Immanuel Sermon Audio
Ezra (15:66)
15 of 66. I think as our Wednesday nights are going to run up through, I think the end of May, middle of May, end of May will be our last one. I think we'll end up almost all the way through with the minor profits. So it won't be exactly a clean break or a good spot to leave off for the summer, but that's where we'll leave off. And then in the fall, next fall, we'll just pick up right where we left off again and keep going. So we have covered a little bit of ground so far. Genesis up through second chronicles. Tonight, we're going to look at the book of Ezra. Short book, not one of the more lengthy books in the Bible, 10 chapters, and hopefully you can learn a thing or two and be challenged along the way as well. I'm going to give you, Catherine, we'll kind of go through these as questions. We'll see how smart everybody is. I want you to think about the time period. This is just the time period where I could get information on all the groups I'm about to ask you about. So this is 1990 to the year 2000. So I don't know if that seems like a long time ago to you, 1990 to 2000s, that seemed like not very long ago. I don't know. Leon says not very long. Someone else says a long time. 1990 to 2000. Tell how old were you in 1994? Tell was four in 1990. I had you doubled. I was eight. 1990 to 2000. The population of the United States. Increase, decrease. Give me a thumbs up for increase. Thumbs down for decrease. Any downs? The population of the United States? Up. Eight percent. 1990 to the year 2000. It went from about 250 million to 280 million. So that's just baseline. Everything else we're talking about is within the United States, the country as a whole grows 8% in that ten year period. Let's break it down denominationally and let's just think through some of this. Lutherans increase or decrease during that same time period. 90 to 2000. A bunch of thumbs down. The answer is down. Not a lot, but a little bit. That's an interesting number. That's a complex number because you have two main branches of Lutheranism in the period we're talking about. You have a more liberal branch and by liberal I don't mean Democrats. I mean liberal theologically. Then you have a more conservative branch. One of those was growing during that time and one of them was decreasing during that time. The larger one was decreasing and it was decreasing faster than the growing one was growing and we'll talk more about that in a minute. So overall Lutherans down 2%. What about Episcopalians? This is Church of England, sometimes called Anglican. Episcopalians down. Five percent. United States population up eight percent. Lutherans down to Episcopalians down five. What about Methodists? Up or down? We've got somebody saying up and the answer is down. Seven percent going in the wrong direction here. Lutherans down. Episcopalians down. Presbyterian's. What about Presbyterians? Up or down? Up or down? You're noticing a trend? Down. Presbyterian's very similar and Anglicans are very similar to Lutherans in that you have a conservative side of them that tended to be growing and you have a more liberal side theologically that tended to be decreasing but the growth was not enough to make up for it. So Presbyterians down. What about Congregationalists? You heard a Congregationalist? There's not a lot of Congregationalists in this part of the country. They never really moved out of the colonies to be honest with you. They're just kind of up there in New England. Congregationalists when it comes to church they act like Baptists so they do what they want to do within their own church. They're congregationally ruled but they practice baptism like Presbyterians or Methodists or Lutherans they sprinkle. So kind of a hybrid group in how they operate. Congregationalists I told you what part of the country they were in that ought to be a clue and the answer is down. Fifteen percent. Here's an interesting one. Catholics. Up or down. Up or down. I got up or down. Average out what I'm seeing in the crowd and you get a push. They just held their own ground just tread in water. How did they stay even and not decline? No? Not a lot of children? That doesn't hurt. Immigrants. Immigrants was mostly how they stayed level and didn't decline as a whole. So Catholics get a push. Okay. Our turn. Southern Baptist. 1990 to the year 2000. The answer is push. Just stayed even. Lots of Southern Baptist churches closed their doors during that time period but lots of new Southern Baptist churches were started during that period. Southern Baptist for all the things we're goofy about and things we don't do well and things we ought to do better and get our ducks in a row we do understand that you need to always continually be starting new churches. You have to do that. Sometimes people say, "This is Odessa, Texas. We don't need any more churches. We've got enough churches." And church planners say, "Listen, if the churches you had were reaching the people in your community everyone would be in church. The churches you have are not getting the job done. You need more churches. This year a church in Odessa is going to close its doors. Someone else needs to open theirs. Southern Baptist have always believed that. Practice that so we stayed level." Here's an interesting one. What about people who said I have no religion from 