Oh, good evening, brothers. It is a joy to be back again with you, and I am sure, if your heart is like my heart, that you have come for the same reason I have come: to see the Lord.
As we come to look into God’s Word, there is a principle of Bible study that is absolutely indispensable—a principle that we can never take for granted. That is total reliance upon God’s Holy Spirit. It is God’s Book. It is God’s Son. Only God can reveal God. Only the Lord can show Himself, and He is delighted to do that.
A lot of what I will share this weekend is set against the backdrop of the great restoration out of Babylonian captivity. Before we pray, I am going to ask you to look—or at least listen—to a couple of verses from Jeremiah 50. We will use this to prepare our hearts, and then we will look in His Word.
This describes the day when Israel, after their chastening, is finally delivered out of Babylon. Beginning in Jeremiah 50:4:
In those days, and in that time, saith the Lord, the children of Israel shall come, they and the children of Judah together; they shall go on their way weeping, and shall seek the Lord their God.
They shall inquire concerning Zion with their faces hitherward: Come ye, and join yourselves to the Lord in an everlasting covenant that shall not be forgotten.
See, they are getting out of captivity, and it will be the Lord, their God, whom they seek. Finally, does it take Babylon to bring us to that? It will be the Lord, their God, whom they seek. They will ask for the way to Zion, turning their faces in its direction, and they will come that they might join themselves to the Lord in an everlasting covenant.
Finally, does it take Babylon to work that in us—that it is the Lord we see, that union with Him is what we desire, based on the everlasting covenant?
Verse 6 is a sad verse:
My people have been lost sheep: their shepherds have caused them to go astray; they have turned them away on the mountains: they have gone from mountain to hill; they have forgotten their resting-place.
It is so sad to see God’s children going from mountain to hill, forgetting their resting place. It is my prayer this weekend that God will put this in our hearts: that it is the Lord, our God, whom we seek; that it is union with Him, based on the new covenant, that we seek; and that He would remind us again of our resting place.
Then we do not have to run to every mountain and hill for this experience and that experience. We can have Him.
So let us bow and commit our time unto the Lord.
Our heavenly Father, once again this evening, we bless Thy name. Thou hast given us Thy Word. Thou hast put Thy Holy Spirit in our hearts. Thou hast already given us a measure of light: the unveiling of our Lord Jesus, life, and union with Him.
Now, as we pause this weekend to look again into a precious portion of Thy Word, we ask that Thy Holy Spirit would unveil the Lord Jesus in a fresh way and minister life unto us. Take us again, we pray, to our resting place.
We thank Thee in advance that Thou art going to over-answer this prayer, because we offer it up in the merits of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
I think it has been announced already that we will be looking a little bit in the marvelous Book of Ezra. Many of the verses I will quote are from the American Standard Version of 1901.
You say, “Why are you using that version this time?” My computer broke. That is why. I lost my copy-and-paste, and so I lost the easy way to use the New American Standard. This was as close as I could come.
Well, we are going to look at Ezra. Ezra is a wonderful saint of the Lord—a wonderful, wonderful brother.
Anybody come here this weekend to see Ezra? I hope not. He is a wonderful saint, but you did not come here to see Ezra.
The book he wrote—the Book of Ezra—is a wonderful, wonderful book. But I hope you did not come to learn the Book of Ezra. That is not why you are here, and that is not why I am here.
I hope that, when we are finished, you know a little more about Ezra the man and Ezra the book than you did when you walked in. But that is not why we are here.
The purpose for this weekend—in fact, every time we gather in the name of the Lord—is to behold Him, to behold the Lord Himself. Praise God for Ezra, and praise God for his book, but we want to see Jesus.
I believe with all my heart that Ezra the man and Ezra the book give us another opportunity to see our Lord Jesus Christ in a living way.
In order to prepare your heart and my heart for the revelation of the Lord in Ezra, this first lesson needs to be an introductory lesson. That is the nature of the beast.
The problem is that it is not all in one place. I cannot say, “Turn to chapter 1 and look at verses 5 through 11.” We are sort of all over the place because our purpose is to get a taste, to get a hunger, for God’s heart in this book.
Why did God put Ezra in your Bible? If tonight He took it out of your Bible, what would you lose? What would you miss?
What is the revelation of the Lord that God gives in Ezra which He does not give anywhere else in the Bible in the same way?
Every book in the Bible has a distinctive revelation of the Lord. We need every book. We need the revelation of the Lord.
