there was no passion for what God had to say. They were just apathetic to God's version of life and flourishing. And so how did that liberalism start? It started when God's word started gathering dust. There were large spans of time where Israel couldn't even find the book of the law. They literally lost the book of the law. Then at one point, Hilkiah, the high priest, found it. He found the book of the law in the temple and then he took it to the king. And then they read it, and they realized they weren't even doing any of it. And then the king instituted all of these religious reforms in Israel to align them once again with God's word. But doesn't that just make you ask: What were they doing up to that point? What were they doing all that time? Well the Bible gives us a great picture. The book of Jeremiah is devoted to telling us what that looks like.
And it started with the priests. They became corrupt because they didn't even know God's word so they couldn't judge rightly and justly among the people. So rampant corruption and rampant injustice thrived in the kingdom. And the priests became greedy. They became gratuitous. They weren't using the tithes and the offerings in the manner that God had said was good and right, to aid the poor and to be a resource for the kingdom. So there's a little bit left over, so they start skimming off the top. And they started showing up in $1,000 suits and private jets. And if anybody called them on it, they'd say things like, "Touch not the Lord's anointed."
And as go the priests, so go the people. They started worshiping other gods, the Israelites started enslaving other Israelites. Jew enslaved Jew. The wealthy would go to the temple to worship on the Sabbath, while still requiring their Israelite slaves to work. They hated each other. God actually describes it by saying that they would say 'peace' to their neighbor, but in their heart, they planned an ambush. They completely ignored God's word and thought God doesn't require anything of us. And they lived as though they'd arrived. Because without a passion for God's word, they ultimately became what liberalism creates - a culture where everyone operates as their own authority. And everyone does what's right in their own eyes.
And I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "That's right. That's what's wrong with our culture today. Nobody's living according to God's word. Get the liberals!" But perhaps the seeds of liberalism have grown and crept into your heart far more than you realize.
So often, when we talk about conservatism and liberalism, we boil it down way to simply, why? Because we only think of it in terms of how our culture defines it for us. So we judge where we fall on the spectrum of liberalism and conservatism, just based on a few basic issues like sex or marriage. And yet, your view that marriage is between one man and one woman doesn't necessarily mean that you treasure God's word or want to live by it. Islam teaches the same exact thing. Liberalism doesn't begin with alternative views of sexuality. Liberalism doesn't begin with progressive views on marriage or family or social reform. Liberalism begins when we do not take God at His Word. Which means the spotlight shines most brightly on those that claim to know God's word.
Do we love the way Christ called us to love? Do we serve the way Christ called us to serve? Do we live in community the way God calls us to live in community?
God's people can ignore His word and the seeds of liberalism can grow in our own hearts just as much as they do any non-believer. And it starts with us in the same way it started with Israel, when God's word starts gathering dust. And when it does, and when that happens, we start to fill in the blanks. And we live in a way that seems good to us. And we live a religion of convenience.
And so we treat God's forgiveness as an excuse to never address any sin in your life. Because Jesus died for it.
Or we treat God's grace as it just simply means that he doesn't actually require anything of you.
We treat God's commands as though they're more like the suggestions that God offers to us.
It's the commands to love one another, to serve one another, to love your enemies, to out do one another in showing honor, well, those are really hard, so He probably doesn't expect that of us anyways.
It's when the demands of our calendar become far more important than the command to serve, the commands for worship, and the command for community.
It's claiming the sanctity of marriage, but never lifting a finger to try to love your wife as Christ loves the church, or trying to grow in respect for your husband.
In the end, liberalism creates a definition of grace, that just means it's an excuse to not do it, instead of the invitation to do it. In the end, liberalism never seeks wisdom in God's word because it doesn't think that it needs to. It has a magical way of creating a God that never says 'no.' He's a God that will always affirm however you want to live, and will always accept you just as you are. And you don't really need a passion for His word, because you can serve Him in whatever way is most convenient, and we can live as though we've arrived. And Israel needed Ezra's passion for God's word so that they can remember what life really looked like. So they could remember life on God's terms.
They needed his passion, but they also needed his dependence. They needed someone to teach them how they needed God to bring to life His words within them.
Because what happens when you have passion, without dependence on God? You get legalism.
And you know who loved Ezra and thought of him as their hero? It's the Pharisees. They loved his passion for the word. They were inspired by how he searched it and he did it. The Pharisees had plenty of passion for God's word. But that's not enough. You know why? Because when God was standing right in front of them, they killed him. They lacked dependence on God because they didn't think they needed to be dependent upon Him. They thought everybody else did. And when we lack dependence upon God, when we disregard our need for him to bring about his word within us, then the seeds of legalism grow in our hearts.
And Jesus has all sorts of things to say about what legalism looks like.
