Our Spiritual RENEWAL
Ezra 1:1-11
It is easy to settle into a
comfortable, routine Christianity. I have been a committed
Christian for about 31 years, and a pastor for 2 years, CCC 29, 4 yrs. In
College and It’s easy for me to drift into a safe, comfortable routine. What I need at such times—what
we all need repeatedly—is for God’s Spirit to blow upon us in spiritual
renewal.
The book of Ezra is about
God’s renewing His errant people. Ezra is about the return of
the exiles from Babylon, the rebuilding of the Temple, and the restoration of
God’s people spiritually to proper worship and godly living..
Spiritual
renewal is for God’s glorious purpose.
The Temple at Jerusalem had
been the place where God’s glory was displayed. That place had been destroyed
because of the sins of His people. God’s purpose was to manifest
His glory through a rebuilt Temple where His restored people could worship Him
in spirit and truth. His glory was supremely
revealed in the rebuilt Temple when Jesus the Messiah appeared there.
God’s purpose today is the
same: He wants to reveal His glory
through a renewed people, who by their holy lives and
witness reveal His Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, to all peoples. In other words, spiritual
renewal is not only for us, so that we can lead happy, fulfilled lives. Spiritual renewal is for
God’s purpose, that His glory would be revealed to the nations.
How can this happen?
1st
, ask God to give you a vision of what a renewed, holy, worshiping, evangelizing
community of His people would look like.
Do you long for it? How
I wish my friends were studying the bible, God’s Word with me. How
I wish my community, my state, my country will follow God’s word.
2nd
we should acknowledge that Spiritual renewal is the work of God.
Requires
his power (Cyrus), his timing (after 70 yrs), his ways (King’s edict)
Ezra 1:1-3a is identical to 2
Chronicles 36:22-23. They are astounding verses. In Jeremiah 29:10-14, the
Lord had sent word through His prophet to those who were already in exile in
Babylon:For thus says the LORD, “When seventy years have been completed for Babylon, I will visit you and fulfill My good word to you, to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans that I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” declares the LORD, “and I will restore your fortunes and will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you,” declares the LORD, “and I will bring you back to the place from where I sent you into exile.”The seventy-year captivity began in 605 B.C. Jerusalem fell in 587 B.C. The decree of Cyrus was in 538, the first year of his reign over Babylon, 67 years after the first deportation. But the remarkable and significant thing is that it was God who stirred up Cyrus to make this dramatic proclamation. Why would Cyrus, a pagan king, issue a decree for the Jews to return to Israel and rebuild their Temple?
Behind Cyrus’ incredible
decree, God was working to fulfill His Word through His prophet (1:1). There is simply no human
explanation for this. God was the only reason for it. There are human schemes and
methods for bringing spiritual renewal. But for it
to be genuine, God must work according to His mighty power.Anything less will be a
cheap, superficial substitute.
We cannot change ourselves.
We cannot change our circumstance. Only God can do that. And if He needs to move kings
of the world and create events to renew us, he will. But, then, do we just sit
around and wait for God to work, or is there something that we can do?
3rd
v.3 Be willing to be inconvenienced to
see spiritual renewal happen, both personally and corporately.
There were many Jews in
Babylon who were comfortable there. Many of them had been born in
captivity and Babylon was all that they knew. They heard stories from the
old-timers about the glories of Zion and the beauty of the Temple. But they just shrugged, “Why
go back there when we have a good life here?” Besides, it was both
inconvenient and risky to go back to Jerusalem.
It meant saying good-bye to
the comfortable and familiar surroundings and friends and venturing across
1,000 miles of hostile desert terrain to a land that had been decimated by war.
There weren’t cities with
beautiful empty homes awaiting them. There were piles of rubble
and some hostile people who had moved into the empty land after the Babylonians
had dragged off the surviving Jews. So why go back?
But there were other Jews in
Babylon who were not comfortable there. They remembered Zion and
said, “How can we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land” (Ps. 137:4). They exalted Jerusalem, where
God’s people worshiped Him in His temple, as their chief joy (Ps. 137:6). So when they heard the
unbelievable news that Cyrus, the pagan king, had issued a call to the Jews to
return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Lord’s temple, they were like those who
dream. Their mouths were filled with
laughter and their tongues with joyful shouting. “Then they said among the nations, ‘The Lord
has done great things for them.’
The Lord has done great
things for us; we are glad” (Ps. 126:2-3).
