Turn to the book of Ezra. We will read Ezra 1, beginning at verse 1.
Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying:
Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia, All the kingdoms of the earth hath the Lord, the God of heaven, given me; and He hath charged me to build Him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah.
Whosoever there is among you of all His people, his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the house of the Lord, the God of Israel—He is God—which is in Jerusalem.
And whosoever is left in any place where he sojourneth, let the men of his place help him with silver, and with gold, and with goods, and with beasts, beside the freewill offering for the house of God which is in Jerusalem.
Then rose up the heads of fathers’ houses of Judah and Benjamin, and the priests and the Levites, even all whose spirit God had stirred to go up to build the house of the Lord which is in Jerusalem.
And all they that were round about them strengthened their hands with vessels of silver, with gold, with goods, and with beasts, and with precious things, beside all that was willingly offered.
Also Cyrus the king brought forth the vessels of the house of the Lord, which Nebuchadnezzar had brought forth out of Jerusalem, and had put in the house of his gods.
Even those did Cyrus king of Persia bring forth by the hand of Mithredath the treasurer, and numbered them unto Sheshbazzar, the prince of Judah.
And this is the number of them: thirty platters of gold, a thousand platters of silver, nine and twenty knives, thirty bowls of gold, silver bowls of a second sort four hundred and ten, and other vessels a thousand.
All the vessels of gold and of silver were five thousand and four hundred. All these did Sheshbazzar bring up, when they of the captivity were brought up from Babylon unto Jerusalem.
Some months ago, I spoke to you on the book of Chronicles, because it so happened that Hob and I were working on that book and getting it ready for the Bible course. Now we have been seeking, in this last day or two, to do the same with Ezra and Nehemiah.
Whilst we may not have got too far, there are, I believe, some very real lessons which it would be very good for us to refresh our hearts and minds over. For some, of course, it will be just refreshing; for others, it will be totally new.
So, without any further ado, I will turn to Ezra and Nehemiah and seek to take some of the lessons which I believe are permanent lessons for the people of God.
First of all, we ought to say this: Chronicles is quite remarkable as a book. Of course, there are the two books of Chronicles, but as a work it is quite remarkable. It comes into that category in the Bible, with one or two other books, of going over what we already have.
For instance, Deuteronomy, the fifth book of the Old Testament, does not in many ways add anything new. It goes over the history of the people of God which we already have in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. But it reinterprets that history and, as it were, puts its finger—or shall we say, the Holy Spirit puts His finger—upon that which is the point of all God’s dealings with His people.
In the New Testament, we have another such Gospel. We have four Gospels, but the Gospel according to John is quite unique. It goes over what the other three have already told us, but John’s Gospel is not what we call a synoptic Gospel. It is not just a record of the facts of our Lord’s birth, ministry, and resurrection; it is an interpretation.
Chronicles is remarkable again because, like Deuteronomy and the Gospel according to John, Chronicles goes over the whole of history which we already have from Genesis to 2 Kings. When we have gone right through the books from Genesis to 2 Kings, we come to Chronicles; and Chronicles goes right back over the whole, right back to Adam, tracing the whole history again—at first very rapidly, and then much more slowly.
We might well question why. What is the need for all this? We have already done it in 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, and 2 Kings. But whereas 1 Kings and 2 Kings deal principally with the king and the kingdom—the throne, if you like, and the kingdom—Chronicles goes even deeper than that.
It puts its finger, as it were, upon that which is the secret of all God’s dealings with man: the thing that lies behind the creation of the universe, the creation of this planet, and the creation and constitution of man; the thing that lies behind the redeeming love of God—His refusal to give up mankind, His desire to save, redeem, recover, and restore.
Chronicles puts its finger upon that secret, upon the key to it all. We have it elsewhere in the books, of course, but in Chronicles it is on every page. The key is the house of God: the temple of the living God, the eternal dwelling place of God.
When we studied Chronicles, we sought to explain that we are that. It says in Ephesians 2:
Being built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the chief cornerstone; in Whom the whole building, fitly framed together, groweth into a holy temple in the Lord; in Whom ye also are builded together for a habitation of God in the Spirit.
Notice: a holy temple in the Lord, not merely a holy temple of the Lord. That would be correct, but this says something more than that. It groweth into a holy temple in the Lord—in Christ.
We have the same thing in Romans 12:5, where we are told that we are one body in Christ—not one body of Christ, but one body in Christ.
So we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and severally members one of another.
Thus, from the book of Chronicles, in symbolic form, in type, in figure, we see this tremendous subject of the eternal purpose of God—the purpose of the ages—set forth.
We discover that, from the very beginning, God’s desire for mankind was to bring them into such a relationship with Himself that they became one with Him; that they became partakers of His divine nature; that they became recipients of eternal life; that they became, as it were, members of His body and members one of another; that they might become a place of worship in Him.
They might become, as it were, the very core of the universe: the place where the most intimate secrets of God are unveiled; the place where God manifests Himself and His heart through His own; the place from which God speaks and governs and rules.
When we come to the end of the Bible, we have the same thing, only the picture has changed. At the end of the Bible we find a city, produced out of only three materials: gold, precious stone, and pearl. Those are the only three materials you find at the end of the Bible.
Out of those three precious—exceedingly precious—materials, a city has been produced. In the Bible, cities symbolize centres of administration. They are places of government, as opposed to villages and towns. A city has some kind of civic responsibility for a much wider area.