1990 to the year 2000? Up six percent. Is that less than you thought that it would go up? Up six percent people with no religion. The last two I can't give you exact numbers but I can give you directions at least. What about charismatic churches? Up or down 1990 to 2000? The answer is way up. How much up? No one knows. There are a lot of charismatic churches and charismatic denominations that do not have membership. You can't be a member. You can come and you can give and you can serve and you can do stuff but you can't be a member. I remember we had a family join our church in Kentucky and we sent for their letter to the church they had been going to and the church sent back and said, "We know this person but we don't have any members." So God bless. Hope you enjoy them. But they're not members here. No one is a member here. Okay. Charismatics way up. How about the next one? Non-denominational. That's a pretty easy one. That one went way up. How much? Who knows? The challenge on this one is who's going to collect the numbers? Who's going to get the information? Who's going to get the data? So many independent non-denominational churches that don't really report to anybody. So there's some numbers to think about. Let me put a group of those churches up on the screen. This is a group of denominations. This is not all of them that would fall under this category but there's a group called mainline Protestant. Lutherans, Episcopalian, Methodist, Presbyterian, congregational. Not on that list. Baptists. Not on that list. Catholics, obviously. It's a Protestant category. Not on that list. Charismatic, non-denominational. These are mainline Protestant churches. In the last 100 years or so, this is not true of every single Lutheran church. If you have a Lutheran mother, I'm not trying to be mean to her. If your grandma goes to Episcopalian church, I'm not saying she's of the devil. I'm talking generally of all these churches. Over the last 100 years, they made a decision that they wanted to try to accommodate themselves to culture. It was a strategic decision of them saying, "If we are going to reach people, we're going to have to change." And there was one big thing standing in the way of that kind of change. And it's this. And so what all of those denominations did in differing stages and orders and progressions, but they all eventually said, "This is a good book." This book is, they would say this maybe with a wink in their eye. This is God's word. I don't mean what you mean when you say that, but it's God's word. And we think God will speak to you through this book. We think this book is inspired. They're using all these words that we're kind of familiar with, but here's what they really mean. You can't really trust this book. There's some things in here that need to be updated. There's some things in here that need to be tweaked. There's some things in here that need to be brought into the 20th or the 21st century. And so all of them did this. They made this decision to say, "This book is not entirely true." And listen, I hate to say this because I don't really feel it, but I think they did it with good motives if that's possible. They did it trying to make sense of some science things and some culture things, and they're trying to reach people with the gospel. The problem is in giving up the book, they gave up the gospel. And so in each one of those denominations, the denomination as a whole started to drift towards theological liberalism, a group split off and said, "Listen, we still want to be congregationalists or Episcopalians or Methodists or Lutherans or Presbyterians, but we don't want to be that. That's not us." And so now you have multiple Presbyterian denominations. Now you have multiple Episcopalian denominations, which is a strange thing because it is the Church of England, the Church of England. And you have churches, Episcopal, Anglican churches breaking off from the communion with Canterbury saying, "We are now of our own communion, but we're still the Church of England. We just don't have communion with you anymore. We want to be Anglican. We're still going to talk, but we don't agree with you on almost everything." And so you had this in all of these denominations. Whether you realize that or not, this happened in our denomination, and it just got stopped a little bit sooner than it did in some of these denominations. Here's what happened in the Southern Baptist Convention in our world. This idea of the Bible not being true, it never filtered down to the Church on a widespread level. But for a time, it took hold of the seminaries. I mean took hold. And so you have our flagship seminary, Southern Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. You can go back and read some of the things that the professors were teaching in the 50s and 60s, and it will blow your socks off. It would blow their socks off. And eventually people like you and the pews of Southern Baptist churches figured out what was being taught at their seminaries. And when they figured it out, they said, "You got to be kidding me. We're paying you money to teach that to our kids and our students that we're sending off to school there." I don't think so. And so there was a battle for the Southern Baptist Convention. And if you were on the traditional side of things, you said, "We are the conservatives