A (0:00)

Hey, Bible nerds. This is Dr. Manny Arango and I'm your host for the Bible department podcast powered by Arma. This podcast follows a Bible reading plan we created to help you read the entire Bible in a year. You can head to the show notes or thebibledepartment.com to download our reading plan and join the journey.

A (0:25)

Hey, Bible nerves. Welcome to day 340. Today we are in Ezra chapters 4, 5, and 6, three short chapters of the Bible to read. If you haven't done the reading, how about you go ahead and stop this video, Pause the audio, go get the reading done. Ezra is an awesome book. I mean, tons of narrative. We're kind of back to story. I know for a long time on the plan, we've been in the thick of poetry. We've been in a lot of wisdom literature. But now we're back into narrative history. I'm loving it. It's a good story. So to pick up from yesterday, okay, Ezra has been. Well, not Ezra, sorry. Ezra, Chapter one has started. And Zerubbabel has been commissioned by Cyrus based on a prophetic word in Isaiah, chapters 44 and 45, to go back to Jerusalem to rebuild the walls. Yesterday we established that this is a second exodus, okay? In the same way that the people of Israel left captivity in Egypt to go to the promised land, they are now leaving captivity in Persia, AKA Babylon. And they are going to the promised land, but not to conquer it, but to resettle it. Three Rs that I want us to focus on. That is return, rebuild and repent. Okay? The people need to return to the land. Number two, they've got to rebuild. They have a massive project ahead of them. Okay? The walls of Jerusalem are completely broken. The temple is in complete disrepair. And what happens when they get back to Jerusalem? They first start to build an altar. And they complete the altar, and then they lay the foundation for the temple. Once they lay the foundation for the temple, I mean, they're off to a great start. But then opposition happens. So I want to add a fourth R. Okay? Return and then rebuilding and then repentance. But in the middle of rebuilding, they're going to hit resistance. And man, I know it's not time for our timeless truth today. I haven't even given you your our context clue for the day, but can I just encourage you? Every time you're in a season of rebuilding, there's going to be resistance, and that's life. I can't count how many ministry leaders I've met that it's like Post Covid, they were faced with the reality that needed to rebuild their church or rebuild teams or rebuild ministries. We're in a season of rebuilding, and Covid's not the only thing. A pandemic's not the only thing that could cause rebuilding. I remember being a really, really, really young, kind of young adult in ministry when, like, the 2008 financial crisis hit, and the church that I was a part of took a massive dip in terms of tithes and offerings just because people were getting their homes foreclosed on. It's a tough time. And what happened? The church had to rebuild. So rebuilding is a normal part of life. And it can be really discouraging to be in a season where you're just picking up the rubble and ruins of your life and rebuilding. And it can be really, really discouraging. It could feel like, I've taken steps forward now I'm taking steps back. Let me encourage anybody today who's in a process of rebuilding. It's kind of like rebuilding's already hard enough, and here it is. There are people that are resisting me. And you can go ahead and just buckle up, okay? Life is full of cycles of rebuilding. You're gonna build and rebuild, build and rebuild, build and rebuild. And rebuilding always comes with resistance. So let's jump into chapter four, okay? They've laid the foundation for the temple. They've been commissioned by Cyrus. And now we open up chapter four, and we've got resistance. Okay? It says this. When the enemies of Judah and Benjamin heard that the exiles were building a temple for the Lord, the God of Israel, they came to Zerubbabel and the heads of the families and said, let us help you build. Because, like you, we seek your God and have been sacrificing to him since the time of Asahardin, king of Assyria, who brought us here. All right, so I want to give context for those opening lines in Ezra chapter 4. The context is actually found in 2 Kings chapter 17. We can actually go there. I'll grab it. In Logos, 2 Kings, chapter 17, you may read these verses and go, why would they refuse help? Like, that's crazy. They're in Jerusalem to build or to rebuild the temple. Why would you refuse help? These seem like nice people, right? They heard that the exiles were building a temple for the Lord, and so they came to Zerubbabel. They're