The whole idea here is, again, government. It says that the throne of God and of the Lamb is there, and that His servants shall serve Him.
It is the most wonderful picture, this city. When we suddenly discover that this city is the bride, the wife of the Lamb, our heads begin to reel. The Bible begins to take figure after figure which seem to be the kind of figures you would not normally associate together.
You never speak of your wife as your city. Your wife would be a little taken aback, I should think, if you said, “I’m taking my city along with me.” You just do not speak like that; it is unusual.
The whole point is that, of course, it is unusual, because this whole matter is quite singular. God is not only wanting a place of government, a place from which He rules and manifests His glory; He wants something on the most intimate level that it is possible to have.
This city is not some great impersonal governmental machinery. This city is an expression and manifestation of love and union in the deepest and most marvellous way. These people have become part of the Lamb, and these people have become one. They are in Him, and He is in them.
From henceforth they share one name, one life, one home, and everything. They have become heirs of God, joint-heirs with Christ.
All this, believe it or believe it not, is found in the book of Chronicles. You might say, “What on earth is he talking about Chronicles for? We started off by saying we were talking about Ezra and Nehemiah, and now we have spent the first seven or eight minutes talking about Chronicles.”
Of course, we have talked about Chronicles because, in the Jewish arrangement of Scripture, Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah are looked upon as one single work.
Although they were split, Ezra and Nehemiah were in fact one book, called Ezra-Nehemiah. It was split away from Chronicles and put in front of Chronicles, so that Chronicles became the last word of God in the Bible. It was as if God was saying, “Now get this absolutely clear. Here is the end of this whole unveiling of Myself in the Old Testament.”
It becomes even clearer when you understand that Ezra and Nehemiah deal with the same theme as Chronicles: the house of God, the temple of the living God, His eternal dwelling place—you and I in Him.
Ezra and Nehemiah go further in this sense: they speak of the recovery of that which has been lost. This whole purpose of God for His people has somehow been compromised, and its glorious nature has somehow been overcome by evil.
The people had gone into captivity under the judgment of God. This house, which stood as a house of prayer for all nations, from which God was to send forth the light of His truth to the ends of the earth, had been razed to the ground by Nebuchadnezzar. The holy vessels in it, all symbolizing some aspect of the ministry of Christ, had been taken away into captivity in Babylon.
Ezra and Nehemiah have as their theme the house of God, but with this additional note: the recovery of the house of God. In Ezra and Nehemiah, you have the whole matter of recovery.
The matter of recovery most obviously comes nearly always toward the end of a dispensation. That is its value to you and me. We believers are not living at the beginning of the dispensation of this age, nor are we living in the midst of it. We are living surely toward the end, if not at the very end.
We are at the end of this age, just as Ezra and Nehemiah were toward the end of the Old Testament dispensation. Something had been lost—something of eternal value, something of exceeding preciousness to God. It had been compromised, overcome by evil, dispersed, broken up, and had almost gone into oblivion.
Now, from the throne of God, God releases power to recover that thing which has been lost and to bring it back into operation, back into practice.
Let me put it another way. God puts Chronicles at the end for this simple reason: in Chronicles you have the setting forth of the eternal purpose of God; in Ezra and Nehemiah you have the recovery of it. God’s last word in the Old Testament, in the Jewish arrangement, was His real thought; the recovery of it comes a little earlier.
What we are saying is this: God loses nothing at all. He loses absolutely nothing. Satan only gains the chaff.
We have in Ezra and Nehemiah perhaps the most wonderful thing of all: everything which has been terribly lost by man’s failure and disobedience is to be recovered with deeper character.
Whenever God acts to recover something, He does not ever just recover it. May this be a comfort to anyone who has fallen away from the Lord and been brought back.
You may feel that your life is forever marred because you have fallen away and spent years which, putting it in biblical language, the locust has eaten. But let me tell you this: when God brings back, He always brings back with something deeper than you ever had before.
Maybe much of your life has been wasted, but when you come back to God, you will come back with a character—a spiritual character—and a firmness, a resolution, that you never had in the beginning.
You will never fall away again in the same way that you fell the first time. You have learnt your lesson. You have learnt deep lessons about the character of God and, perhaps very importantly, about yourself.
One of the great things about Ezra and Nehemiah is that God never loses anything. Satan only gains the chaff. God gets all the value. He always keeps the real value.
In these two books, the character of God is manifested in a way which I find very, very wonderful. You might think that God—and most of us do—it is the most extraordinary thing that most believers always start off with a negative picture of God.
They think of God somehow or other in dark colours, always. I do not know why that is. For instance, we always think that God will judge everybody on the negative side rather than the positive.
Whereas God says, “Let me take one instance. If one person in a family is a believer, I will treat the whole family as if they are believers.” We tend to think that if there is only one member of the family who is a believer, God will curse the whole family and that believer will suffer. Scripture never says that. One person is a believer, and the children are sanctified.
God is always positive. He said to Abraham, “If there are in that city of Sodom ten righteous people, I will not judge the city.” There may be ten thousand unrighteous people, but if there are ten righteous, “I will not judge it,” said the Lord.
It would be interesting to know what would have happened if Abraham had gone on in his bargaining down to five. We do not know, but Abraham stopped at that point.
The fact of the matter is that in Ezra and Nehemiah it is the character of God, the positive character of God, which is so marvellously manifested. God never rejects anything if it is possible to save it, reconstitute it, or restore it.