versus the liberals." If you were on the other side of things, you said, "We are the progressives versus the fundamentalists." And they duked it out, and they battled. And people like you went and slept in their cars at Southern Baptist Convention annual meetings to vote for who would be the president of the Southern Baptist Convention. We don't care about that anymore today. We just pick one, and it's great. But at one point in time, that was a big deal because whoever the president was got to pick, who taught at the seminaries, and who sat on the boards, and who made all these decisions. Eventually the conservatives, or if you want to think of them differently, the fundamentalists won. Now, why am I bringing all of this up? You got this list of mainline Protestant churches, and we went through the numbers. Down, down, down, down, down. What do you think happened in the last 10 years, 2000 to 2010 in those churches? Down, down, down, down, down, down. It did not change. It only sped up. When you give up this, you have guaranteed the end of your movement, of your denomination, of your church, of whatever you want to call it, it's over. It may take a while, you can run on fumes for a long time, especially when you're some of these denominations and you got big bank accounts. Fumes can get you a long ways. But it's over. It is all over. There's lots of things that can cause a church to decline. Population movements, the economy, new church plants. Church is declined for lots of different reasons. Giving up this book will guarantee that you're going down sooner or later, and probably sooner rather than later. All of this plays into the book of Ezra and what you read about Ezra in his ministry, his job, his God-given task in the history of Israel. I'm going to put up on the screen the history of Israel. It's been a couple of weeks since we've talked about the Old Testament. This is just a short summary to help you wrap your brain around the history of Israel in just a few simple words. The conquest of the land, Joshua goes in and they fight. Moses dies. He doesn't get to go in. Joshua leads them. They fight for the promised land. God gives them victory. They win it. Then comes the period of judges. We talked about the book of judges and the book of Ruth fall into that second word, their judges. Judges and Ruth in that period of local sort of almost tribal leaders being raised up and God uses them for a time. In truth, be told they're all really spiritual losers on some level. The whole book is kind of creepy and weird. Things aren't exactly like they're supposed to be, but that's judges. Then comes the monarchy. You have the last judge, Samuel, anointing the first king, Saul. We talked about Saul and how he started off great and flamed out. After Saul came David, David started off great and then didn't end so good. Then came Solomon and he started off great and he didn't end so good. You see in a pattern developed here in all of these guys? That's the monarchy. After Solomon dies, his two sons, Rehoboam and Jeroboam split the kingdom. They can't agree. They can't get along. They don't want to submit to each other. So they just split the kingdom. Northern kingdom, Southern kingdom. Then comes rebellion. First Israel completely turns its back on the Lord. Then Judah over time follows and does exactly the same thing. There's a few bright spots in that period of rebellion. There's Uzziah and Jehoshaphat and Hezekiah, but for the most part it's just rebellion against God. Then comes the exile. Both kingdoms get kicked out of the land. God brought them in and he warned them. If you turn on me, I'm going to kick you out just as quick as I brought you in. They turn on him and he kicks him out. So in 722, Assyria comes and they conquer the northern kingdom. In 586 Babylon comes and they conquer the southern kingdom and God's people are out of the Promised Land. That's a strange thing to think about. All the things God did to bring him in there. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the Exodus, Moses, the wilderness, the conquest, all of it. God finally says, "I'm sick of you. You're out." He kicks him out and they're both exiled into foreign pagan countries. Then comes the return. This is at the very end of the timeline of the Old Testament that God says, "Okay, now I'm going to bring a remnant. I'm going to bring a few of you back into the Promised Land and that's where Ezra takes place during this period of the return." Interesting that when you look at a Jewish scriptures, Jewish, they wouldn't call it the Old Testament, they would just call it the Book of the Law, the Word of God, whatever, they combine Ezra and Nehemiah into one book. It's just one book smashed together. They do that with 1st and 2nd Samuel, they do it 1st and 2nd Kings, Chronicles, they just combine those books. In the year about 400, when Christians sat down in response to heretics, not because they're just pulling this stuff out of thin air, but in response to heretics, they sit down in 400 AD and they say, "Okay, what is the Bible?" These guys are saying it's all kinds of stuff and we don't believe that, so let's make a decision here. They take Samuel and they split it into. They take Kings and they split it into Chronicles 2 and they take Ezra and Nehemiah and they split it into, but here's how the