You say, “What if I do not have a revelation of the Lord in one of those little books—say, Zephaniah or Haggai or something like that?” Are you open to the Lord? Then you are open to the message of Zephaniah whether you know what it is or not.
I am open to the message of Zephaniah whether I know what it is or not. I hope someday God opens up all of those books. There are a lot of closed books and a lot of dark places in my soul when it comes to the Bible.
But I am open to every message in every book of the Bible, even though I do not know what it is. There are certain books that are very, very dark to my soul. Do I despise those books? No, I do not. I love those books. I study them all the time, even though I have not seen the Lord there yet.
I know I am already open to the message of Christ in those books. Ezra is like that. We need to see the Lord in the Book of Ezra.
To give you just a little taste, I am going to ask you to turn to Ezra 9. There is a wonderful verse in that chapter. Quite apart from how this verse fits into the history, and quite apart from the background of what was going on, I just want you to look at the verse and the wonderful spiritual realities it lays out, one right after another.
Ezra 9:8:
And now for a little moment grace hath been showed from the Lord our God, to leave us a remnant that is escaped, and to give us a nail in His holy place, that our God may lighten our eyes, and give us a little reviving in our bondage.
That is one of those plaque verses. It should be on the wall. That is a wonderful, wonderful verse.
“Now for a little moment grace hath been showed from the Lord our God.” The present truth is that the grace of God, for a brief moment, is shown.
This is my key verse for the weekend, and I have been praying through its various parts. I am praying that God will fill the brief moments of this weekend with His grace.
The second expression is “a remnant that is escaped.” I love that. Of course, in the context, it was the escape from Babylonian captivity.
The remnant, the escaped remnant, was that handful—that part of God’s people—that said yes to God’s invitation through Cyrus.
The invitation by Cyrus basically said, “Everyone is invited. Everything is provided. You can all come out.” But not all came out. It was not a command; it was an invitation.
Only a small handful, relatively speaking, came out. There were several million, and only about fifty thousand came out in that first group.
Now, we cannot say that none of the remnant stayed behind, because we know Daniel stayed behind, along with others like him. But we also know that he opened his window and prayed toward the holy city. He had a remnant heart. No matter where his body was, he had a remnant heart.
No doubt many stayed back with a remnant heart. But in the main, those who remained behind did so because they were not saying yes to the Lord. There were exceptions, but those who left said yes to the Lord.
Those who remained behind, in the main, did not want to give up their comfortable lifestyle to go back to what? A destroyed temple, a destroyed wall, and a ransacked city.
At first, if you read the Book of Lamentations, you see that the captivity was a terrible time—a time of suffering, grief, and agony. When Nebuchadnezzar came in, he was very cruel.
The people of God became slaves. They had to do hard labor. They even had to pay for their drinking water. If you read Lamentations, you see how terrible it was. They became so hungry that some women ate their newborn babies. It was a terrible, terrible time.
They had been uprooted from their culture, their families, everything they knew, and everything familiar to them. In many cases, their names were changed so that the old would be forgotten, and they were given heathen names.
Lamentations tells us that the holy women who were taken as prisoners of war were raped every day. Every day they were raped. It was a terrible, terrible time.
But as the years rolled on and the pressure was lifted, they got used to life in Babylon. They began to take up positions.
By the time of Cyrus’s declaration that they could leave and go free, they had become comfortable. They had become captive colonists. They had settled in. They owned land. They became involved in government. They had their own houses, their own property, and their own businesses.
There are a lot of jokes about the Jewish person and how he handles money, and many trace that back to the Babylonian captivity. They say that is where they learned to be business-savvy. I do not know if that is true or not.
But at this time, it was a lot easier to stay in Babylon than to take that seven-hundred-mile journey through the trackless desert, identify with the poor remnant, and go back to a devastated land.
I like what Ezra calls it: an escaped remnant.
The decree went out: “You can leave. You can escape.” But they said, “That is not an escape. That would be a sacrifice. To leave Babylon would be a sacrifice, not an escape. I do not want to give up all this. We have now settled in.”
In your Bible there are five books called remnant books. In other words, they follow the remnant that came back. There are actually six post-exilic books—books written after the captivity—but only five of those are remnant books.
The two history books are Ezra and Nehemiah. Those are remnant books. Then there are the last three prophets: Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi.