like, let us help you build, but we're going to learn a valuable lesson that not everyone who wants to help you build is called to actually help you build. I'm in a season right now where I'm building a church. And not everyone who says that they want to help me build have good intentions. And part of what it means to be a good leader is discerning. Are there people who want to help me build because they need me to owe them one in the future? Are there people who want to help me build because they see an opportunity to get a job at some point? Are there people who are here to help me build out of pure motives or impure motives? And so I actually shout out to Zerubbabel and the crew for hearing. Sometimes you could be so desperate for help, you'll take help from anybody. And they are encountering people who wanna help, but they have enough discernment to know, no, no, no, no, no. These people do not have the same heart to actually put their hand to the plow as we do. And so what's the context? There's context that they have that we may not have. And that context is Second Kings, chapter 17. Second Kings, chapter 17 says this. In the twelfth year of King Ahaz of Judah, Hoshea son of Elah, began to reign at Samaria over Israel. They reigned nine years. And then we're going to skip, skip, skip, skip, skip. Okay? So then we're going to skip all the way down to verse 23, okay? And it says this in verse 23, the end of verse 23. So Israel was exiled from their own land to Assyria to this day. Now, remember Judah, the southern kingdom of Judah is going to get exiled in 586 B.C. to Babylon. But in 722 B.C. the Northern Kingdom of Israel gets exiled to Assyria. Okay? So the context for Ezra, chapter four is the Assyrian captivity of the northern kingdom of Israel says this in verse 24. The King of Assyria brought people from Babylon, Kutha, Ava, Hamath and Sepharvaim and placed them in the cities of Samaria in place of the people of Israel. They took possession of Samaria. If you go all the way down to verse 27, then the king of Assyria commanded, send there one of the priests whom you carried away from there. Let him go and live there and teach them the law of the God of the land. Okay? And so one of the priests whom they had carried away from Samaria came and lived in Bethel. He taught them how they should worship the Lord, okay? But every nation still made gods of its own and put them in the shrines of the high places that the people of Samaria had made every nation in the cities in which they lived. So these people who want to help In Ezra chapter 4, the context for them is 2 Kings 17. And what do we learn about these people in 2 Kings 17? They want to worship Yahweh and their idols. They want to worship Yahweh and the gods of their own ancestors. Which means what they're saying here isn't incorrect, but it is incomplete. It's the truth, but it's not the whole truth. So what they. What Zerubbabel has context for is that these people are syncretists. Syncretists. This is a form of idolatry known as syncretism, where you take God or Jesus or Yahweh and you mix in other things. This would be like going to church on a Sunday morning, but then burning sage on Sunday night at your house. That would be syncretism. That would be like going to church on Sunday morning, but buying chakra stones from urban outfitters and laying those soccer stones on your chest so you can charge up. You know, that's syncretism. It's kind of like going to church on a Sunday, but then also having a dream catcher above your. Above your. You know, above your bed. And sometimes what can happen is we can be more loyal to our ethnicity or our race or our culture than we are to the God of scripture. And so we want to take on practices of our ancestors, and we want to do things like smudge. Like, this is Native American man. It's. It's. Before the white man came and gave us Christianity, this is what we were doing. Yeah, okay. And going to hell. So, I mean, sure. I mean, if you want to do what your ancestors are doing, that's fantastic. Or you can say, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not going to follow my ancestors. I'm going to follow, like, my spiritual ancestors, all these people in the Bible. These are my ancestors because I've been grafted in to the olive tree that is Israel. So my ancestors are actually people who have tried with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength to worship the Lord God Almighty. So good jobs are rubbable for not allowing syncretists to. To help with the building of God's house. Okay? Who knows what they would have done to sabotage the building? And guess what? Every leader needs to know