Whom Shall I Fear?

Brian Carroll / General Adult

Work in Progress / Ezra 5:1–17

 

Introduction - Project Delays

• Chapter 4 ends and the circumstances in Israel have taken a troubling turn.

• After so much momentum, the work on the temple has ground to a halt.

• The opposition was significant.

• They started sending some correspondence back and forth with the Persian King.

• And for about 15 or 16 years, there was no work taking place on the temple.

• This is a problem - because that was the primary task for which they were sent back.

• That’s the decree that Cyrus the Great issued.

• That was their primary calling.

• 15 or 16 years is a LONG time for inactivity.

• But all that starts to change once we get to chapter 5.

› Scripture Reading

Ezra 5:1–17 ESV

¹ Now the prophets, Haggai and Zechariah the son of Iddo, prophesied to the Jews who were in Judah and Jerusalem, in the name of the God of Israel who was over them.

² Then Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel and Jeshua the son of Jozadak arose and began to rebuild the house of God that is in Jerusalem, and the prophets of God were with them, supporting them.

³ At the same time Tattenai the governor of the province Beyond the River and Shethar-bozenai and their associates came to them and spoke to them thus: “Who gave you a decree to build this house and to finish this structure?”

⁴ They also asked them this: “What are the names of the men who are building this building?”

⁵ But the eye of their God was on the elders of the Jews, and they did not stop them until the report should reach Darius and then an answer be returned by letter concerning it.

⁶ This is a copy of the letter that Tattenai the governor of the province Beyond the River and Shethar-bozenai and his associates, the governors who were in the province Beyond the River, sent to Darius the king.

⁷ They sent him a report, in which was written as follows: “To Darius the king, all peace.

⁸ Be it known to the king that we went to the province of Judah, to the house of the great God. It is being built with huge stones, and timber is laid in the walls. This work goes on diligently and prospers in their hands.

⁹ Then we asked those elders and spoke to them thus: ‘Who gave you a decree to build this house and to finish this structure?’

¹⁰ We also asked them their names, for your information, that we might write down the names of their leaders.

¹¹ And this was their reply to us: ‘We are the servants of the God of heaven and earth, and we are rebuilding the house that was built many years ago, which a great king of Israel built and finished.

¹² But because our fathers had angered the God of heaven, he gave them into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, the Chaldean, who destroyed this house and carried away the people to Babylonia.

¹³ However, in the first year of Cyrus king of Babylon, Cyrus the king made a decree that this house of God should be rebuilt.

¹⁴ And the gold and silver vessels of the house of God, which Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of the temple that was in Jerusalem and brought into the temple of Babylon, these Cyrus the king took out of the temple of Babylon, and they were delivered to one whose name was Sheshbazzar, whom he had made governor;

¹⁵ and he said to him, “Take these vessels, go and put them in the temple that is in Jerusalem, and let the house of God be rebuilt on its site.”

¹⁶ Then this Sheshbazzar came and laid the foundations of the house of God that is in Jerusalem, and from that time until now it has been in building, and it is not yet finished.’

¹⁷ Therefore, if it seems good to the king, let search be made in the royal archives there in Babylon, to see whether a decree was issued by Cyrus the king for the rebuilding of this house of God in Jerusalem. And let the king send us his pleasure in this matter.”

• Here in chapter 5, we are introduced to a couple of new characters in the book - Haggai and Zechariah.

• These are two prophets that God calls during this difficult season.

• (We’re studying through Zechariah on Wednesday nights)

• These men are called to declare the Word of God to this generation.

• They prophesied - that doesn’t always mean that they talk about what is going to happen in the future.

• In fact, most of the prophetic work in the Old Testament is speaking directly into a specific people’s situation.

• The prophet’s message is whatever message the LORD gives him.

• And in this situation, these men aren’t first talking about some future activity, they’re telling the people what God thinks about their immediate circumstances.