The only post-exilic book that is not a remnant book is Esther. That is a post-exilic book, but it is not a remnant book. If you want to know why I think that is so, we can discuss it on the side.
We are going to use the expression escaped remnant this weekend to mean the cream of the crop: those who heard the invitation—everything provided, everyone invited—and said yes.
They said, “We want to follow the Lord. We want to identify with the Lord.” It is not something we have to give up; it is a deliverance. It is an escape. We want to be liberated.
That is almost the opposite of the way the world uses the word remnant.
When the world uses the word remnant, it speaks of the remnant of the cloth—the leftover after you make the curtain. Make the curtain, and then there is the remnant. That is the cloth you throw away, or use to wash the car, or dust the furniture.
The remnant is the leftover. There is the remnant of the wood; we have already built the shed. Throw the remnant away.
But when you see the word in the Bible, that is not how God uses it. God does not say, “Throw the remnant away.” The remnant is the part He treasures. The remnant is the cream of the crop. That is the part that is true.
So we are going to see not only the grace of God for a brief season, but the escaped remnant.
Then Ezra 9:8 speaks of “a nail in His holy place.” The American Standard Version says “a nail in His holy place,” following the King James Version. Another translation says “a firm place.” Another says “a foothold in a firm place.” Another says “a refuge.” Another says “a secure hold.”
What is the principle? The peg, the nail, the firm place, the secure place, the refuge, the foothold, the stronghold—it is stability. It is fixity. A nail puts something in place.
The Orientals used nails to pin down their tents and to put things on the wall. It is God’s promise to make it secure, to nail it down.
Sometimes in my life, Bible truth flies around. I love principles. I love Bible truth. But sometimes these truths are like papers on my desk when my wife opens a window. They just go everywhere. I wish they were nailed down.
Yesterday—and you are glad you were not there—I decided to sing in the shower. I sound better in the shower, at least to myself. Early in the morning, I was singing that song, “Complete in Thee.”
Those are wonderful, wonderful words. But I started it like I heard someone begin “The Star-Spangled Banner”: “Oh, say, can you…” Now where is it going from there?
There was no way I could reach the words. I started on an unbelievable pitch, and I got into this falsetto. I was way up there singing, “Complete in Thee.” But the words were wonderful:
Complete in Thee, no work of mine
May take, dear Lord, the place of Thine.
As I was taking the shower, the Lord was convicting me. It is so easy to know the words. Sometimes you just cannot reach the notes. You cannot sing it. There is no music.
You have all the words. You know all the words. You can recite the words. But the music is not there. You want that nail in a firm place. You want God to nail it down so that your experience and your knowledge are together.
God brings those things together. In Ezra, you have the grace of God for a brief moment. In the Book of Ezra, you have this nail in a firm place so that we can have security. You have the escaped remnant.
There are a couple more things in Ezra 9:8: “that our God may enlighten our eyes.” What a prayer that is. This is more than a happy face and bright eyes after a shameful, disgraceful departure from the Lord. That is part of it. But it is also what we pray for: revelation, that God will enlighten our eyes.
Finally, the verse says, “and give us a little reviving in our bondage.” That is not too much to expect of the Lord this weekend: that, for a brief moment, God would give us grace; show us that we are an escaped remnant; give us a nail in a firm place; nail some things down for us; and give us a little reviving in our bondage.
The word revive—and now we are getting close to Ezra—comes from two words: re, again; and vive, to live. To live again. That is revival. That is what it means to be revived: to live again.
Anybody who has studied Ezra knows this is one of the greatest books in the Bible on living again.
I believe with all my heart that God wants to give some revival this weekend. You say, “I already have life.” Yes, but how about some real life? Revival.
You cannot have revival if you have not had life. You have to have life, and then God wants us to live again. A lot of people do not need revival; they need repentance. That is another thing altogether.
But revival is when the coals have gone cold, and we need God to blow again on the coals and give us life. “A little reviving in our bondage”—that is the reality of this book.
Revival is what Ezra is all about. God wants us to live again. By the time we are done with this introduction, I hope you see how God develops that great truth.
Ezra 9:8 takes the heart of the book. It is about the grace of God, the escaped remnant, God giving a nail in a firm place, God enlightening our eyes, and God giving us a little life in our bondage.
So where do we begin in introducing the Book of Ezra? I want to begin by trying to show you how Ezra fits in the canon of Scripture.