this. Whenever you tell someone something they don't want to hear, it's a test. It reveals motives. And so that's exactly what happens. Zerubbabel says, no, you can't help us. And what do these people start doing? They start causing hell for the people of Israel and those who are building, which means if they had had pure motives, then the no would not have deterred them. Kind of like right now in church building, you know, someone asked me, can we have, like, a flag ministry? And I was like, you can have a flag small group. How about you find everybody at the church who wants to wave flags, and you go do that at your apartment. Now, that's a test. Two things can happen. Three people are going to be, you know, at Billy Bob's apartment waving flags around, or 80 people are going to show up. And guess what? Now we got a flag ministry on our hands. Now we have no choice but to have a ministry because the person was faithful over little. So now you make them ruler over much. If you could get 80 people at your apartment to wave flags, you deserve a flag ministry. Let's go. But it's a test. It's a test to see did you just want a platform or did you want to disciple people using flags? Because if you just wanted a platform, hey, we're not going to use Sunday morning just because your church hurt and you didn't get a platform or an opportunity at your last church. That's not what we're doing here. But if you actually care about discipling people and loving people, if the word gets out, oh, my gosh, that flag group that meets at Billy Bob's apartment, oh, my gosh, man, they. They pray for you, man. They love on you, man. They encourage you. People may not like flags, but they'll show up at Billy Bob's apartment because it's fruitful. So it's a test. It's always a test. If you want to test people's motives, you say things that they may not want to hear, and then you get to see ah was their heart in the right place. And so Zerubbabel will test them. What's revealed gets revealed. That they are now gonna bribe officials to slow down the work of. Of the ministry. Which means Zerubbabel was right all along. These people cannot be trusted. Okay, that's enough context. Okay, let me give you seven nerdy nuggets. Golly, I got seven minutes left on the episode. I'm going to give you seven nerdy nuggets. Okay, number one, the context for these adversaries can be found in Second Kings, chapter 17 already said that. Number two, who is Ahasuerus? Ahasuerus. That would be Xerxes. Now, here's something I need to make everybody aware of. The letters that we're going to get from all of the kings are not in order. Okay, so let me actually give you the order of Persian Kings. Okay? The first Persian king is going to be when Cyrus overtakes Babylon, and we get the edict of Cyrus that obviously is a man by the name of Cyrus. Okay, that's not hard. The king after him is a man by the name of Cambyses. Cambyses ii. After him is Darius. After him is Xerxes, whose name is Ahasuerus. So if you see Ahasuerus somewhere, you know that's Xerxes. Now, this is the Xerxes that's married to Esther. All right, so what? You're going to discover that in between chapter six and seven of Ezra, so, like, in between today's podcast episode and tomorrow's podcast episode, the whole Book of Esther is going to happen. Okay, so I'll remind you of that tomorrow. Hey, Esther has happened. All right, Then after Xerxes, we're going to get Artaxerxes, which is Xerxes stepson, and then we're going to get Darius ii. What you're going to begin to realize is that the letters that we have here in the Book of Ezra are not based on chronology, but they are based on theme. And there's a reason that they're based on theme. And we'll get into that either at the end of this episode or tomorrow. Let's keep rocking. Chapter five, verse one. Okay? The opposition works, okay? Sixteen years go by, and the people stop building the temple. They stop. They're like, this is hard. So the opposition, or the resistance actually works. So they are called to rebuild. They are met with resistance, and that resistance actually has the power to stop them in their tracks. And so let's think, what do they need? Of course, they need a politician. They need some construction workers. They need. There's all kinds of practical things that they probably need in order to restart. They need an army. What does God send to prophets? That's right. Haggai and Zechariah. Honestly, anytime I feel discouraged, and that's often, sometimes I can think to myself, man, like, there's so many people who can do so many incredible things. All I can really do is preach. Like, that doesn't seem like that impressive of a thing to do. And