Let this be a comfort to all of us. God is not a kind of angry, irritable, short-tempered, dark, authoritarian creature who somehow or other stomps around breathing out fire and fury.
This is the idea that so many people have of God. It lies at the root of much of our spiritual neurosis too. If there is any possibility of saving, reconstituting, or restoring, God will not judge.
Sometimes, may I say this, God will judge in order to reconstitute. That is why 1 Corinthians 11 says that if we are judged, it is that we may not be judged with this world.
Therefore, God will go so far as to take a person’s physical life in order to save their spirit. That is what 1 Corinthians 11 says. God will go so far as to make sure that you do not lose your citizenship in the city.
This is a principle we find with mankind in general. God will never judge anyone if there is any possibility of saving them. God will follow them. He will speak to them right up to their last moment.
I think of people saved on their deathbeds. Right at the last moment, God will speak to some people and arrange things so that, at the very end of their lives, they are surrounded with believers.
I remember years ago a man in Richmond Hospital. I went to see an old Welsh brother who, for one month, lay there unconscious, unseeing, and unknowing. Yet we went every day, because I learnt a great lesson from that man.
As we used to read the Psalms, he began to repeat them. I discovered that although he was supposed to be a cabbage, his spirit was alive. When we prayed, he said “Amen” in the right place. Yet he could not recognize his daughter or any friends. Even when they spoke to him in Welsh, he did not answer.
But when we read him the Scripture, he followed. Here is the interesting thing: he did not follow afterwards; he went with us. Only I was reading from the Standard Version, and he was quoting from the Authorized Version.
I remember there was a man in a bed a little way away who called me over on the first or second day and said, “That man speaks all night in Welsh. Could someone come and speak to him in Welsh?”
“Yes,” I said, “I will try to get someone.” So Lewis went down and spoke to him in Welsh, but it had no effect. Then this other man said to me, “I would like a Bible.”
This man was an able merchant naval captain. Some of you will remember how we prayed for him. He said, “I do not want any preaching. Do not preach at me, please. I would like a Bible.”
We got him a Bible. Gradually, day by day, his story came out: how his father and mother had been believers; how he had wandered away and rejected everything; how he had led his own life, a quite profligate life in one way or another; how he had married and had three or four children; and finally how he had been struck down with leukemia.
In his last days, through a man who was unconscious and was a believer, through visiting him, he was surrounded by Christians and found the Lord. I remember his last words: how he thanked God for leukemia, that it had humbled what he called such a proud man and brought him into the place where he found his Lord.
You may argue, “Why does God do that? That man’s life is wasted. He was such a proud man. He did not accept anything. Why did God finally do it?” Well, it just shows you: God will reject nothing if there is the faintest possibility of restoring, saving, or reconstituting.
That is true whether it is mankind in general or Israel in particular. God does not just throw overboard Israel, even though she has gone into Babylon. His whole plan was that Israel should be purged in Babylon and brought back.
Even now, when the Jewish people have been dispersed to the ends of the earth, He has not given them up. In the end, we shall see the final great miracle of their reconstitution into the elect people of God—their restoration.
We come here in Ezra and Nehemiah to a wonderful revelation of the character of God. If it is true of mankind in general and true of Israel in particular, it is certainly true of the Church of God, and it must be true of you.
God does not throw us overboard because of difficulties or problems. God knew all about the difficulties and problems when He saved us. If it is possible to reconstitute or restore, He will not finally reject.
Another wonderful thing we learn is the sovereignty of God. Here, of course, some people have got to get their ideas a little readjusted. It is sometimes very hard for us to understand how God can use the most extraordinary people to do His will.
But as C. T. Studd said, “God uses the devil most of all.” The devil, in the final reckoning, will have been found to have been used more by God to do His will than any other created being. That is the paradox of it all.
Here in Ezra and Nehemiah, we find that God uses Cyrus, Darius, and Artaxerxes—these Persian kings who are quite without God. They had some ideas; today we would call them totally unsaved. They may have been religious in the sense that they had some idea of the unity of the Godhead, but we would call them unsaved men.
Yet God uses these very men. In Ezra He says that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished, and that the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom.
God uses such people. We find the sovereignty of God, and God is doing exactly the same today in His recovery. Something has been lost—something that God first had in His heart for His people.
Whereas we are now clear about salvation, new birth, and perhaps a number of other things, we are certainly not too clear about the Church. That is true of this company.
Many of us do not really understand what the Church is. We could easily use this place just as a chapel, or mission, or something. We do not understand properly. Just in the New Testament, the vast majority of people who were saved did not really understand what the Church was.
They rejoiced to be in the family of God. They rejoiced to be in the body of Christ. They rejoiced to be in the Church, but they did not see what it was. That is why, within a century, the thing had gone off the rails and become institutionalized and systematized.
So it can be so easily with us. What God does at the very beginning very quickly, within the next generation, becomes systematized, institutionalized, and organized.
Yet the wonderful thing is that God uses the most remarkable things to get His way. Sometimes it is economic things. There would have been no Reformation if God had not used economic factors. If God had not used the growing nationalism in different parts of the Holy Roman Empire, there would have been no Reformation.
But God was behind it all, and He used it all in order to establish, once and for all, justification by faith. It became a byword and, in the end, passed into the language of the household of faith in a way that will never be lost again.
From Martin Luther’s day to this day, justification by faith has not been lost to the true believer. In exactly the same way, we could speak about the Wesleyan movement and its tremendous emphasis on new birth. It has never been lost.
