Sermon Tone Analysis

It is January 6.

How are you doing on your resolutions?

I’m not going to ask you to raise your hands, but are you still on track, or have you already been thrown off?

If this week hasn’t gone well for you, I am not trying to discourage you or point you out.

Change is hard, and I don’t want to downplay that.

However, could we make the case that keeping our resolutions at times is a matter of integrity?

I heard someone recently talking about the fact that they make artificial deadlines for projects so they don’t procrastinate.

He put it in the framework of keeping his word to himself.

If I am honest, I am not always the best at that.

I strive to keep my word to others, but when I promise myself that I am not going to eat like that ever again or that I am going to make it a priority to get up or have the dishes done before bed or whatever it may bed, I find myself breaking those promises to myself more often than I would like to admit.

That’s why I am so glad that the God we serve isn’t like me at all.

In fact, what we will see this morning as we look at God’s Word together is this key truth: God always keeps his word, and often in impossible ways.

We are going to see this as we begin a study through the Old Testament book of Ezra.

Ezra is one that we don’t typically spend a lot of time in, and we are going to have to get a handle on some of the story going on around us.

It is easy to get lost in the names of the kings and empires and genealogies and things, but we are going to draw what lessons we can from each of these unique situations.

As we pull all these threads together, we will see an amazing account of God keeping his word to his people time and time again.

Their first response to God keeping his word is worship, so my prayer through our walk through Ezra is that God will help you learn more about how he works, which will lead you to put a greater emphasis on worshiping him in holiness.

This morning, we are going to attempt to tackle the first two chapters.

It isn’t as daunting as it seems, because you may notice a long list of names in chapter 2. We won’t cover each of those names this morning, although they are important for various reasons.

However, our main point this morning is to see that God keeps his word, and often in impossible ways.

We are going to see that this morning in three different ways God moved when he was bringing his people back to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple.

Before you say this is ancient history and tune out, let me remind you that the way God worked in the past teaches us about how he is working now.

In fact, I read this quote recently:

“What God has done in the past is a model and a promise of what he will continue to do in the future, although he is too creative to do the same thing the same way twice.”

(James Allman)

Our goal in looking at Ezra is to see that model, rest in his promise, and look forward to what God is going to do.

Let’s set the stage:

Way back in the book of Genesis, God called a man named Abraham to himself.

Abraham’s descendants were going to be God’s special people on earth, and so God moved Abraham to a special area that would one day belong to his descendants.

Generations later, a famine forced Abraham’s family to move down to Egypt, where they would stay for over 400 years.

God led them back to the Promised Land under a man named Moses in something we refer to as “the Exodus”.

In the course of time, they took possession of the land God promised and set up Jerusalem as their capital.

God eventually told them to build a temple to him in Jerusalem, so the city of Jerusalem was the political and spiritual center for the nation of Israel.

However, during all this time, the Israelites kept turning their backs on God and worshiping other Gods.

Eventually, God allowed the Babylonians to destroy Jerusalem, obliterate the temple, and carry the people off to captivity in Babylon.

Before he did, though, God made promises through several prophets that one day, he would bring his people back to Jerusalem to worship him:

As we open the book of Ezra, it has now been 70 years since they were carried into captivity.

The Babylonian Empire has been overthrown, and now a new king, Cyrus of Persia, has come to power.

God is about to keep his word, bringing his people back, and they are going to begin the process of rebuilding the temple and reestablishing the worship God called them to.

As we see how God does this, I want you to think of what God has promised to do in your life.

In case you don’t really know what God has promised, look in your bulletin for the list of Promise to the Believer.

This is a list of 41 promises God has made to those who follow Christ.

Notice that a Rolls Royce, perfect health, and a high-powered job are not on that list anywhere.

Those aren’t the things God has promised us.

In fact, his promises to us are much, much greater than that.

When you look at that list, though, there may be some things you read and go, “Yeah, right.”

When those seem like impossible promises, I want you to think back to Ezra.

Look at what God did when he brought them back to himself, and know that he keeps his word.

The first impossible thing God did in bringing back his people was...

1) God can change the hearts of kings.

Read with me.

The nation had been carried off to captivity.

When that happened, the victor would destroy everything they could that symbolized your nation because they wanted to absorb you into their culture.

That way, you wouldn’t be able to get people together for a revolt.

God allowed the Babylonians to completely and utterly destroy Jerusalem in a horrific fashion.

In those days, your god wasn’t just something you did.

If my army beat your army, that meant my god was better than your god.

One of the first things I would do is defile your temple to prove just how powerless your god actually was.

That’s what happened when Jerusalem was destroyed.

2 chronicles 36:17-

Here we are, 70 years later, and what does King Cyrus decide should happen?

That the God of Israel should have a temple again!

He allows anyone who wants to move back to Jerusalem do so, and as we will talk about more later, he tells them to take all the money they need!

Why in the world would a pagan king do that?

Because of what we saw in verse 1 - “the Lord roused the spirit of King Cyrus...”

Because even kings of powerful empires are subject to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, who as we saw last week, is the Maker of heaven and earth!

I will be honest with you: I absolutely hate politics.

I find myself reading news articles as if I was watching a train wreck: you hate to see it, but you can’t look away out of some morbid curiosity.

Did you know, though, that not a single mayor, governor, delegate, representative, senator, judge, president, or king can stop God from keeping his word?

Here’s how the prophet Isaiah described God’s relationship to rulers on earth:

All God has to do is blow on any ruler in the world and they melt like a snowflake.

isaiah 40:23-34

That’s why Solomon could write:

Isn’t that what he did here to Cyrus?

God stirred his heart, and the next thing you know, he is issuing a royal edict that God’s temple be rebuilt.

He stirred his heart, and the next thing you know, he is issuing a royal edict that God’s temple be rebuilt.

Want to kick this up a notch?

Not only did God stir up Cyrus to rebuild the temple, he knew it would happen years before.

Okay, so Isaiah said that Cyrus would be the one to issue the decree.

Great.

What’s the big deal?

The big deal is that Isaiah said that 150 years before Cyrus would be born and come to power.

God told Isaiah that he would stir Cyrus’ heart a century and a half before it happened!

Can you tr

Can you trust, then, that this same God can keep his word in your life?

That no human power can stop him.

In fact, God can move in surprising ways to use people you would never expect to carry out his plan.

We see that in the next section as well when we see that...

2) God can move in the hearts of his people.

Read .

Notice anything interesting here?

It doesn’t say that all of God’s people, or everyone who had been carried off in captivity to Babylon prepared to go.

Instead, it says specifically that it was “everyone whose spirit God had roused...”

That’s the exact same wording we saw in verse 1 with Cyrus, isn’t it?

When it came time for God to send people back to the land, he didn’t send everyone.

We can’t know for sure why, but I would imagine that it was because of the difficulty ahead of them.

The city and temple had been destroyed, and it would be a huge task to rebuild it.

It would take a unique group of people.

Not only that, but it has been 70 years!

Think about your own family.