breakdown works in these two books because they really do belong together. When you think about Ezra, you've got to think about Nehemiah and when you think about Nehemiah, you've got to think about Ezra, okay? Ezra begins with a guy named Zerubbabel or Zerubbabel, I don't care how you say it, just say it like you know it's right and everyone will think, "Wow, they're so smart, they know how to say Zerubbabel." I didn't know that's how you said it, I thought it was Zerubbabel. You'll just think you're a genius, so Zerubbabel in the year 538 BC, he comes back and his job is to build the temple. You go back, you take a bunch of people with you, right? This is the return in the history of Israel and you rebuild the temple. It got flattened, Nebuchadnezzar flattened it, the Babylonians flattened it, they carried off the ark and the vessels and the gold and all of it and they send this guy back to rebuild the temple, 538. When he goes back, they work on it for a while, well we'll get to that in a minute, we'll get to that in a minute. So that's first part of Ezra. Second part of Ezra is actually about Ezra and he goes back in 458 and his job will read in a minute is to teach the law. You go back and you teach the people the law. And then there's Nehemiah, Nehemiah and 444 and his job is to go back and to rebuild the wall around Jerusalem. So those two books go together. Those are the two books that actually describe God's people coming back. Now let me give you the outline just of Ezra and I put a few extra things in here, a few things that I normally don't put in just because this is part of the Bible that is not in order. If you just read from Genesis to Malachi, you're going to go out of order about this point. And so this can kind of put some of the pieces together. Ezra 1 to 6 is a story of Cyrus, "Sending's rubable to build the temple." And how it works is they go and they start and everything's going good. And then there's some opposition to their work. Some people try to stop them from finishing the temple and they just pretty much roll over and play dead and quit. It's not done. They did not do what God sent them to do and they just give up. And there's a guy named Hagai, you may have heard of him, he wrote a book in the Old Testament. There's a guy named Zechariah, you may have heard of him, he wrote a book in the Old Testament that are sent to the rubable and to the people to basically say, "What are you doing? God sent you to build the temple. Finish it. Get the thing done." And so they listen to these prophets, they build the temple. Then there's a break in the storyline. You won't read that in the Bible. It's not a little italicized note between chapter 6 and 7, but there's a 50-year break. And in that window, that's the story of Esther. It fits right in that window. So if you like to make notes in your Bible, you can go right between the end of 6, beginning of 7, and you can just say, "Book of Esther." It goes right here. Ezra 7 to 8, "Artiserxes, the son of Xerxes sends Ezra back to teach the law." We just talked about that. And then Ezra 9 and 10, the end of the book, Ezra prays for the people. He teaches God's Word. And this leads to a revival. And that sort of is the transition to what we talked about at the beginning. When you think about revival, you think about growing churches, you think about denominations that are growing or that are not growing. This is what Ezra did, okay? He prayed. He taught the Bible, and then there was a revival. He didn't worry about marketing. It was not on his to-do list. He didn't worry about fitting in with Babylonian culture. I don't care about that. It's not my job. He didn't worry about, "Should we sing the old songs David wrote, or should we sing the new songs that the new guys have written?" I don't know. What's going to get people? He didn't worry about that. He said, "My job is to teach the Word, to pray, to lead you in doing that with me." And God blessed that and sent revival. So, three simple lessons I want you to see from this book. Book of Ezra. Number one is this. God is sovereign over the events of history. He's sovereign over the events of history. You can look back at the stuff I just shared with you about Ezra and Nehemiah and the outline of the book, and you keep all that in the back of your mind. And I want you to look at Isaiah chapter 44. Isaiah 44. I told you that when Zerubbabel was sent back to build the temple, and they didn't finish it, that God sent prophets. He sent Hagai. He sent Zechariah. And those guys fall in that part of the story. Isaiah is way before that. Isaiah is preaching and prophesying and teaching the people before the exile. You put that in your brain. You go back and you look at the history of Israel and you say, "Okay, Isaiah, he's before the return, before the exile. He's during this period of rebellion when God's people are in all out sin and he's going and he's telling the other people to repent and he's giving them the consequences. Isaiah 44, you're looking at verse 24, you just keep in your brain. This is 150 years, 150 years before the people come back from exile. They had not even been in exile. They have not been conquered. It's 150 years before God brings them back was Zerubbabel. Verse 24, Isaiah 44, "Thus says the Lord your Redeemer who formed you from the womb. I am the Lord