I know some of you could probably stand up here and walk circles around me concerning the facts of Ezra. I am not pretending that I know all about the book and that you do not know anything about it.
But years ago I began to learn that you do not take anything for granted. So I am going to pretend that you have never heard of the book, never heard the name, and know nothing. I know a little because I have studied, and you know nothing. I am just going to say it as if you have never heard anything, in order that we might all be on the same page.
How does Ezra fit into the Bible story?
Ezra is an introduction to a great section in the Bible. If I can show you that, you can begin to see God’s heart. After we see that big picture, we can home in on the book and its distinctive message.
The Book of Ezra introduces us to the last century of Old Testament history—the last one hundred years.
This is nothing new: studying the Bible in blocks of time. We do it all the time. We study the two thousand years from Adam to Abraham, the four hundred years in Egypt, the forty years in the wilderness, the seven-year war for Canaan, the three hundred and fifty dark years of the judges, the five hundred years of the kings, or the seventy-year captivity.
Every block of time has to do with redemptive history, and every block of time speaks about our spiritual history. Behind this history is a marvelous spiritual reality.
There is another block of time that Christians have neglected. It is not as famous as the forty years in the wilderness.
Go up to the average Christian and ask, “What do you know about the forty years in the wilderness?” They can sit down and talk to you. They can tell you about God’s provision in the cloud, the rock opening with water, and so on. They can talk about the forty years in the wilderness, or perhaps the days of the judges.
But how does God close the Old Testament? What are the last one hundred years about? It is a block. It belongs together.
What is God’s final word? After this, we have to wait for Bethlehem. What does God say as He comes to the end? What is His final message?
Some have studied this and given it a name. In some books you open up and see the heading, “The Recovery.” You take those last one hundred years and study the recovery.
Most commentators do not call it the recovery. They call it the restoration period: the period after Israel was restored out of Babylonian captivity, the post-exilic period, the last one hundred years.
Why is Ezra important? Ezra introduces us to that period. It is the first book that deals with those one hundred years.
Ezra lays out God’s heart. Ezra says, “This is what God wants to show you in the last century. This is what God’s heart is all about. Here is what God wants you to know.”
The Book of Ezra introduces and summarizes God’s heart, clinches the entire Old Testament message, and lays out before us in story form God’s final burdens and God’s final heart.
There is a reason scholars have called this period the restoration. We need to get this spiritual principle before our hearts, because we are going to be looking at the spiritual side. We will see the physical side, but we cannot miss God’s heart.
If we are going to live again this weekend, if He is going to give us a little reviving in our bondage, it is because this final one hundred years follows the escaped remnant as they leave captivity.
God revives His people. They had sinned against God. They had gone into chastening and captivity. They left Jerusalem, the city of peace, and went into Babylon, the city of confusion. That happens.
The Old Testament ends before it ends. You know what I mean by that? You say, “Where is the end?” You go to the end, but the end is not the end. The end is in the middle.
Chronologically, the Old Testament ends just before Job. God tells the story and gives the history, and that story ends with Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther.
Then God takes the poetry section, the major prophets, and the minor prophets, and goes back to explain the history. But the historical story ends with Esther.
That is how Ezra fits into the canon of Scripture. It stands at the doorway of that great section: the last one hundred years of Old Testament history.
Now, we say restoration. A nation is released after a seventy-year captivity, allowed to go back to its homeland, rebuild the temple, and rebuild the wall. Those are the big things that happened in that period.
The temple was always God’s illustration of the spiritual condition of His people.
God said, “You need to come back. I want a temple.” They said, “Let us have a wall. It makes more sense to build a wall first. Then we can build a temple. We need protection.”
God says, “No, you do not build the wall first. I will be a wall around about you. You build a temple first.”
The temple means being right with God. The wall has to do with the knowledge of God. God has always wanted a people who are right with Him and surrounded by the knowledge of God. That is what restoration is all about.
What good is it, brothers, to be able to recite all of this biblical history? Really?
You say, “I know Nebuchadnezzar reigned. Do you want to hear me recite the three sons who reigned after him?” Who cares?
You say, “I know the arrangement. I know when Cyrus appeared, when Darius appeared, when Xerxes appeared, when Artaxerxes appeared, and I know the ones in between.” Who cares?
God is not trying to give us information. That is not why He tells us these things.
I want to lay before your heart the spiritual message. Restoration is after captivity, but let us look at the captivity for one moment in order to see God’s heart in restoration.