• And as they preach, their message resonates with the people and they dust off their tools after 15 years of being idle and they get to work doing exactly what God asked them to do so many years earlier.

• It just goes to show us this:

God’s people are at their best when the preaching of the Word is the strongest (vv. 1-2)

• You can go and read what these men had to say.

• They wrote down their sermons.

• What do we find when we look at their sermons?

• We find that they don’t pull any punches.

• Take a look at the prophet Haggai’s opening message:

Haggai 1:1–11 ESV

¹ In the second year of Darius the king, in the sixth month, on the first day of the month, the word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai the prophet to Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest:

² “Thus says the Lord of hosts: These people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the Lord.”

³ Then the word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai the prophet,

⁴ “Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins?

⁵ Now, therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways.

⁶ You have sown much, and harvested little. You eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And he who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes.

⁷ “Thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways.

⁸ Go up to the hills and bring wood and build the house, that I may take pleasure in it and that I may be glorified, says the Lord.

⁹ You looked for much, and behold, it came to little. And when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why? declares the Lord of hosts. Because of my house that lies in ruins, while each of you busies himself with his own house.

¹⁰ Therefore the heavens above you have withheld the dew, and the earth has withheld its produce.

¹¹ And I have called for a drought on the land and the hills, on the grain, the new wine, the oil, on what the ground brings forth, on man and beast, and on all their labors.”

• Haggai wasted no time getting to the heart of the problem.

• These Jews had grown very comfortable with their circumstances.

• The Temple foundation was built, the altar was making sacrifices.

• This isn’t too bad.

• And Haggai points this out…

• They’ve build a pretty decent life for themselves.

• He says they’ve got paneled houses.

• That word for paneling is how the inside of Solomon’s palace was described back in 1 Kings 6.

• If you could paint an ideal picture of suburbia in the burned out remnant of Jerusalem, they’ve done it.

• They’re living in a level of opulence and privilege, tending their own affairs, and they’re not paying any attention at all to the condition of the house of God.

• It takes a particular degree of boldness and courage to look at a people and call out their sin.

• Haggai has no problem, whatsoever, doing just that.

• But what happens?

• It works - the people get to work.

• It says it here in Ezra 6 and it says the same thing in Haggai.

• Because that’s what we need.

• You don’t find a bible prophet that doesn’t preach the Word of God.

• They don’t get to be prophets if they don’t preach the truth.

• The bible has a word for people like that - they’re called false prophets.

• And if someone was found to be a false prophet in the Old Testament, they usually didn’t live to tell about it.

• We don’t have prophets in the same way we had them in the Old Testament.

• We don’t need prophets to declare to us what God says because God has spoken through his word.

• The responsibility of declaring God’s word today falls on those God has called to preach.

• The church needs strong, biblical preaching today.

• But strong biblical preaching only comes from strong, biblical preachers.

• I’m thankful for the godly men who invested in me and helped me understand that preaching is a sacred task and it dare not deviate from the words contained in this book.

• Sadly, there’s a lot of stuff that goes around today that masquerades as preaching.

• I saw a video yesterday of a pastor dressed up like Indiana Jones cracking a a whip while the electric guitar player was playing the theme song from the movie franchise.

• It wasn’t VBS - it was during their worship service. They were doing a whole sermon series based on Indiana Jones.

• I saw another video of a lady priest dressed up in her vestments preaching about how we need to stop talking about all that “heaven and hell stuff.”

• I could literally put tens of thousands of examples on the screen this morning to show you how much non-preaching is taking place in the church today.

• You all share A LOT of these examples with me on the regular.

• It’s not just non-denominational megachurches or liberal protestant churches, it’s small country churches and downtown first churches.

• I had a friend who was a missionary in Kentucky who was telling me about one of their churches (A Southern Baptist Church, just like us).

• They attended the church on two different occasions and on both occasions the pastor preached the same sermon on the Ten Commandments.

• It wasn’t because they really needed to understand the Ten Commandments, it was because he was illiterate and that was the only passage he knew.