New birth, which was so extraordinary even to the Puritans—their accent was upon justification, not so much upon new birth—has passed into the language of the household of faith and will never be taken away from us. We all know what it is to be born again. We would say, “If you do not know what it is to be born again, you cannot be a true believer.”
There are other things which have been recovered that have become part of the language of the household of faith. They are never lost again. That is what I am talking about in Ezra and Nehemiah. What God recovers, He recovers with deeper character. It is never lost again.
If much was lost in the succeeding centuries of the first Church, the early Church, when God started His great recovery movement, every single stage in that recovery has been a recovery which has not been lost. Essentially, it is with us to this day.
God uses the most remarkable people and factors to get His way. I believe that in this day He is using communism. He is using the World Council of Churches. He has used, very greatly, the Second Vatican Council.
That frightens the Lord’s people more than anything else. The combination of the World Council of Churches and the Second Vatican Council frightened the people of God into thinking. Everywhere, they had to think, think, think, and think again.
What is the Church? What is the unity of the believers? Wherein does our unity lie? It became the theme of a thousand conferences. Many books had to be written on it. What before was despised and looked upon as some secondary, unnecessary subject has now been brought right to the fore.
How has God done it? By using the most extraordinary factors and people to push His people into a new place.
That is certainly what we have in Ezra and Nehemiah. If it is any comfort to us, the great message of this twofold book is that the ultimate word belongs to God.
May that be a comfort to you. If you have seen something, it will be a comfort to you. If you have not, it will not. You will see no point in talking about the ultimate word belonging to God.
But if you have seen something as to the purpose of God, and you are conscious of the onslaught upon that purpose and the whole confrontation of evil, then it must be a tremendous comfort to you that the ultimate word belongs to God.
God says He is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. This is true not only of His purpose—for the purpose of God begins with God, is developed through God, and ends with God—but of its very outworking in practical terms.
Every single stage of it must begin with God, must come through God, and must be unto God. If that is true of the outworking of His purpose in our lives personally, it must certainly be true of any recovery.
God must always be the Alpha and Omega of any move for recovery. That is why sometimes you find people who get their ideas worked out up here and start little companies and groups which become so bound and so inhibited. They have soundness and some light, but they are absolutely bound, as in a straitjacket.
God has got to be the beginning and the end. He certainly was with Ezra and Nehemiah. It was the Lord who stirred up the spirit of Cyrus. He began it all.
It was the Lord who saw that Daniel was in the king’s palace. It was the Lord who enabled Daniel to be uncompromising. It was the Lord who gave Daniel the interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, so that he rose step by step to a position of tremendous influence and power.
It was the Lord who gave Daniel the word for the last reigning king of Babylon, and overnight it came true. Daniel was in charge of the government when the Persians arrived, and they had to deal with Daniel. Rather than destroy him, Daniel became a great friend of the Persians.
They not only kept him in power; he became even more important. In the end, he became one of the three, the council of three, and finally the president over all the council, second only to the emperor himself.
It was the Lord. He was the Alpha and Omega. It was the Lord who was the Alpha and Omega of Daniel’s prayer ministry. He prayed three times a day that the people would go back, and he prayed year in and year out.
In spite of a lion’s den and a few other difficulties, he came right through the whole thing and lived to see the people of God go back to Jerusalem. He did not go back with them. That is the interesting thing.
He lived for at least two more years after they had returned, in exile, and as far as we know, he died in exile. But Daniel’s ministry—its Alpha and Omega—was God.
Have you got a prayer ministry? Have you seen something? Has God given you a burden for the people of God, to pray something into being, to see the realization of the purpose of God?
Oh, for an army of intercessors! Oh, for an army of those who know how to travail! Then let me tell you: God must be the Alpha and Omega of your prayer ministry. He must be the beginning and the end, the first and the last.
How comforting it is to know that even when His glorious purpose seems overcome by evil and compromise, God is the Alpha and Omega of recovery, and God will not fail.
There are so many Scriptures one thinks of in this connection. I think of those in the book of Revelation.
I am the Alpha and the Omega, saith the Lord God, Who is and Who was and Who is to come, the Almighty.
—Revelation 1:8
And He said unto me, They are come to pass. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.
—Revelation 21:6
I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.
—Revelation 22:13
Perhaps the most wonderful of all is Revelation 3:14:
These things saith the Amen.
That is the final thing that can be said. God says that His final word is Christ. Jesus is the Amen—Amen—for the whole purpose, desire, and counsel of God.
The devil has not got the Amen. Evil men are not the Amen. Antichrist is not the Amen. An apostate church is not the Amen. Not even a superficial, lukewarm church is the Amen. Jesus is the Amen.
There will be with Him those who overcome and sit down with Him in His throne.
That leads us to another point in this matter: it is a remnant in whom God is gloriously vindicated and who are the means by which God’s purpose is fulfilled.
When you say “Amen,” that is the end. You do not normally begin a prayer with “Amen”; you normally end it with “Amen.” When you say “Amen,” you say, “Even so. Let it be so.”
If you want to be absolutely final about it, as in the Psalms, you say, “Amen and Amen.” That is the end of the matter. That is the final thing that can be said.
God says that His final word is Christ. Jesus is the Amen for the whole purpose, desire, and counsel of God. The devil has not got the Amen. Evil men are not the Amen. Antichrist is not the Amen. An apostate church is not the Amen. Not even a superficial, lukewarm church is the Amen. Jesus is the Amen.
