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o Fear,
hopelessness, despair, discouragement, everyone experiences them sometimes, yet
these feelings are unpopular non-topics of conversation in the church today.
o We
are uncomfortable with sharing and expressing these raw and most wounded of
feelings with each other because it requires a deep level of trust and many of
us have had that trust betrayed.
o Henri
Nouwen wrote that the Holy Spirit is creative and always seeking to display
that creativity in new life. But fear can stifle that creative new life and we
end up clinging to what we have where we are in the present and, therefore,
cannot move forward into God's planned future.
o Fear
is among the most powerful influencers in the world today.
o Fear
is the ever present "what if."
o After
September 11, 2001, much of North America was paralyzed by fear and the events
of that day continue to have an impact on government policy, close to home and around
the globe.
o But
fear doesn't just impact politics; fear finds its way into businesses, schools,
neighborhoods, families, and even churches.
o Everywhere
fear gets a foothold it restricts, hinders, and is an obstacle to new life. Fear
is an energy sucker. It makes us hesitate.
o When
we are afraid we are timid, cautious, and we tend to withdraw rather than
engage. Fear tends to make us self absorbed.
o How do we deal with
fear? What's a healthy way to deal with our fears?
o Over
the next two weeks, we will take a look at the third chapter of Ezra to find a
good answer.
o God's
people had been in captivity for 70 years because they had not followed God's
directions for how they were to live neither as individuals nor as a nation.
o But
God had stirred up the heart of Cyrus king of Persia who proclaimed religious
freedom and the funding of a massive empire wide rebuilding campaign.
o God
also stirred up the hearts of many of his people and chapter 2 of Ezra records
the tens of thousands of members of Judah and Benjamin and of the Levites,
priests, and servants whom God stirred up to return to their ancestral homes
and to rebuild the Temple of the Lord.
o God
stirred up the hearts of Cyrus and the leaders of his people with that one
purpose in mind to re-establish, restore, and renew Israel as a worshipping
community.
o The
people and their leaders all understood exactly why they had uprooted
themselves after 70 years of exile and moved great distances back to their
homeland, because God was their God and they were his people.
o And
as they returned to their homeland it was like a new exodus from Egypt; they
returned and found they were living in occupied territory. The people living in
the land were unfriendly to them.
o To
make such a big move in the first place they had to trust God, but now that
they had arrived in their homeland they had to continue to trust God because
the people that lived all around them didn't exactly want them there.
o But
they are excited to be home; they are excited about the prospect of rebuilding
the Temple and they are excited that after 70 years of no Temple sacrifice and
no gathering in Jerusalem to celebrate the appointed feasts of the Lord, they
could begin again.
o It
was now autumn, the seventh month according to the Hebrew calendar, which is a
very important month for Jews.
o The
first day of the seventh month begins with the Feast of Trumpets, 10 days later
is the Day of Atonement, perhaps the holiest day of the Jewish year, then on
the 15th day of the month began the weeklong Festival of Booths (or
Tabernacles), a feast which every male Jew of age was required to attend, and which
remembered their time living in tents throughout their 40 years of wandering in
the wilderness.
o Everyone
left their homes after getting settled in their towns and gathered in Jerusalem
with a single purpose.
o And
what was that purpose? To obey the commandment of the Lord and celebrate the
Feast of Booths.
o Ezra
tells us, 1 "When the seventh month came, and the
children of Israel were in the towns, the people gathered as one man to
Jerusalem." They gathered with a single purpose.
o What can we do when
we are afraid?
o Gather with the
purpose of worshiping God who is greater than our fears.
o The
people gathered in Jerusalem to show God their trust in him and their obedience
to him, but also to encourage one another because fear is more easily conquered
as a community of faith. Fear is more easily conquered as a community of faith.
o And
God is bigger than their fears and our fears and worshiping God together reminds
us of just how big he is when our worship is based on the truth of God's word.
o When
we worship God in spirit and truth God reshapes our thinking and our
perspective on the world and helps us to conquer our fears.
o Because
God is faithful and good, He will help us conquer our fears.