sometimes because I'm so intimately aware of my own gift, it's almost like I'm too close to it to really appreciate it. I'm just kind of like, yeah, man, I just preach. And then I'm reminded that when God's people were stuck I mean, could not progress. They needed to build the temple. God didn't send a construction crew. He didn't send politicians. He sent two preachers. He preached. Because the reality is that if you want the people to build the temple, you got to build the people. And I'm in the middle of building church right now. And I think that part of the reason that we're successful is because I don't think about people as a resource to build a thing. I think about that thing as a resource to build people. I'm passionate about building people. And so, of course, God would send Haggai and Zechariah. Haggai and Zechariah begin to preach. They begin to preach, encourage, and prophesy. And what does that do? It turns the heart of the people towards building. They now have a heart to build. And a lot of times I can feel discouraged. Like, man, I wish I had, like, real hard skills. All I know how to do is preach. But the Lord keeps reminding me through moments like Haggai and Zechariah that actually the thing that he's graced me to do is actually the thing that kickstarts other people's hard skills and allows them to do what God's called them to do. And I know it may seem odd to you that I would get discouraged. You may be listening to me. Like, no way. He's just saying that. Well, no, no, no. I really, seriously, there's a lot of times where I'm like, man, I just wish I had other things to offer. Like, all I really do is, like, talk like, that's it. But isn't it crazy how the one thing that God's asked me to do actually kicks? Like, kickstarts? A domino effect of all these other people who have all these other amazing gifts. So if you're out there and you have the gift to preach and teach and communicate, please don't let anybody look down on you and don't look down on yourself. When God's people were stuck and had no progress, he could have sent politicians. He could have sent a construction crew. He could have sent an army. But he sent two preachers to prophesy named Haggai and Zechariah. All right, next, the people are going to celebrate Passover. And I want you to see Passover is going to bookend the Exodus and the Exile. Why are they celebrating Passover? Well, because this is a new Exodus. And the same way that they celebrated Passover when they left captivity of Egypt to go to the promised land, they are now celebrating Passover again as they've left the captivity of the Persian empire to come back to the promised land. Next nerdy nugget. In terms of timeline. Let me just go back a second. Haggai and Zechariah are prophesying because the work has stopped for 16 years. Now, if you need a refresher on Haggai and Zechariah, just literally, we've already covered them on this barbering plan. Go find the books. Go find the podcast recordings from Haggai and Zechariah. One of my favorite lines from Haggai and Zechariah is that the people keep saying to their leaders, we're poor, we're poor. We can't build God's temple. Cause we're poor. We can't build God's house. We don't have the resources. And one of the things that Haggai and Zechariah both make very clear is. No, no, no, you've got it twisted. It's not that you're poor, and that's why you can't build God's temple. You haven't built God's temple. That's why you're poor. And can I tell you something? As somebody whose mom was on welfare, as someone whose mom started tithing off of her welfare check, man, I watched my mom prioritize God's house. And as my mom prioritized God's house, guess what God did. God used that house to bless her son with a job in ministry. So it's not that we're poor, we can't build God's house. No, no, no, no, no. A refusal to build God's house will keep you poor. And my family broke poverty, the curse of poverty in one generation, because my mom was tithing off of her disability check and off of her welfare check. I know it's natural to assume I'm poor. I can't prioritize God's house. Well, my mom was poor. We're actually launching, you know, a top givers group at the Garden. That's the church that we're planting right now. That top givers group is gonna be called the Vineyard. And somebody asked me, is there a certain amount of money that I need to give in order to be a part of that group? And I said, no. Actually, I don't like a culture of you have to give a certain dollar amount. Because I've got a friend in Atlanta. I've preached for him a bunch of times. His name's Pastor Michael Turner. He's an amazing Guy, he tells a story about