who made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself, who frustrates the signs of liars and makes fools of diviners, who turns wise men back and makes their knowledge foolish, who confirms the word of his servant and fulfills the counsel of his messengers, who says of Jerusalem, she shall be inhabited. And of the cities of Judah, they shall be built and I will raise up their ruins." Time out. And the people who are listening to Isaiah and they say, "Wait a minute, wait a minute. This is a prophecy." And the prophecy says that Jerusalem will be built and that the ruins of the cities of Judah will be established. And they look around and they say, "They look pretty solid to me." What do you mean the city is going to be rebuilt? It's built. How do you rebuild something that's been built? They have no category for what Isaiah is actually saying. They haven't gone into exile yet. Verse 27, "He says to the deep be dry, I will dry up your rivers. He says of Cyrus. He is my shepherd and he shall fulfill all my purpose, saying of Jerusalem, she shall be built and of the temple your foundation shall be laid." Thus says the Lord to his anointed to Cyrus, whose right hand I have grasped to subdue nations before him and to loose the belts of kings, to open doors before him that gates may not be closed. I will go before you and level the exalted places. I will break in pieces the doors of bronze and cut through the bars of iron. I will give you the treasures of darkness and the hoards and secret places that you may know that it is I the Lord the God of Israel who call you. He's still talking to Cyrus. It's me, the God of Israel who calls you by your name. For the sake of my servant Jacob and Israel my chosen, I call you by your name. I name you, though you don't know me. Of course he doesn't know him. It's 150 years before he's been born. You don't know me, but I know you and I'm naming you. He says, "I am the Lord and there is no other. Beside me there is no God. I equip you, though you do not know me, that people may know from the rising of the sun and from the west that there is none beside me. I am the Lord. There is no other. I form light and create darkness. I make well-being and create calamity. I am the Lord who does all these things. I do all of it. What does it mean that God is sovereign? It means he does whatever he wants to do whenever he wants to do it and he does not ask anyone's advice or permission. He is in complete and total control of all things. And you look at Isaiah 44 and 45 and you say, "Are you telling me that he named Cyrus by name, the king of Persia, when Persia wasn't even a world power, 150 years before he was born, and he said, "You're going to be the one who sends the people back and rebuilds the city and rebuilds the temple." God predicted all of this through Isaiah. Showed you that list of mainline churches, okay? A lot of the scholars in those denominations would look at Isaiah 44 and Isaiah 45 and they say, "It's impossible. It's impossible." If he named him, if he really has the name Cyrus in the text, it's proof that Isaiah really didn't write this. Somebody else wrote it after Cyrus sent them back and then they just signed Isaiah's name at the bottom of the paper. It's not a prophecy. It's a description of what God had already done through Cyrus. It is not miraculous prophecy. That's what people say today, almost 2,500 years removed from it. You know what historians thought 2,000 years ago? There's a Jewish historian named Josephus who is incredibly accurate in describing world events. Josephus says, "I have it on good authority that when the Jews were in exile and Cyrus came to power, they took the book of Isaiah to him and they showed him chapter 44 and 45. And they said, we wrote this down. Isaiah wrote this down 150 years ago. You're in it. We've been waiting on you. God knew you were coming and God has something for you to do." And Cyrus was so impressed with it. He said, "Go back. Zerubbabel, go back and build the temple. This God is awesome." He was talking about me. He knew, you think about a pagan king, he said, "This God knew that I was going to be a big deal 150 years ago. By all means, go back, rebuild his temple. I'll even pay for it." Zerubbabel, you go back. So you can take the side and you can say, "No, it's just silliness. Somebody wrote this after the fact. It's not prophecy." Or you can just take the Bible at its face value and you're going to listen to a historian who was much closer to the events than we were. And you can say, "This is amazing. If God really did that, He is completely and totally sovereign over all things. He knows the beginning from the end. He has power to do whatever He wants to do." That's lesson one. Lesson two. True revival comes from preaching Scripture. From preaching Scripture. Look at Ezra chapter seven verse ten. This is one of those verses. You've been asked what your favorite Bible verse is. I hate that question. Don't ask me that question. I don't like to answer that question. That's a really hard question. But sometimes if I really get pressed, this might be a verse that I'll mention. Okay, you need my favorite? I'll go with Ezra seven ten. Says this, "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. Three things he committed himself to do and the order matters. First, I'm going to