If you ask the average Christian—even the most uninstructed Christian—“How long was Israel in Babylonian captivity?” everybody knows the answer: seventy years.
Turn, if you would, to Jeremiah 25. Beginning in Jeremiah 25:11:
And this whole land shall be a desolation, and an astonishment; and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years.
And it shall come to pass, when seventy years are accomplished, that I will punish the king of Babylon, and that nation, saith the Lord, for their iniquity, and the land of the Chaldeans; and I will make it desolate for ever.
Notice that Jeremiah the prophet predicted the exact time of captivity: not fifty years, not sixty years, not sixty-eight years, not seventy-one years—seventy years.
Turn to Jeremiah 29. Beginning at verse 10:
For thus saith the Lord, After seventy years are accomplished for Babylon, I will visit you, and perform My good word toward you, in causing you to return to this place.
For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you hope in your latter end.
And ye shall call upon Me, and ye shall go and pray unto Me, and I will hearken unto you.
And ye shall seek Me, and find Me, when ye shall search for Me with all your heart.
There it is again: seventy years. Not sixty-five years, not sixty-eight or sixty-nine years, not seventy-one or seventy-two years. Seventy.
Now, if you read through Old Testament history, you will see there were many occasions for captivity. They got what they asked for. They deserved it.
You say, “Why did they go into captivity?” Idolatry. They turned to idolatry. Is that true? Yes, indeed it is. That was an occasion for their going in.
Someone says, “I saw a verse that says they made unholy alliances with heathen nations, and that is why they went in.” Is that true? Sure it is. That was also an occasion for their going in.
Someone else says, “Manasseh was the point of no return. God said, ‘After Manasseh, even if you repent, you are still going into captivity.’ He went too far. He passed the line of no return.”
Secular scholarship tells us he is the one who cut Isaiah in half with a wooden saw. God said, “That is enough.”
Another says, “They did not listen to the prophets. The prophets warned them to return and repent, and they would not repent. That is why they went in.”
Another says, “They became materialistic. That is why they went in.” Those were the occasions.
But God isolates His heart, the reason.
Turn to 2 Chronicles 36. If you can stick with me, Ezra will become a mighty factor in your life.
Second Chronicles 36:20-21:
And them that had escaped from the sword carried he away to Babylon; and they were servants to him and his sons until the reign of the kingdom of Persia:
To fulfil the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her sabbaths: for as long as she lay desolate she kept sabbath, to fulfil threescore and ten years.
Mark that, brothers. Here it is in a nutshell. Right from the beginning of your Bible, God has had a heart that His people trust Him and rest in Him.
So that they would rest, He set one day aside and called it rest. He called it Sabbath. He said, “Trust Me today. I will meet your needs. I will provide. Just enjoy Me. Worship Me. Take that day and set it aside.”
Then, as He laid out their calendar, He took the seventh month and made that a special month for the Jews. We will not get into that now, but as we go through the weekend I will show you a little about that seventh month. It began with a trumpet sound and an announcement of rest: rest, rest.
Then God said, “Every seven years, take a whole year off. We will call that a sabbatical year. Take the whole year off, and you will see that I am faithful. I will provide. I will be your God, and I will take care of you.”
But they did not get it.
They did not get the weekly rest; they neglected that. They did not get the monthly rest; they neglected that. They did not get the annual rest; they neglected that.
So the seventh year came by. Somebody might have said, “Hey, Jake, are you going to take off? You have to take the whole year off.”
“That is not too practical, you know. Things are a little tough with the kids right now, and the tractor broke down.” So they did not take it off. They had it as any other year. They pulled stumps, plowed the land, planted seed, and reaped just like another year.
God was patient.
Seven more years rolled by. Another sabbatical year came. Did they rest? Did they trust the Lord and say, “God is faithful. He is going to take care of us. He wants the land to rest. He wants us to rest. We will just trust Him”?
No. They did not take it off.
Thirty-five years went by—seven times five. Five sabbatical years. Did they rest? No. But who was counting?
I will tell you who was counting. Seventy years went by: ten opportunities, ten sabbatical years, and they did not rest.
One hundred years passed. God was taking notes, and they did not rest. Two hundred years went by. Three hundred years went by. Four hundred years went by. They never took a Sabbath year off. Never did.
Four hundred ninety years.
God said, “That is enough. That is it.” How many Sabbaths are there in four hundred ninety years? Seventy.