It produces a people that can only see in black and white. It's simply do this or don't do that. And they judge everybody and everything based on performance. Which means they dramatically underestimate the world's problems, even though they act as though they're an authority, because in their mind, everybody just gets what they deserve. And so they crushed the poor and the needy, why? Because they deserve it. Why lift a finger to help them when God is putting judgment upon them. That's why Jesus said they are devours of widow's homes.
Jesus says the legalist preaches, but they don't practice. They make heavy demands of others, and watch them do all the work. And they never lift a finger, Matthew 23. Which means that the legalist is the one that complains about what's wrong with the world today. They're the one that complains about how people mooch off the system, and they rely on everybody else to do the work for them. Yet all they've done is perfectly described their own level of participation in the life of the church.
The legalist boasts in their accomplishments, while always noticing what others haven't accomplished. They can always point out the flaws in others and never see their own.
The legalist shuts the kingdom of God in people's faces because nobody ever measures up. They're the opposite of what the liberal creates, because they create a God that always says 'no, not good enough.' The legalist isolates themselves from the world, and they call it the fear of God. Yet it's really the fear of man.
The legalist is the one who says, "Well, the Bible says it, so just do it." Yet all that means is they haven't read it. And it shows a complete disregard and contempt for dependence upon God. Because if you take the Word of God seriously, who among us can love like Christ loved? And yet, that's the command over your head. Who among us can love their enemies? Who among us can turn the other cheek? Who among us can remain steadfast and faithful in trial and tribulation without help? Who can do any of those things without prayer? Who can do any of those things on their own?
Legalism grows when we look at God's word, and all we see are laws, but we never see His love. We look at it and never see a God of service, a God of compassion, kindness, goodness, mercy, justice, or sacrifice.
And it may appear that the liberal and legalist are opposites. But in reality, they're no different. They're the exact same. The liberal just assimilates into the world, the legalist isolates from the world. And neither of them have anything to offer the world. And neither seek wisdom in God's word because they don't think they need to.
The liberal thinks that God requires nothing of them and the legalist thinks they've done all that God requires, which means that both, in the end, have the exact same problem, it's confidence.
They're confident in who they are and nothing about them needs to change. They both live as though they've arrived. So how can you know if legalism or liberalism is growing in your heart? It's if right now you're thinking about how somebody else needs to hear this. James 1 tells us that the word of God is like a mirror. It'll show you who you are, if you're willing to look at it.
And the problem with the liberal and the legalist is that when they look into God's word, they always see someone else, never themselves. It always gives them the reasoning to point at somebody or something because they never realize it's they who need to change. And Ezra's story shows us the necessity of both passion for God's word and dependence upon God, we need both. But at the same time, for all of Ezra's passion and dependence, he wasn't nearly enough.
Because Israel never came to a place where they were willing to listen to God's word. They only continued to make the same mistakes over and over and over again. And they were never willing to change. They gloried in the temple, but they never desired the God that dwelled in it. They continued to live as though they'd arrived. And I hate to spoil the story, but that temple that we just saw rebuilt, God will destroy that one too. And it should at least tell us this, that God isn't committed to our version of His religion. He's only committed to His.
Which means that we need a teacher that's far greater than Ezra, we need one with passion. We need one with dependence. But we also need one with power. We need a teacher that has the power to change us. We need a teacher that has the power to give us a new heart and a new mind to transform us from the inside out. We need a teacher that doesn't just bring us the words of life, but gives new life. And is that not the promise of Christ your Lord? To come, follow me, and I'll make you something new. But we will never follow Him, unless we realize that we need to be made into something new.
So how can we get hold of that? Where do we start with all of this? Remember, Ezra, he searched, and then he did, and then he taught. Which means that Ezra gives us the mindset that each of us as individuals should have, which is this: is that God's word is written to me first, before it's written to anybody else. God's word is written to me first, before it's written to anybody else.
Which means that we need to come to the Bible to change, not just check a box. We need to come to the Bible to change.
It's so easy to read the words on a page. It's so easy to mindlessly go through the motions, or once we read it, once it makes us have to think about it, we move on. Instead, open your Bible this week, and come with a desire to change. Let it show you who you are. Let it show you what you can be. Let it show you the beauty of life on God's terms. And come with a desire, not just to learn it, but to live it and ask God to bring those words that you read to life within you.
If it's the fruit of the Spirit, you need God's help ask Him to bear that fruit in your life. If it's about marriage, ask him to give you the type of marriage that would reflect the love of Christ and His Church. Allow what God says is life to be life to you. And rest upon Him to bring that life to bear within you. Because God has an incredible renovation project He wants to do in your heart.
And when we come to his words in that way, and we come with passion for what He has to say, but we come with dependence so necessary for Him to bring that to life within us.
And so here we are, in this beautiful building. God's given us a place to worship. God has given us a place where we can meet with Him. God has given us one another. And we are so blessed.
But have we arrived? Is the work done? Or is the real work just beginning?
Let's pray.