his mom. His mom was a single mom, and she was a top giver at the church, but she was a waitress at a restaurant. And all she did in order to become a top giver was she tithed off of her paycheck and off of her tips. But on the weekends, she decided all the tips that she made on Friday and Saturday would go to God's house. So she became a top giver not because of equal gifts, but because of equal sacrifice. God's never asking, well, if you give $25,000, you can be a part of this group in church. And no knock on churches who do it that way. But we've just decided at the Garden, we're gonna do it in a way that anyone from any socioeconomic background can. Could be a part of the vineyard. Because it's not about giving a certain dollar amount. It's about going above and beyond the 10%. If you're willing to go above and beyond the 10%, I don't care if you are a waitress at a restaurant or if you manage a brokerage account at a. At a stock exchange. I don't care what you do. To me, it's the sacrifice that matters, not the dollar amount. All right, last couple nerdy nuggets. Question. Anyone notice how Ezra has not yet been mentioned? Ezra is nowhere to be found. Well, we're going to get introduced to Ezra tomorrow in chapter seven, okay? Because this entire first wave is all about Zerubbabel and Zerubbabel's mission to rebuild the temple. Tomorrow we're going to get into the next section. And I want you to remember, Ezra and Nehemiah are all one book, okay? So tomorrow we're going to get into the section of Ezra, chapter 7, verse 10, which is going to really focus on the third wave of returnees to Jerusalem, led by Ezra. And then after that, the day after tomorrow, we'll start with Nehemiah and Nehemiah. Chapters one through seven will all be about a third wave of the exiles coming back home. Remember, there were three waves of deportation. 605 BC, 597 BC and 586 BC. Five waves of exile. I mean, sorry, three waves of exile. Okay? Three waves of exile. 605 BC, 597 B.C. and 586 BC. Three waves of exile. Therefore, there's going to be three waves of return. Those returns are going to be with Zerubbabel, with Ezra, and with Nehemiah. And not only do the people need to return, but they need to rebuild and they need to repent. So tomorrow the focus is not going to be on rebuilding. The temple is going to get rebuilt in the reading that we've covered today. And the focus tomorrow is going to be on Torah obedience. Ezra is going to lead a spiritual awakening now. Last thing I'll say before we wrap up today, family. The wait is over. My brand new book, Crushing Chaos, is out now and available everywhere. Books are sold. Literally. Today I walked into a Barnes and Noble and I signed a bunch of copies at a physical location. So you can grab this book at a physical Barnes and Noble or you can go to a Books A Million or Amazon or anywhere books are sold and grab a copy. If you enjoy reading the Bible from an ancient perspective, if you understand that the beauty of scripture is actually knowing it in context, then you'll love this book. And if there's any chaos in your personal life, I think that reading the Bible from an ancient perspective can actually help to crush the chaos in your life. I think that this book is going to be a New York Times bestseller. I really do. I think we wrote a good one. I think you should get a copy today. All right, back to the episode. This is honestly a little bit of context, but I knew that if I started with it, it would take too long. So I wanted to get through all the nerdy nuggets first. And now I'll give you context. Okay? Ezra 1:6, Ezra 7:10, and Nehemiah 1:7 all follow the same format. And it's a four part format. Okay? Each of these sections are going to start with a king making a decree. So in Ezra 1 through 6, it's Cyrus who commissions the rebuilding of the temple. In Ezra 7 through 10, it's Artaxerxes who commissions Ezra to establish the law of God. And then in Nehemiah 1:7, it's Artaxerxes who grants Nehemiah permission to rebuild Jerusalem. Okay? Second, the returned Israelites are going to face opposition. That's the second thing that's going to happen in the pattern. Okay? Whether it's the enemies of Judah, whether it's Ezra discovering that there are mixed marriages in Ezra 9, or whether it's Sanballat and Tobiah who oppose the rebuilding of the wall in Nehemiah, chapters two through six. Third, is that the returnees, the returned Israelites, are going to have to overcome that opposition. Okay? And then fourth, this one is tough. We're going to get an anticlimactic resolution. An anticlimactic resolution. So for Today, in Ezra 1:6, we're going to get a mixed response to the temple. Some