There will be with Him those who overcome and sit down with Him in His throne. It is a remnant in whom God is gloriously vindicated and who are the means by which God’s purpose is fulfilled.
We must not think that because God says, “I am the beginning and the end, I am the Alpha and Omega of everything, and I am absolutely sovereign. I can use any factor and anybody, whether they know it or not, to work out My purpose,” that God would use us, His people, as automatons or some bit of technical and impersonal machinery.
God is not interested in anything like that at all. If you want to stay in exile, God will let you. You will spend the whole of your Christian life happily ensconced in exile.
You will know the Lord, the blessing of the Lord, the life of the Lord, the salvation of the Lord, and the provision of the Lord. It will all be in exile: in the place where the house of God can never be built; in the place where the purpose of God can never be realized; in the place where the Messiah can never be born.
You can stay there right through to the end. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands of the people of God stayed in Babylon, in Persia, and all over the world. They stayed there right through into the coming of the Messiah and beyond the coming of the Messiah.
But the purpose of God could never be fulfilled until there was a little remnant who, through faith and obedience to God, because they had seen something of His purpose, were prepared to sacrifice everything to go back to Jerusalem.
They went back to a place which was in ruins, to a house of God which did not exist, to a land which was depopulated and destroyed, and which had indeed been mixed with other races.
This little remnant that went back—these people are the glorious vindication of God. He points to them as if to say, “These are something that means more to Me than anything else in the whole of this world.”
Because they had, of their own free will, having seen something, made an absolute sacrifice and were prepared, whatever the cost, to go back to the land.
It cost those people everything, but in the end they are the heart of God’s purpose.
I imagine that one day, when we are in the kingdom and we talk with these brothers and sisters in the day of Ezra and Nehemiah—Zerubbabel, Ezra, and Nehemiah—and we say to them, “It cost you everything, and you did not see too much when you died. Looking back now, do you really think it was worth it?”
I am sure every one of them would say, “It was totally worth it—utterly worth it. They got everything they wanted, those who stayed. Had I lost an inheritance? We, by the grace of God alone, have ended up at the heart of God’s eternal purpose.”
“We hardly realized it when we first saw it. We only knew that the Lord wanted this of us. We only knew that it was somehow giving satisfaction to God, that it was something to do with the purpose of God. We dimly saw it.”
“We only dimly saw it, but it cost us everything: all the affliction, suffering, discipline, conflict, and problems that came our way—things we would never have had if we had stayed in Babylon. But forever we have ended up at the heart of God’s purpose.”
Through this one simple act of walking out of Babylon, going back to Jerusalem, and becoming instrumental in our own little way—some of the ladies would probably say, “All I ever did was cook meals, bring up children, and somehow support the menfolk who built this and that and the other”—yet they have ended up in the bride of the Lord.
Think of that. It was worth it. “I ended up, by the grace of God alone, right at the heart of God’s purpose.”
Some of those men may have only put a few stones into position. They may have thought, “What was I? There was that marvellous man Ezra, preaching every day to thousands and doing this and that. There was this head of a father’s house, that head of a father’s house, this prince and that prince, this priest and that priest. But I only hewed a few stones and put them together.”
“I did the work as well as I could. But do you know that, by the grace of God alone, I have ended up in the city? My little bit of work—I did it unto the Lord, I have to say that—but I thought I was so insignificant. I ended up at the heart of God’s purpose forever.”
Was it not worth it?
Now, if we take a look at this book, I am only going to underline two further things and leave it. We have three returns in Ezra and Nehemiah.
The return of the people of God to Jerusalem was in three returns. Strangely enough, something we had not recognized before was that it was over a century—over one hundred years—that this return took place.
God slowly recovered everything, beginning first with taking the ground at Jerusalem, setting up the altar, restoring the foundation, and building the house. Then came the reinstitution of the law in the second return. Finally, in the third return, under Nehemiah, came the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem.
Over one hundred years God worked relentlessly to bring about a full recovery of every single thing that was lost, only with deeper character in the end.
In the first return, we will only touch on it this evening, there are two things that I think all of us need to understand. The first is this: in recovery, recovery is a question of ground.
We read Cyrus’s decree in Ezra 1:1-4. The remarkable thing, as I have already pointed out, is that Cyrus is God’s instrument. Listen to what God says about him in Isaiah 44:28.
Did you ever know that this heathen man was actually prophesied by name one hundred or two hundred years before he even appeared on the scene?
That saith of Cyrus, He is My shepherd, and shall perform all My pleasure; even saying of Jerusalem, She shall be built; and of the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid.
Thus saith the Lord to His anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the loins of kings; to open the doors before him, and the gates shall not be shut:
I will go before thee, and make the rough places smooth; I will break in pieces the doors of brass, and cut in sunder the bars of iron.
—Isaiah 44:28–45:2
What a wonderful thing this is. God is speaking of Cyrus, this unsaved heathen man. God says, “He is My anointed. I have anointed him for this job. He hardly knows what he is doing, but I am doing it through him. I am actually using this man to perform My pleasure.”
Is this not an illustration of Proverbs 21:1?
The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord, as the watercourses:
He turneth it whithersoever He will.
If you think I am being fanciful, turn to Ezra 6:22:
And kept the feast of unleavened bread seven days with joy: for the Lord had made them joyful, and had turned the heart of the king of Assyria unto them, to strengthen their hands in the work of the house of God, the God of Israel.