o Let's
continue with what Ezra tells us.
o 2 Then arose Jeshua the son of Jozadak, with
his fellow priests, and Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel with his kinsmen, and
they built the altar of the God of Israel, to offer burnt offerings on it, as
it is written in the Law of Moses the man of God. 3 They set the altar in its place, for fear was
on them because of the peoples of the lands, and they offered burnt offerings
on it to the Lord, burnt offerings
morning and evening. Ezra 3:1-3 (ESV)
o It is better to
obey God and worship him than do what we think is safe.
o It's
better to obey God and worship him than do what makes sense in the eyes of the
world, such as staying home and protecting your property from your neighbors
who really don't want you there as was the case.
o But
did God's people act out of fear once they arrived in Jerusalem?
o Yes,
they acted because they were afraid, but they did not do what we might expect
them to do.
o What
did they do? Ezra tells us they built an altar to the God of Israel as
instructed in the Law of Moses so they could offer burnt offerings on it.
o Ezra
reveals that they built the altar because they were afraid of the local people
and they built it in the exact place where the old altar once stood.
o What can we do when
we are afraid?
o Build an altar for
worship.
o God
called and set apart Israel to be a peculiar people who were totally devoted to
worshiping only him.
o And
God has called and set apart Christians to be a peculiar people to be totally
devoted to worshiping and proclaiming the name of Jesus Christ as Lord and
Messiah.
o Now
when I say that we need to build an altar for worship I don't mean we should actually
go out and build an altar so that we can slaughter and offer cattle and sheep
and goats for burnt offerings.
o Because
Jesus died on a cross, he is the perfect blood sacrifice to cleanse our sins
and pay our dept.
o However,
in Romans 12 in the very first verse, the apostle Paul urges his readers to
offer their bodies as living sacrifices and a living sacrifice acts upon the
truth of Christ applying Christ to everyday life and it is only because of the
mercy of God that we can do this.
o The
reasonable and obvious response to God's canceling our debt and cancelling his
judgment against us is to offer up our whole lives with gratitude for him to
use as he sees fit in return.
o Worship
has always come with sacrifice. Under the former covenant sacrifices were made with
a dead animal, but under the new covenant sacrifices are living.
o We
no longer make a sacrifice; instead we are to be a sacrifice. And according to
Paul that sacrifice is service to both God and others.
o God
calls the Christian to sacrifice fear.
o Because
God is faithful and good, He will help us conquer our fears.
o No
matter what our fears, God calls us to be the people He calls us to be and do
what He calls us to do. That is just what God's people did in Ezra's day.
o 4 And they kept the Feast of Booths, as it is
written, and offered the daily burnt offerings by number according to the rule,
as each day required, 5 and after that the regular burnt offerings,
the offerings at the new moon and at all the appointed feasts of the Lord, and the offerings of everyone who
made a freewill offering to the Lord.
6 From the first day of the seventh month they
began to offer burnt offerings to the Lord.
But the foundation of the temple of the Lord
was not yet laid. Ezra 3:4-6 (ESV)
o Like
with Israel, sometimes things can get to be such a mess and things seem to be
lying in ruins, but Ezra makes it clear that our relationship with and worship
of God have to come first.
o They
worshiped, offering sacrifices, and kept the Feast of Booths, before the
foundation of the Temple was laid.
o We
experience discouragement, hopelessness, fear, and despair when we can't see
God at work, when we don't know what he's doing, when we don't know where he
is, or where he's taking us.
o We
hit a spiritual wall that feels like it's impossible to walk through, but God
still asks us to trust him.
o Because
God is faithful and good, He will help us conquer our fears.
o What can we do when
we are afraid?
o We can gather with
the purpose of worshiping God who is greater than our fears.
o Worshiping
God together reminds us of just how big God is when our worship is based on the
truth of His word.
o We can build an
altar for worship by offering our bodies as living sacrifices.
o We
are the sacrifice and that sacrifice is our service to both God and others.
o Because
God is faithful and good, He will help us conquer our fears.
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