God said, “You would not rest seventy times in four hundred ninety years. I have been waiting for you to rest. Now you will go into captivity one year for every year you refused to rest.”
That is what Babylon is about. That is the spiritual significance of Babylon. That is why you need to study Lamentations and the Babylonian captivity, because that experience is the experience of all those who refuse to rest in the Lord.
If you want to know what I can experience if I do not rest in Him, read Lamentations and look at the principles. It describes the consequences of not resting in the Lord.
There were many occasions, but this was the reason they went into captivity.
Every Christian, and every Christian group, that fails to rest in the Lord will experience Babylonian captivity—the principles of Babylonian captivity.
Now let us come to God’s heart. Is there any hope? Is there any life? Can those who have heard so much, so many times, been invited to rest in the Lord, and have not done it—can those who have tasted the bitterness of not resting—live again?
After not resting in the Lord, perhaps for years, can they live again?
God says, “Yes. Study Ezra. I am going to show you how you can live again, even if you have not rested in the Lord up to this moment.”
No matter how much you have heard, how much you have known, or how much you have tried to apply, if you have not rested in the Lord, you have experienced Babylon. That is what you have experienced. I know that is true.
In this segment of time, these one hundred years, God is saying to every person, “You do not have to live that way. You can live again.”
You can return to the city of peace. The temple can be rebuilt. The wall can be rebuilt. I can have a name and a testimony again.
Ezra offers hope to all those who have failed to rest in the Lord and now desire to live again.
Let me home in on the prevailing theme of the book, and then focus on exactly what I would like us to consider.
We know Ezra wrote this book. Scholars believe he also wrote Chronicles. Some think he also wrote Nehemiah and Esther. Some think God used him to arrange all the Old Testament books.
But here is a strange thing: the book that bears his name is not about him. When you open Ezra 1, you do not see Ezra. He does not show up in the book for eighty years. Finally, he appears in the later chapters.
So what is the book about?
The answer is that the Book of Ezra is a book of revival. Ezra contains three revivals. It is the record of three revivals, and those three revivals took place during those one hundred years.
God said to those who had life, “You can live again.” He said, “You can live again, and you must live again.”
God said, “I want you to live again here”—revival number one. “I want you to live again here”—revival number two. “I want you to live again here”—revival number three.
Ezra lays it all out in story form: the three ways in which God’s people can live again.
The Book of Ezra contains the greatest summary of revival in the entire Bible. I think anyone who studies revival has an obligation before the Lord to study the Book of Ezra.
We use the word revival very loosely. We sing, “Revive us again,” and speak about revival meetings and revivals. We pray, “Lord, send an old-time revival.”
We read books on revival by Finney, Torrey, or someone like that. We study the old revivals: the Reformation of the sixteenth century, the Puritan revival of the seventeenth century, the Methodist revival of the eighteenth century, the missionary revival, the evangelical revival, and so on. Some would say we are in a revival now—a revival of worship.
But the Bible does not use restoration and revival in the way we often use those words.
I was surprised in my study to discover this. In all the remnant books, I read very carefully. I combed through the five remnant books, plus the one non-remnant post-exilic book. As far as I could see, there was no illustration of a direct miracle in any of those books.
By a direct miracle, I mean something like the days of Moses, when God opened the sea, made water come out of a rock, or sent special plagues; or the days of Elijah, when a leper was healed, food was multiplied, or the dead were raised.
There is no direct miracle.
But I noticed this: though there is no direct miracle mentioned, the remnant books are full of the supernatural.
You know what I mean—behind the scenes. You read a book like Esther and see God on the throne. You see God controlling things. He is on the throne. He is there.
You say, “That is not a miracle.” In a sense, it is. But I am making a distinction between that which is supernatural and that which is miraculous.
There is no direct miracle, but the supernatural is always there, on every page.
Let me give you two verses, one from the New Testament and one from the Old Testament. God wants us to live again, but what is restoration? What is revival? How does the Bible use the word restoration?
My passage is Matthew 12:10 and 13, the story of the man with the withered hand.
Picture it: his hand is all withered up, dried up, shriveled up, useless, dead, and paralyzed. Jesus said in Matthew 12:13:
Stretch forth thy hand.
Can he? It is withered up, dried up, paralyzed, dead.
“Stretch forth thy hand.” Matthew 12:13 says:
And he stretched it forth; and it was restored whole, as the other.