people are going to be happy that the temple is built. And some people are going to weep that the temple is built. Because you may already realize this. When the Temple of Solomon was built, the fire from heaven came and filled it. When the tabernacle of Moses was built, the fire of heaven came and filled it. The smoke came and filled the cloud of the pillar of cloud. Like, literally. I mean, the priests couldn't even do their jobs. And so Zerubbabel is going to build this temple, and no glory is going to enter it until a couple named Mary and Joseph bring baby Jesus to Zerubbabel's temple. In Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, in the opening chapters of the Bible, baby Jesus is gonna get brought to the temple. Remember Simeon and Anna? They're a prophet and prophetess. They can't believe that the king has now come to the temple. And so the glory is not gonna come in the form of fire or smoke, but the glory is gonna come in the form of God incarnate in the person of Jesus. And so when you get to the end of today's reading, which is the end of just one section, you should go like, okay, I'm so glad they overcame the opposition, man. That response was lackluster. And this is why in Zechariah and in Haggai, the prophets are going to be saying, the Zerubbabel is not by power, nor by might, but by my spirit, says the Lord God Zerubbabel. I'm sorry. Zechariah and Haggai are also going to say, do not despise a day of small beginnings. Why? Because there's people in the crowd weeping that the temple has been constructed. And they're weeping because the temple looks kind of puny in relation to what they knew as a previous temple 70 years prior. Which leads us seamlessly into our timeless truth for the day. Do not despise the day of small beginnings. How encouraging. Of course Haggai and Zechariah would say that to Zerubbabel. Hey, man, you ran your race. You did your job. There was an assignment that God had for you which was to rebuild the temple. At some point, you've got to ask yourself the question, do you want applause from heaven or do you want applause from people? Because if you want applause from people, then you're going to get real discouraged. You're going to despise a day of small beginnings. But I promise you that the Temple of Solomon and the tabernacle of Moses are going to encounter something that your temple, Zerubbabel is going to encounter something or experience something that these better temples or bigger temples never experienced. And that's that Jesus at the age of 8 days old and 12 and 33 are going to walk through the halls and walk through the stones that you've laid down. Jesus, the king of kings and the Lord of lords is actually going to walk through Zerubbabel's temple and not Solomon's temple and not Moses tabernacle. And that, that'll make me want to not despise the day of small beginnings. There's this, I call this the Mandela effect. Well, not I. Everybody calls it the Mandela effect. You can Google Mandela effect if you don't know what I'm talking about. There's kind of low key conspiracy theories of like communal false memories, these things that we all think happened at some point, but they actually didn't. Like the spelling of Berenstein bears or the spelling of Chick Fil A or whether or not there was a cornucopia of fruit for the fruit la logo. Anyway, one of these Mandela effects is from the Field of Dreams. And everybody thinks that the line from that movie is if you build it, they will come. But actually if you go watch that movie, the line is if you build it, he will come. And man, if I could go back in time and say something to Zerubbabel, that's what I would say. Sir, if you build it, he will come. We don't build it so that people will be happy. We don't build so that people would applaud. We build so that God can say, well done, my good and faithful servant. So if you're in ministry, if you're rebuilding your life or whatever your season is right now, maybe your season is marked by rebuilding and resistance. I would say the same words that Zechariah and Haggai said to Zerubbabel. Don't despise the day of small beginnings. Maybe, just maybe, if you remain faithful, then heaven will applaud your work. Maybe not people, but definitely heaven. That's the goal. And that's not just true for Zerubbabel, Haggai, Ezra, Zechariah, that's true for you and that's true for me. I love you guys. I'm so proud of you. Especially if you're on a streak. Tomorrow we're going to finish up the book of Ezra. We got day three 41 here. The Bible Department podcast, Ezra 7 through 10. It's going to be fantastic. And then we got Nehemiah. I can't wait. I'll see you tomorrow. Love you. Peace.