• This isn’t a new, 21st Century phenomenon, either.

• Written in 1942, the Screwtape Letters is one of C.S. Lewis’ greatest works.

• I’ve mentioned the book before, but if you’re unfamiliar with it, it’s a series of fictitious letters written between two demons, where an elder demon is training a lesser demon about how to render a new Christian completely ineffective.

• Letter 16 features the elder demon’s reflections on a couple of churches that they’re attempting to get the man to attend.

• One of the churches is described thusly:

The Vicar (a vicar is a senior priest in the Church of England) is a man who has been so long engaged in watering down the faith to make it easier for a supposedly incredulous and hard-headed congregation that it is now he who shocks his parishioners with his unbelief, not vice versa. He has undermined many a soul’s Christianity. His conduct of the services is also admirable. In order to spare the laity all “difficulties” he has deserted both the lectionary and the appointed psalms and now, without noticing it, revolves endlessly round the little treadmill of his fifteen favourite psalms and twenty favourite lessons. We are thus safe from the danger that any truth not already familiar to him and to his flock should ever reach them through Scripture.

• We can grow big groups of people by giving religious TED Talks every single Sunday, but we’re not building the church.

• The church needs biblical preaching.

• The church needs that prophetic voice like Haggai that says, “You know you’re letting the house of God fall into disrepair while you’re building your own pristine homes?”

• It should not be that way.

• That doesn’t mean that every sermon, every Sunday, means showing up for your weekly lashing.

• That’s why I just preach what comes next.

• When we stick to the text, then we can’t go wrong because it’s exactly what God said.

• Just say what God says…and the church will be better for it.

• We will stay on task and have a strong foundation to be the people God wants us to be.

• There’s a second thing that we see here…

The world loves it when the church is distracted (vv. 3-4)

• In v. 3 we meet a couple of the Persian officials who aren’t too excited about this building program.

• Tattenai is the governor of this province that is translated “Beyond the River”

• We don’t know what all that included, but it definitely included Judah.

• Tattenai, Shethar and their associates - well, they’re not excited about this construction project, so when they catch wind that it’s gotten underway again, they go and investigate.

• When you read this, it sounds like a government investigation…They want names to put into the report.

• They really only showed any concern for the situation AFTER they started rebuilding the Temple.

• In today’s world, you could almost imagine the codes enforcement officer or the building inspector or the fire marshal showing up…and while I know the people in those roles have a place, sometimes it can feel like they’re just there to slow down progress.

• While the Jews have been minding their own business for the last 15 years, Tattenai wasn’t paying them any attention - but the second they started that building project again, that’s when the red tape appeared.

• Up until this point, the Jews were just going through the motions.

• They had the altar…they were making sacrifices.

• But they weren’t doing what God told them to do.

• They had a form of religion, but it wasn’t what God called them to do.

• One of the themes that gets emphasized over and over in the prophets is the fact that God doesn’t want sacrifices it they’re coming from hearts that are not inclined toward obeying him.

• The prophet Samuel said:

1 Samuel 15:22 ESV

²² And Samuel said, “Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams.

• The world wants the church to be distracted and inactive and self-absorbed.

• The world is perfectly content with a church that goes through the motions.

• I remember when Barack Obama was president.

• He was a very skilled orator, and I believe he was someone who carefully weighed his words.

• He frequently referred to one of the foundational freedoms of our country as the “freedom of worship.”

• That’s a nice sentiment, but enshrined in the First Amendment is not the freedom of worship, but the freedom of religion.

• That’s a very subtle, but monumental shift, but it expresses exactly what the world wants from the church.

• They don’t want the church doing outreach.

• It’s fine if you show up here on Sunday and hear a good speech and listen to some music, but make sure you leave all that here.

• Don’t bring your church experience out into the public square.

• Don’t let your faith influence you in your workplace

• Don’t let your faith impact your voting patterns or where you stand on any given policy or issue.