The Lord had done it. Cyrus’s decree is absolutely marvellous.
I wonder about Daniel’s part in this. We know from Daniel 1:21 that Daniel continued even unto the first year of King Cyrus. If you turn to Daniel 6:28 and Daniel 10:1, you find that it is quite clear that Daniel lived into the reign of Cyrus.
One wonders, from Daniel 6:1-3, where he became the chief president of the whole government of Persia, whether he had some part in the wording of this decree.
It would be very interesting if King Cyrus had said—because kings do not usually word their own decrees; they turn to civil servants and say, “Will you please get the wording of this? This is what I want to say.”—and the chief executive in the civil service was Daniel.
Cyrus may have turned to him and said, “Daniel, do you think you could word something about the house of God in Jerusalem? Go away and do it, will you please? It will be according to the law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not.”
Daniel, with great delight, may have gone away and done it. I do not know; that is speculation, but it is quite possible. From Daniel 6:1-3, we learn that Daniel became not merely first of the council of three, but president of the whole government of Persia, next to the king, the most powerful man in the whole empire.
How wonderful God is, and how wonderful it is to walk in works afore prepared.
You never walk in works afore prepared unless you take a step of faith. Some people have got this idea of God in a fatalistic way: you just do anything, and you find that you are in the will of God. Never.
Sometimes you do not know what are the works afore prepared, and you do not know where you should be, but you take a step of faith. That is why it has been so good in these past two or three years to pray, as we entered each new year, “Lord, see that we are kept in works afore prepared.”
That is an act of faith. Then we go ahead in faith, just trusting the Lord. Then you find you are in works afore prepared. Daniel did that.
Do you not think the devil came to Daniel in his early years and said, “Do not be stupid now. You do not have to be just kosher. Let go of the whole thing. If you are going to influence the king, if you are going to influence the course of things, you have got to be diplomatic.”
“You have got to eat Gentile food. Do not be stupid, Daniel. What would a bit of bacon do to you? What would this or that do to you? Nothing at all, Daniel. Go on.”
I dare say there are a whole third, or perhaps half, of us here—including myself—who would collapse if it came to this kind of thing, because our minds would get too clever. We would say, “Of course, the point is this: if we are going to be of any influence, we have got to be very diplomatic indeed.”
“No good being stupid about such silly little food laws from Leviticus in Babylon. It is all right when we are in the land, but we are here in Babylon, standing in the king’s palace. God has got me here in the king’s palace, so if I am going to exercise a ministry, I have got to be prepared to be a bit diplomatic.”
At the very beginning, Daniel must have taken a step of faith and said, “Never. Never. If I die, I die, but I will not touch anything at all that is forbidden by the Word of God.”
He did not. The result was that Daniel came to be next to the king in authority, power, and spirit in the whole realm. That is what God does. That is works afore prepared.
You will never get into works afore prepared by compromise or diplomacy, but only by absolute faithfulness to the Lord.
Have you noticed that there is an emphasis here in the first chapter of Ezra, not on the land nor on the cities of the land, but on Jerusalem?
Look again at Ezra 1:2-5:
He hath charged me to build Him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah.
Let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the house of the Lord, the God of Israel—He is God—which is in Jerusalem.
The freewill offering for the house of God which is in Jerusalem.
All whose spirit God hath stirred to go up to build the house of the Lord which is in Jerusalem.
You get almost tired of the repetition: “in Jerusalem, in Jerusalem, in Jerusalem.” Go on to Ezra 2:68:
Some of the heads of fathers’ houses, when they came to the house of the Lord which is in Jerusalem, offered willingly for the house of God to set it up in its place.
Then Ezra 3:1:
And when the seventh month was come, and the children of Israel were in the cities, the people gathered themselves together as one man to Jerusalem.
And Ezra 3:8:
Now in the second year of their coming unto the house of God at Jerusalem.
Then Ezra 6:12:
And the God that hath caused His name to dwell there overthrow all kings and peoples that shall put forth their hand to alter the same, to destroy this house of God which is at Jerusalem.
Why is it almost a phrase: “the house of God which is in Jerusalem,” “the house of God which is at Jerusalem,” “go up to Jerusalem”? What is this emphasis?
Why does it not just say, “Go up to the land; go up to the house of God which is in the promised land”? Why Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Jerusalem all the time?
The emphasis has a very real meaning. The house of God cannot be built anywhere, even if there are many easy sites available.
Church history reveals to us that the house of God has been built in many an easy site. The Spirit of God came upon people, and they said, “Well, here is a good place to build the house. We will build it here.” That grew into one thing. Then they went elsewhere and built something else.
You cannot build the house of God anywhere. The house of God has to be built in a certain place which God has defined. We are talking about something spiritual, are we not? God’s ground.
For them, God clearly defined it: it was Jerusalem. They were not to build it in Shechem, Beersheba, Hebron, or somewhere else where God had greatly blessed and manifested His presence. Jerusalem was the one place.
For them, the ground was Jerusalem. If they built the house of God anywhere else, it would have been anathema to God.
When it comes to us, what does it mean for us? If we understand anything about God’s recovery, we have to understand that God is seeking to recover something. What is this ground that He has defined? It is Christ, and Christ alone.
Jesus said:
Upon this rock I will build My church.
—Matthew 16:18
Again:
Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them.
—Matthew 18:20
And we have it again in Ephesians: “Groweth into a holy temple in the Lord.”