study. Second, I'm going to do it. Third, I'm going to teach it." That's a pretty good life plan if you need one. Beginning in 2015, if you're needing a New Year's resolution, you need in some direction, it doesn't get a lot better than that. I'm going to study the law of God. I'm going to do it, it says, and I'm going to teach it. Okay? That was his game plan when he went back with the Exiles. I am going back to teach the Word of God. We'll talk more about that in a minute. I just want you to see that was his plan. I also want you to understand that every great revival ever, every true revival in the history of the church came when people preached the Word of God boldly and unapologetically and clearly where people could understand it. Go to the book of Acts. Okay? That's Peter. Trust me. Looks just like him. Look at Peter, look at Paul. They just walked around and talked about the Bible. When people believed, they put them into a church and they went to the next town. And you just read the stories. God is adding daily to their number, those who are being saved. 3,000 join on this day, 4,000 join on this day. It's like, what did they do? What's the secret? They just preached the Bible. You go forward and you look at the Protestant Reformation. You look at Martin Luther. What did he do? He said, you know what? You guys are saying everything in Latin and nobody speaks Latin. They have no idea what you're talking about. Why don't we preach to them where they can understand it? Wycliffe and Huss and Calvin and Luther and Zwingli and Busser and all these guys. All they did is just preach and teach and proclaim the Bible where people could understand it. In their own language with boldness, with confidence, without a bunch of tradition getting mixed in, they just said, let's talk about the Bible. Amazing. What happens? Protestant Reformation. What about the Great Awakening in the United States of America? We talked a couple of weeks ago about some of the preachers in the Great Awakening and some of the things that they did and accomplished. These guys, all they did is go out and preach. They just went out and talked about the Bible. They got in trouble because they did it not in church buildings. It was scandalous that George Whitfield would have the nerve to preach from the steps of the courthouse in the city of Philadelphia and he wouldn't go into the church to preach. Whitfield said, all the people can't get in the church. I can talk to 30,000 people out here. I can talk to 400 in there. Are you kidding me? I'm just going to preach the word. Forget your traditions. I'm just going to preach the word. Southern Baptists. Something happened in the year 2008. Think about this. Southern Baptist Convention founded in 1845. In 2008, something happened in the Southern Baptist Convention that had not happened ever in the history of the Southern Baptist Convention. Guess what it was? Total number of Southern Baptists declined in a one-year period, 2008. The first time since 1845 that the total number of Southern Baptists in the United States of America declined. There are a lot of people who have theories about why that happened and what needs to be done. I'm just going to tell you mine and you can take it or leave it. We did a marvelous job as a convention fighting for this book and we won the fight and the other denominations that lost that fight either declined precipitously or they just had to hive off people and start new denominations that have done reasonably well, although they're very, very small. Southern Baptist won that fight. That's a good thing. And then we won the fight for the book and then we just kind of forgot about the book. That's the weirdest thing that's ever happened. We fight tooth and nail for the book and then we get the book and we just almost put it on the shelf. And you can look, the fight in the Southern Baptist convention was over by the mid-80s. It's done. We won if you're of the we, if you're not, you lost. Sorry. 80s, it's over. You start looking at things Southern Baptist right and scholars and church growth experts and all this sort of stuff and you have two veins that just sort of pop up in there and you have one group saying, look, we have grown all these years because of our methods, because we've done things this way. That's why we've been growing and we have to keep doing things this way. You had a group of people say that. You know what the other group of people said? You can't stick with old methods. You got to change. You got to worry about your branding and your marketing and your this and your that and you can't sing those songs. You got to sing this kind of song. They both missed it. They both totally missed it. They gave up the centrality of the book for either tradition that they wouldn't let go of or for novelty that they took a lot of pride in. They both totally missed it and by 2008 you saw the consequences of that. That's my thought. What did Ezra do? He goes back and he does two things in leading a revival. He preaches a word after studying it and doing it. He preaches it and the second thing he does is he prays. That's the last lesson from Ezra. Ezra models a life of faithful prayer. There's not really a lot about Ezra in the book of Ezra. He shows up in chapter 7 and he's there in 7, 8, 9 and 10 and then you move on to Nehemiah. He only