• Don’t let your faith impact the kind of student you are at school or the kind of athlete you are on the field.

• Keep all of that Christian stuff to yourself and others like you, if you don’t mind.

• Really, it would suit us just fine if you would keep it all contained in the walls of your churches.

• God’s call to Israel wasn’t to go through the motions, it was to build the temple.

• But God’s call on his church today is not to go through the motions, but to be busy making disciples from the neighborhoods to the nations.

• Doing so will draw attention (we see that here when Tattenai and his comrades show up).

• But we have to ask the question - when all is laid out on the table, are we to be about pleasing God or pleasing man?

• There are plenty of times when both those things overlap.

• But when those two things are at odds with one another, which one will you choose?

• You can’t help but hear the first Joshua’s thunderous charge to the Israelites in this question…

Joshua 24:15 ESV

¹⁵ And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

• Which brings up this final point, when you choose to do what God says, you need to make sure:

God’s people must be a persistent people (v. 5)

• It turns out that Tattenai and his associates weren’t the only ones watching.

• Verse 5 says “the eye of their God was on the elders of the Jews.”

• This is a reminder that the task that they were undertaking was very much what God had for them to do.

• They weren’t undertaking a project and then asking God to bless it.

• They were doing exactly that which God had called them to…this was HIS work.

• They have heard the Word of God, preached through the prophets.

• And this time, in response to this word, they handle the opposition differently.

• They keep building - that was the mission they were sent to satisfy so many years in the past.

• They were going to keep building until that order changed.

• This kind of persistence is so good to see - especially after their resolve withered away after the last bout of opposition.

• When it comes to doing the LORD’s work, persistence is the only thing we should know.

• Over and over again, persistence is affirmed to us in the New Testament.

1 Corinthians 15:58 ESV

⁵⁸ Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.

Galatians 6:9 ESV

⁹ And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.

Philippians 3:14 ESV

¹⁴ I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

2 Thessalonians 3:13 ESV

¹³ As for you, brothers, do not grow weary in doing good.

• Persistence is hard, especially when we’re having to row against the current.

• And there are a lot of currents pushing against our calling today.

• The Bible never sugarcoats this, however.

• I press on, don’t grow weary, be steadfast.

• This is the language of struggle.

• You don’t have to caution me about growing weary if what I am doing isn’t something that is exhausting.

• You only have to exhort me to to be steadfast when it is a lot easier to crumble.

Invitation

• Ultimately, the battle we find being fought here in this project is this:

• Who do we fear?

• Do we fear God or do we fear man?

• The outcomes of this chapter look very differently for a people who fear man.

• Haggai and Zechariah never challenge the people of God because challenging God’s people doesn’t always endear you to those people.

• Looking at a group and saying, “Stop sinning or else” isn’t really the best way to make friends.

• The people never dust off their tools.

• They’ve got sacrifices going.

• How long did the nation function just fine without a Temple? We don’t need to rock the boat or upset the apple cart.

• And the only persistence is the persistence in the status quo.

• Nobody is angry with us.

• The government isn’t snooping around.

• Just keep your heads low and they’ll leave us alone.

• Some people live their lives like that - just keep your head down so nobody will notice you.

• But that’s not what God wants for us.

Proverbs 29:25 ESV

²⁵ The fear of man lays a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is safe.

• I love what Paul says to the Galatians

Galatians 1:10 ESV

¹⁰ For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.

• It is easy to live our lives with our goal being keeping the Tattenai’s in our lives content.

• “Don’t mind me…I’m just over here embracing mediocrity, trying to keep everybody happy”

• But if that’s the focus of our lives, then we’ve missed the most important thing.

• You can’t serve two masters.

• Who will you fear?

• But at the end of our lives, it’s not about how many people we pleased, it’s about one thing and one thing alone. Was God pleased?

• As we pray this morning, maybe a really simple question to ask from your heart today, “God, are you pleased with my commitment to you?”