Where is this ground? This ground for us is Christ and Christ alone. This is one of the primary principles of recovery. Never forget it. It is essential.
I fear very greatly, in this great pouring out of the Spirit of God everywhere, that this matter is not being seen clearly enough. We shall end up, as again and again in the history of the Church, in successive movings of the Spirit of God, with the house of God built somewhere of our own making.
The only place where the house of God can be built is in Christ. He is the basis. He is the foundation.
Where do we find that foundation? Obviously, where we live. That is quite clear, is it not? It is where we live.
Here is this first great and wonderful lesson from the book of Ezra in the first return: recovery is a matter of ground.
Spiritually put, the recovery of the house of God is a matter of finding the foundation which is Jesus Christ. When we have found that foundation, how wonderful it is: not Christ plus, but Christ alone.
Not Christ plus baptism; not Christ plus an experience of the Holy Spirit; not Christ plus some interpretation of the coming again of the Lord; not Christ plus some experience of holiness; but Christ alone.
On that basis, I receive you and you receive me, and we can be built together in Him: different temperaments, different nationalities, different races, different backgrounds, different outlooks; but we have one thing in common—the Lord Jesus Christ.
Upon that basis, God builds. That is the first great thing of recovery. When they came up to the land, they came up to Jerusalem. We must discover Christ and Christ in one another.
The second thing—I will only touch on it—is in Ezra 2. In recovery, it is a remnant who pay the price and return.
In Ezra 2, we have a register of all who returned. Even the livestock are mentioned. Every single thing that returned to the land is mentioned, right down to the livestock. So precious is this return to God that He says, “Even the cattle, the camels, the asses, the donkeys, the sheep, the goats—I want them all included. I love the lot.”
They mean something to Him, this whole crowd. It is extraordinary that in the Bible we should not only get all the people listed—how many thousand here, how many hundred there, then a thousand here and a thousand there—but finally even the livestock.
That is how precious it is to God. Of course, as I have already said, the great majority remained in exile, where the house of God could never be built and Christ, the Messiah, could never be born.
Do not forget that Scripture had already said, through the prophet Micah:
But thou, Bethlehem Ephrathah, which art little among the thousands of Judah, out of thee shall One come forth unto Me that is to be ruler in Israel.
—Micah 5:2
Bethlehem was in ruin. There was no Bethlehem. Isaiah had said:
And thou, Galilee of the nations, the people that walked in darkness have seen a great light.
—Isaiah 9:1–2
But there was no Galilee of the nations at that time. The cities were lying waste. Later on, the prophet Malachi was to say, “The Lord Himself shall suddenly come to His temple,” but there was no temple.
It all had to be recovered.
The great majority of the people of God stayed where it was comfortable, where they could worship God on their own terms, where they could be saved, blessed, provided for, and know the Word of God.
A marvellous thing had happened to the people of God: there was no more idolatry, not an idol in any home. They were as pure as pure as pure could be. They had been cured of idolatry. Seventy years in Babylon, the seat and home of idolatry, had finished them for it.
Not an idol—but they were even more vulnerable. They had a tremendous respect for the Word of God. Before, they had derided the Word of God, rejected the Word of God, and broken the law. Now they kept the law of God and respected the Word of God.
In their midst began a system which we now call the synagogue. All over Babylon began these home meetings. Sounds heady, does it not?
They began to meet in homes. Someone who was a real teacher of the Word of God began to teach them. They opened the Word of God and read it, worshipped together, praised the Lord, prayed together, and then someone who had a gift ministered from the Word of God.
It was marvellous. They had never had anything like it before in all their history.
These people in exile might say, “Surely we have learnt something, and we have got it so well. The children are settled at school. We are in good business.” According to archaeology, quite a large amount of the banking business in Babylon passed into Jewish hands, and a number of other things too.
The result was that they were very comfortable. They had nice homes. They were not bothered. There was no persecution and no anti-Semitism. It was all very nice.
“What is the point of going there? The Lord is with us. We have learnt our lessons. We have got a purer worship than we have ever had before. We have got a purer understanding of the Lord than we have ever had before. We have got a purer fellowship than we have ever had before.”
“Oh, it is lovely here. What more could you ask? The Lord is with us. We have got the Word of God. We have got dear Ezekiel—he is terrific. He is one of the first to get the whole thing written.”
Ezekiel was the first great literary prophet. From the moment he spoke, he wrote, and it was sent out everywhere as a written message. They said, “This is tremendous. We can read Ezekiel’s message.”
“And we have got Daniel. You could not want more. Anyway, all you lot that are going back, what is the point? Daniel is not going with you. Well, if Daniel is not going with you, are you? Stay with Daniel.”
But the fact of the matter is this: with all they had learned of God, all the purging and purifying that had come, their pure worship of the Lord, their pure fellowship, and their understanding of the Word of God, they were still in the place where the house of God could never be built.
They were still in the place where the purpose of God could never be realized and where the Messiah could never be born. The Messiah had to be born in Bethlehem—Bethlehem Ephrathah.
Someone had to go back and build the house of God at Jerusalem. Someone had to go back and build Jerusalem itself. Then, from Jerusalem, they had to go out and build the cities of the land, so that the purpose of God and the Word of God would be fulfilled.
The people who went—what a poor and afflicted people. They opened themselves up to much difficulty and much conflict that they would never have had if they had stayed in Babylon.
Because God is so faithful, we have the register of them all. One day in the kingdom, they will come to you and put their finger there and say, “You see, this is where I come in—here.”