To return to Jerusalem was a
major hassle and inconvenience for everyone who responded to the call. But if God is going to renew
your life, you’ve got to get out of your rut and make some changes. You’ve got to be willing to
give up the comfortable life in “Babylon” and embrace the hardships of seeing His
Temple rebuilt in “Jerusalem”.
It may be as simple as
turning off the tube and picking up your Bible on a consistent basis to spend
time with the Lord. It may mean scheduling
regular extended times for seeking the Lord. It may mean setting some
spiritual goals and asking God for the grace and wisdom to achieve them. But it certainly means doing
some things differently than the current status quo!
Do you sense the need
personally for spiritual renewal? If your honest answer is,
“No, I’m fine, thanks,” you’ll stay in Babylon.It’s a comfortable place to
live. You’ll enjoy a good life there. But you’ll miss what God wants
to do with you personally and with you as a part of His church corporately. If you sense the need for
renewal, get alone with God as soon as you can and begin asking Him by His
great power according to His gracious promises to work for His glorious purpose
in you and in this church.
It won’t be an easy,
comfortable road to travel. There are many hardships and
obstacles along the way. But, as the closing words of
chapter one, “from Babylon to Jerusalem,” mark one of the turning points of
history. God calls
you to join that group returning to the place of His blessing.
4th
v.5 Devote yourself to being a part of making that
happen here.
While God greatly uses godly
women, He has ordained for men to take the spiritual lead in the home and in
the church. God won’t bring renewal while men are spiritually passive.
Lastly
4, 6-11 God’s provision supplies the demands of His promises.
God had promised to restore
His people after the 70 years, but it was a humanly impossible task. After 70 years in Babylon,
with the city of Jerusalem and the Temple in ruins, how could things ever be restored? The Jews didn’t have the
resources to do it, even if a royal edict permitted them to return to the land. But what man could not do,
God did.
He had Cyrus put it into the
royal edict that the people should contribute to those returning.
And, Cyrus himself brought
out the vessels from the Temple that Nebuchadnezzar
had put into his own temple. The 2,499 in 1:9-10 probably
refers to the bigger and more valuable items, whereas the 5,400 in 1:11 is the
total of all the items .Every piece of these temple
items was “a witness to God’s sovereign care and the continuance of the
covenant.”
Christ has promised to build His church and
that some from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation will
one day be gathered before His throne (Matt. 16:18; Rev. 5:9). But the task seems humanly
impossible!Where do we get the resources
to see these promises become a reality?
The answer is here: When God
promises, He also supplies the demands to meet those promises as His people
wait on Him in prayer. As Hudson Taylor used to say,
“God’s work done in God’s way will not lack God’s means of support.”
3.There
are things that we can do to bring Spiritual renewal in our lives.
Everything in the spiritual realm
depends on God’s grace as promised in His Word. Since God had promised, and
since He works through means that He ordains, there are some things that we
can do:
A. Prayer brings God’s promises into practical
reality.
The prophet Daniel’s
meditation on Jeremiah’s prophecy and his prayers for God to forgive and
restore His captive people were behind these dramatic changes in history
(Daniel 9). Daniel didn’t read Jeremiah’s
prophecy, realize that the 70 years were almost up, and say, “Cool! Let’s sit
back and see what happens!” Rather, he humbled himself with fasting and he
confessed his people’s and his own sins.
If we want spiritual renewal,
whether personally or for God’s church, we must humble ourselves before God and
entreat Him for it. If we’re content in Babylon,
with no longing for worship in God’s temple in Jerusalem, we won’t cry out to
Him for anything different. But if we realize that God promises more than
we’re experiencing, we will give ourselves to prayer until He grants it.
B. God’s Word reveals His promises and His path
of blessing.
The renewal under Ezra was a
renewal of God’s Word. The fulfillment of Jeremiah’s
and Isaiah’s prophecies showed God’s people that His Word is true and can be
trusted, no matter how impossible the situation. Clearly,
Ezra was a man who believed in the transforming power of God’s Word.
Every true spiritual renewal
is founded on and sustained by God’s Word. The Reformation was a renewal
of the Word. Luther, Calvin, and the other
Reformers began systematically teaching and applying God’s Word in ways that
had been grossly neglected. . The Puritan movement also was
centered on God’s Word, as pastors would explain and apply the great doctrines of Scripture,
usually in hour-long sermons.
If we want renewal, we must
put a renewed emphasis on God’s Word of truth.
Resource Materials Taken From: Dave Guzik,
Alexander Maclaren, Gregg Herrick, Ralph Davis & Steven Cole
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