That is restoration. That is how the Bible uses restoration: it was restored.
When we come to Ezra, we are going to talk about restoration, and we are talking about supernatural restoration. Every time my Shepherd restores my soul, He does for my soul what the Lord Jesus did for the man with the withered hand. It is restored supernaturally.
The second word is not restored, but revived. First Kings 17:17-24 is the story of the widow of Zarephath’s son. You remember the story: the boy died in his mother’s arms. Elijah the prophet prayed:
O Lord my God, I pray Thee, let this child’s soul come into him again.
Then we read:
And the Lord heard the voice of Elijah; and the soul of the child came into him again, and he revived.
That is revival. He revived.
When we talk about restoration, we are talking about the supernatural work of God. When my hand and my life are withered, I need more than a command to stretch forth my hand. I need power to stretch it forth. You need more than a command; you need power to stretch it forth.
What is revival? It is what God did to that little boy. When his life returned, he lived again, and he revived.
Let me suggest an outline to the book. Then you will know where my heart is and where we are going.
The book is outlined in terms of three great revivals.
Revival number one is found in Ezra 1 and 2, under the illustration of getting out of Babylon and coming back to Jerusalem, the holy city.
When God dawns on a Christian—or on a group of Christians—how to get out of captivity, how to get out of bondage, and how to live free, they live again.
A person may have been saved for many years and not be free. Probably many Christians are not free. They need to live again.
The first revival God gives is found in those first two chapters. He spells it all out. Every principle is illustrated there. He gives illustration after illustration, laying out all the principles in seed form. It is Old Testament picture form, but it is all laid out: how God sets us free.
We need to be free.
The second revival begins in Ezra 3 and goes through Ezra 6. The picture changes. It is no longer getting out of captivity. Now it is: build the temple. Build the temple to completion, that I might be honored and glorified, says the Lord.
Thousands of Christians have been set free, but they do not know how to build a temple. Building the temple has to do with going forward, growing, advancing, putting on the superstructure, and maturity.
God lays it all out: how to have a complete temple, that God might have His dwelling place.
I tell you, if God were to dawn on you how to build a temple, you would live again. Every Christian needs to know how to live free. Every Christian needs to know how to build a temple.
After Ezra 6 and before Ezra 7, about fifty-six years go by. Between those chapters you can write the word Esther. That is where Esther takes place.
Ezra 7 starts the next revival. It goes through the rest of Ezra, picks up in Nehemiah, and continues there.
God has a different picture now: rebuilding the wall. Rebuilding the wall.
Getting out of captivity. Rebuilding the temple. Rebuilding the wall. That is the one hundred years.
Rebuilding the wall is all about the Word of God. Ezra comes forth as a Bible expositor. He begins to give light and show how to study the Book and how to see the Lord. They make vows they cannot keep, and God begins to show them how to produce fruit through the study of the Word of God.
What a marvelous revelation.
When you learn how to see Jesus in this Book so that you produce fruit, you live again.
On a weekend like this, there is no time to look at all three revivals. You would not allow it; you could not take it. I cannot stand up here and say, “All right, let us look at all three revivals.” There are too many lessons.
So I had to choose, and I tell you, that was not an easy thing before the Lord. What shall I share?
Maybe some need to know how to live free. Maybe I should share that. Maybe some need to know how to build a temple. Maybe some need to know how to study this Book in order to see the Lord and be transformed into His likeness.
We need to live again. Ezra lays it all out.
Ezra spells it all out in picture form. When you leave this place, I pray that God will burn it into your heart to study this Book. It is a marvelous picture, such a neglected section of Scripture—this last one hundred years. Who studies it?
Because we cannot look at everything, and because we must look at something, I trust God has guided me.
I am going to share with you revival number two. We are going to look together at Ezra 3 through 6: how to have a complete temple, how to build a temple, how to grow, how to advance, and how to move on.
May God help us. That is what we want to look at. That is what Ezra is about.
May God give us a little reviving in our bondage. Somebody needs to live again. May the Lord touch our hearts.
Let us pray.
Our Father, how we thank Thee for this Book. Certainly, Lord, we need to know how to live free, and we live again when Thou teachest us that.
We need to know how to grow. We need to know how to produce fruit.
As we focus this weekend on revival number two, wilt Thou give us a little reviving in our bondage? Call some brother to live again. Teach us Thy heart and Thy ways.
Teach us how to build a temple. We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.