gets four chapters, not even half the book in the book that's named after him. But one of the things, in fact, the thing that he does the most in those four chapters is pray and you can look for yourself. I'll let you look at it tonight. Ezra 9, if you want to know how to pray and confess your sin to God, read Ezra 9. That's how you do it. You just do exactly what Ezra did. Just read it the prayer out loud and read it like you mean it and that's confessing sin to God. An amazing prayer of confession. I want you to look at chapter 7 and 8. I want you to look at another prayer that I think is an interesting prayer. When we're in Kentucky, I had a church member named Ron Moore and Ron was one of those guys that you just never could get a feel for. You never could tell. Does this guy like me or does he not like me? I'm not really sure. Does this guy think I'm brilliant or does this guy think I'm an idiot? I have no idea what this guy thinks of me. He's always asking me interesting questions and I don't think that his intention was malicious to try to stump me or embarrass me. I think he was just an inquisitive guy and one day he came and he said, "Okay, where in the Bible does it say that you should pray for people who are traveling?" Ron, are you saying we shouldn't pray for people? No, I'm not saying that. I'm not saying. I just want to know and he didn't know. This was not a stump question. It's just a genuine question. Where in the Bible does it say that you pray for people who were traveling? Does anyone do that in the Bible? I honestly just looked at him and said, "I have no idea. I'm just thinking off the top of my head. I'm scared. I'm thinking, did they pray about going into the promise? Did they pray for safe travel into the promise land? They knew they were going to fight. I don't think that counts. Not exactly what we're praying for today. This is, I think, Ezra 7 and 8, I think it's the closest thing you get to a prayer for safe travel and I think it's kind of funny. So we're going to look at it real quick as we finish up. Look at Ezra 7, verse 1, "After this in the reign of Artaxerxes, the king of Persia, Ezra, the son of Sariah, son of Azeriah, son of Hylkiah, son of Shalom, son of Zadduk, son of Ahidub, son of Amoriah, son of Azeriah, son of Marios, son of Zerahiah, son of Uzi, son of Buki, son of Abishua, son of Phineas, son of Eliezer, son of Aaron the chief priest, this Ezra, as if you were confused, now you know, this Ezra went up from Babylon, okay? He was in Babylon. He was in exile. He went up from Babylon. He was a scribe, skilled in the law of Moses that the Lord the God of Israel had given and the king granted him all that he asked for the hand of the Lord his God was on him. And there went up also to Jerusalem in the seventh year of Artaxerxes, the king, some of the people of Israel, some of the priests and the Levites and the singers and the gatekeepers and the temple servants. These are the people who were going with Ezra, okay? Notice who's not mentioned in that list. Nobody guards, no Marines, no army rangers, no centurions. It's a bunch of pastors and peasants in Ezra. Okay? Verse eight, he came to Jerusalem in the fifth month, which was in the seventh year of the king. From the first day of the first month he began to go up from Babylonian. On the first day of the fifth month he came to Jerusalem. For the good hand of his God was on him. Ezra had said his heart to study the law of the Lord and to do it and to teach his statutes and his rules in Israel. That's the summary of what happened. That says Ezra got a bunch of people together. The king gave him his blessing and they went from Babylon up to Jerusalem. The rest of seven and eight tell you how it happened, okay? Spell it out in detail. So you keep reading, starting in verse 11, the king gives him a letter and the letter basically says do whatever Ezra says. Ezra's in charge. I'm giving him a bunch of money and I'm sending these people with him and he's supposed to go back and teach and if Ezra says jump, you say how high. If Ezra says build it, you say how big. You do whatever, whatever Ezra tells you to do, Ezra is in charge. Look at verse 27 in Ezra chapter 7. "Bless 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." You look at verse 27, you just go out in the margin and you remind yourself of that first lesson. God is sovereign over the events of history. Why did all of this happen? Why did they get to go back? Why did they get the letter of the king? Why did they get the bank account of the king? God put it in the king's heart to do this. God's in control of all of this, okay? So they go back. You can read in chapter 8. There's a long list of people, numbers of people, names of people, all the folks going with Ezra. Again, no soldiers mentioned in that list. Jump down and look at Ezra chapter 8 verse 21. Everybody's together. They're in Babylon. They got the money. They're getting ready to go back. Now, think about this. It's an ancient world. You're traveling with a bunch of money and you have no soldiers. Now all you got is me, a bunch of pastors and you got some farmers and you got a bunch of money and you got no soldiers. And Ezra gets ready to leave and he's thinking this may not end very well. What if we meet the bad guys on the way? Well, chapter 8 verse 21 says, "I proclaimed a