I do believe that the Book of Acts has never been finished. When the whole book is finally penned—as I am sure it has been, the real story of Church history—what a wonderful thing it would be if we could say, “Yes, come here, and this is where I am.”
These people went back, and they opened themselves up to difficulty and conflict. There was a conflict over the house of God and the rebuilding of Jerusalem which the people in Babylon never knew.
These people had to know a total sacrifice such as the people in Babylon never knew. To do that, they had to be people of vision. No one is going to go back unless they have seen something.
They saw something, and they had faith. They were people of vision, faith, and determination.
You must not only have vision, dear child of God, people of God. We must not only have vision; we must also have faith, or vision will mock us.
When you have seen something of the Lord, you must respond in faith. When God shows you that the fullness of the Spirit is yours, you must respond, or it will mock you.
When you see that you have been crucified with Christ, you must step out, or it will be a mere theory. When you see this matter, you must go back to Jerusalem by faith.
God will make sure that it is by faith. He will make sure that everything happens along the way that will make it impossible for you to go, get back, or get on with the work unless it is by faith. That is why you will need determination.
Through faith and patience we inherit the promises.
This people may have been a poor and weak people in the sight of this world. I do not suppose too many of the rich bankers went back, or those with prospering businesses. I imagine they were rather a penniless lot—perhaps ragged, weak, and in the eyes of the world a weak lot.
Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem the Arab wrote, “What do these feeble Jews?” A fox could push over your walls. That was the estimate of the world: poor, afflicted people.
But in the sight of the Lord, these people were exceedingly precious.
I sometimes wonder whether we have not got a reference to this remnant in Isaiah 62:3. Speaking of those who go back to Zion and who give God no rest until something happens in Zion, the Lord says:
Thou shalt also be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord,
And a royal diadem in the hand of thy God.
If you look at Isaiah 28:5:
In that day will the Lord of hosts become a crown of glory, and a diadem of beauty, unto the residue of His people.
What a wonderful promise. The Lord says, “I will be your diadem of beauty.” In another place, He says, “You will be the diadem in the hand of your God.”
This reminds me again of Malachi and his word about those who feared the Lord. In Malachi 3:16-17:
Then they that feared the Lord spake one with another: and the Lord hearkened, and heard, and a book of remembrance was written before Him, for them that feared the Lord, and that thought upon His name.
And they shall be Mine, saith the Lord of hosts, even Mine own possession.
The word there is so beautiful: “My own treasure. My own personal treasure.”
Here are the two lessons we have from Ezra. First, it is a matter of ground. We have got to find the foundation which is Christ if the house of God is going to be recovered.
The second thing is that we have got to make a sacrifice. If we are not prepared for that, we will not go.
God is so wonderful in this matter. He does not push us, and He does not even call us. He says, “If you want to stay in exile, do so. Be happy. I will bless you there. I will save you there. I will prosper you there. I will provide for you there.”
He almost helps us to stay. “Do not come. Do not come.”
It reminds me very much of Elijah and Elisha. Elijah said, “Do not come. Go back.” Elisha said, “I want a double portion.” Elijah said, “It is too difficult for you. You go back.”
He turned his back and did not give any help. “Elisha, are you still there? Go back.” But Elisha followed. “No, no,” Elijah said. “Elisha, go back.”
There must have been a twinkle in the old man’s eye. He smote the river and went across. Elisha saw him carried up into heaven, and then the double portion of Elijah’s spirit fell on Elisha.
None of us will ever be in the diadem of God, in that crowning work of God, in the wife of the Lamb, because we have been cornered or pressurized.
God will help us to stay in exile and bless us tremendously there. But for those who, in the end, will be the vindication of God—the diadem, the crown of beauty—God says, “Look, My authority.”
Who is the vindication of God’s authority? You and me, worn by the King of kings and Lord of lords.
If you want to be in that, if you want to be one who is really at the heart of God’s eternal purpose for all the ages to come, you have to decide, of your own freedom, to follow Him, whatever the cost, whatever the price, whatever it means.
You can be assured that in all the conflict that lies ahead, and all the darkness, the Lord will be your power, your life, your deliverance, and your final glory.
These people were never something in themselves. They became the means, in the end, of the blessing of the whole people of God.
The little group that went back could not find it in saying, “Oh, we are really something. We went there.” Oh, no. God humbled them so much.
God says, “Here is the ultimate: you lay down your lives completely so that all those who have had such a good time in exile may come into the blessing.”
That is what happened. All those people used to come up for the feasts, and everyone who stayed in the land opened their homes, took them in, kept them, looked after them, and rejoiced with them.
These people who went back and suffered so much became the blessing of the whole people of God. That is service.
God will never have anyone on the throne with Him who has not got the character of His Son. The character of His Son is to give, and to give, and to give again.
Well, Lord, Thou knowest that much of this perhaps is beyond us. But, oh Lord, we do thank Thee that Thou art able by Thy Spirit to write it in our hearts and make it live.
Give revelation, Lord. May we begin to understand what Thy purpose is all about. May we begin to understand, Lord, that call of Thy Spirit to every one of us: to rise up and follow Thee; to take up our cross, deny ourselves, and follow Thee.
O Lord, do it. We pray, make us all people who are right in the heart of Thy purpose; make us people, Lord, who are instrumental in every move of recovery Thou art seeking to make in our day and generation.
Hear us, we pray, Lord. We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus.
Amen.