fast there at the River of Hava that we might humble ourselves before our God to seek from him a safe journey for ourselves, our children, and all our goods." Ezra, why did you proclaim this fast? Verse 22, "I was ashamed, embarrassed, to ask the king for a band of soldiers and horsemen to protect us against the enemy on our way because we had told the king the hand of our God is for good on all who seek him and the power of his wrath is against all who forsaken." In other words, I just really talked God up to the king. I just told the king God can take care of his people and God's going to get his enemies. How can I then go back to the king and say, "Can we have an armed escort?" He's going to say, "Well, just how big is your God? You need my soldiers to go with you." He says, "I was embarrassed." Notice he doesn't say, "I didn't want the soldiers." He just says, "I was embarrassed to go back and ask for protection for the bodyguard." So they do the fast, they humble themselves, they're asking for a safe journey. Verse 23, "We fasted and implored our God for this and he listened to our entreaty." You can keep reading in verse 24, Ezra does something funny. He gets all these priests together and he gets the pile of money and he divvies it up. Why does he divvie it up? He's saying, "If the raiders come and get us, and Lucas goes down, and Lucas has all the money, well, maybe if Tel has a part of the money, we won't lose all the money. And maybe if Tony gets taken out and he's got just a little part of the money, then maybe Thelma, she's pretty fleet of foot. Maybe Thelma can get away and Thelma's got part of the money. But if I give all the money to Mark and Mark gets taken out, we lose everything. Listen, just because you pray about something doesn't mean you don't need to use your brain. God, please give us a safe journey. We don't want to get robbed and beat up and killed and taken for granted along the way. Now here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to trust God to do that, but I'm going to split it all up and we're going to go. We're going to pray, but we're also going to use our brain. He says that God heard their prayer. Look at verse 31. He says, We departed from there from the river Ahava on the 12th day of the first month to go to Jerusalem. The hand of our God was on us, and He delivered us from the hand of the enemy and from ambushes, by the way. When I get to heaven, I would like to find Ezra at some point in time and say, What does that mean? Does that mean it was just easy? And no one tried to ambush you? Does that mean the ambush came and God sent angels to protect you? Does that mean the ambush came and the earth opened up and swallowed those guys whole? What does that mean? He doesn't explain it. He just says, God heard our prayer and He delivered us from the hand of the enemy and from the ambushes, by the way. And you keep reading. And He says, We got to Jerusalem. Everybody emptied their pockets. And, huh, good news. We had all the money. Jimmy decided not to keep a $10 bill in his pocket. We got all the money back. It was all present and accounted for. God blessed us. We used our minds, but we prayed and God was in control of this all the way. So there you go. I like that prayer of Ezra. I think sometimes Christians pray about something and then they're too afraid to just do it. They're just paralyzed. And Ezra said, We're going to pray about it. And then we're going to go. But we're not going to go like fools. We're going to use our minds and we're going to strategize here. And we're going to be wise along the way. So interesting lessons about prayer there. Three things you take away from Ezra. Really, really simple book. God is sovereign. God is sovereign. He's sovereign. He is in complete control. We must be people who preach the word. Tradition will not make your church grow. Innovation will not make your church grow. The word of God and prayer, that's what God blesses. Okay. That's what you take away from the book of Ezra. So let's pray. And then we will share some prayer requests. Lord, thank you for this book of the Bible. On the overarching level, we are reminded that you keep your promises to your people. You brought them back. You raised up Cyrus. You provided for them. Father, you are God who always keeps your promises. You promise to send a Messiah and you send Him. You promise to send your Spirit to your people and you send Him. You have promised to send Jesus to return for us and we believe that you will keep that promise. Father, we know that in a church, in the United States and the Bible Belt, that there are all sorts of ideas about what we ought to do and how we ought to do things and why we ought to do things. And Father, forgive us for complicating what really is not very complicated at all. We want to be people, individuals, families, a church as a whole. We want to be people at a manual who are passionate about the word. We want to study it. We want to do it and we want to teach it. We also want to be people of prayer. And we ask that as we think about Ezra's prayer in chapter seven and eight, as we think about how he confessed sin that you would teach us to pray and that we would be people faithful to your word and faithful in prayer. We love you and we pray tonight in Jesus' name. Amen. All right. There's Ezra. Next week.