Posts
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Last week we started answering the
question: What can we do when we are
afraid?
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We found two parts of the answer to
that question in Ezra 3.
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1.
We can gather with the purpose of worshiping God who is greater than our fears.
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Worshiping God together reminds us
of just how big God is when our worship is based on the truth of His word.
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2.
We can build an altar for worship by offering our bodies as living sacrifices.
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We are the sacrifice and that
sacrifice is our service to both God and others.
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Because God is faithful and
good, He will help us conquer our fears.
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This week we will continue to answer
the question: What can we do when we are afraid?
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3.
Diligently lay a new foundation over the ruins with the remnant God provides.
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Last week I said that 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.
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They worshiped, offering sacrifices,
and kept the Feast of Booths, before the foundation of the Temple was laid.
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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.
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We hit a spiritual wall that feels
like it's impossible to walk through, but God still asks us to trust him.
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After God's people built the altar
and re-established the pattern for worship that God designed for the life of
his people, their leaders began to oversee the work of rebuilding the
foundation of the Temple.
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Let's look at what Ezra had to say.
o 7 So they gave money to the masons and the carpenters,
and food, drink, and oil to the Sidonians and the Tyrians to bring cedar trees
from Lebanon to the sea, to Joppa, according to the grant that they had from
Cyrus king of Persia.
o 8 Now in the second year after their coming to
the house of God at Jerusalem, in the second month, Zerubbabel the son of
Shealtiel and Jeshua the son of Jozadak made a beginning, together with the
rest of their kinsmen, the priests and the Levites and all who had come to
Jerusalem from the captivity. They appointed the Levites, from twenty years old
and upward, to supervise the work of the house of the Lord. 9 And Jeshua with his sons and his brothers, and Kadmiel and his
sons, the sons of Judah, together supervised the workmen in the house of God,
along with the sons of Henadad and the Levites, their sons and brothers. Ezra 3:7-9 (ESV)
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Just like with Israel, sometimes
things in our lives, work, school, business, job, family, even the church are
in such ruins that we need to lay a new foundation, to start from scratch.
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Sometimes we need a do over.
Sometimes we make mistakes that we wish we could press stop and rewind and
retake that scene.
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Thank God for his patience and his
grace because God allows "do over's". It is, after all, what we are seeing in the
book of Ezra.
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God's forgiveness is about giving us
the opportunity for a do over, to start from scratch, to begin anew all over again.
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Will life be like it was before?
Will things be the same as they were?
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No, it will be different. Things
will be new. There will be similarities and there will be differences.
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Because God is faithful and
good, He will help us conquer our fears.
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After all, life is still life,
business is still business, a job is still a job, school is still school,
family is still family, Christ's church is still His church.
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When we are afraid because things in
life seem to be in ruins, we can lay diligently a new foundation over the ruins
with the remnant God provides.
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This encouragement comes with one
caution. Laying a new foundation and completing the project takes a great deal
of work and supervision to accomplish just as it did for Israel.
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That brings me to the next step in
what we can do when we are afraid.
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4.
Give thanks to God for his goodness and faithful love.
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Because God is faithful and
good, He will help us conquer our fears.
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At this point in working through our
fears, once we lay that new foundation, we have something to celebrate,
something worth worshiping God about because it's his goodness and faithfulness
to us that helps us conquer our fears.
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We can give thanks to God for his
goodness and faithful love.
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Let's hear the words of Ezra:
"And when the builders lay the foundation of the Temple of the Lord, the
priests in their vestments came forward with trumpets, and the Levites, the
sons of Asaph, with cymbals, to praise the Lord, according to the directions of
David king of Israel. And they sang responsively, praising and giving thanks to
the Lord, 'For he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever toward
Israel.' And all the people shouted with
a great shout when they praised the Lord, because the foundation of the house
of the Lord was laid." (versus 10-11).
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It's God's faithfulness that helps
us conquer our fears. It's God's faithfulness that fulfills his promises and
his word in our lives and in the life of the church. It's God's faithfulness to
us that helps us accomplish the task of mission and build upon the
relationships in our lives.
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It's God's faithfulness that enables
us to build upon the foundation of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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That is something worth celebrating
in the presence of the Lord. Give thanks to God for his goodness and faithful
love.
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Because God is faithful and
good, He will help us conquer our fears.
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In order to conquer our fears, we
need to lay a new foundation and that foundation can only be built on that
which God has already laid for us to build, and that is the person and work of
Jesus Christ and a relationship with him.
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If we tried to lay a foundation on
anything else, sooner or later, it will fail us. But if
we build our lives and the life of the church on the foundation of Jesus Christ
alone, then we can move into the future that God has for us with confidence,
conquering our fears.
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Because God is faithful and
good, He will help us conquer our fears.
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Ezra has a final word for us.
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"But many of the priests and
Levites and heads of fathers' houses, old men who had seen the first house,
wept with a loud voice when they saw the foundation of this house being laid,
though many shouted for joy, so that the people could not distinguish the sound
of the joyful shout from the sound of the people's weeping, for the people
shouted with a great shout, and the sound was heard far away" (Versus,
12-13).
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Step 5. Grieve the past, but joyfully step forward into God's future.
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Grieve the past, but joyfully step
forward into God's future.
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When looking at the foundation of
the second Temple the old men remembered Solomon's Temple.
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The new Temple was not going to be as
glorious as Solomon's Temple. The returned Israel was not going to be the
nation that it was under David and Solomon.
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God was fulfilling his promises, but
the glorious promises of blooms in the desert were not happening. The Messiah
was not sitting on the throne. Jerusalem was not the center of healing and
renewal for the world.
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God was fulfilling his promises, but
in a way his people did not expect.
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Because of sin, there was much loss
to grieve, but because God was at work and fulfilling his promises in
unexpected ways, his people needed to continue stepping joyfully forward into
God's future.
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Like Israel, we have much to grieve,
because of sin. But because God is at work, even if we can't see what he is
doing, we must joyfully step forward into God's future.
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Grieve the past, but joyfully step
forward into God's future.
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Because God is faithful and
good, He will help us conquer our fears.
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Because God is faithful and good,
Jesus Christ will build his church.
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Because God is faithful and good,
God keeps his promises to his people.
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Because God is faithful and good,
the Lord Jesus is coming again to take us home.
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Because God is faithful and good, we
can gather to worship God who is greater than our fears.
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Because God is faithful and good, we
can build an altar for worship by offering our bodies as living sacrifices in
faithful service.
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Because God is faithful and good, we
can lay diligently a new foundation over the ruins of the past with the remnant
God provides.
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Because God is faithful and good, we
can celebrate conquering our fears and give thanks and praise to God.
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Because God is faithful and good, we
can grieve the past while joyfully stepping forward toward God's future.
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Because God is faithful and
good, He will help us conquer our fears.
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Chuck Swindoll tells the story of
how one night he was looking after a couple of his grandchildren.
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“It was late in the evening , but
since grandfathers usually let their grand children stay up longer than they
should, they were still awake.
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We were laughing and messing around,
and having a great time together when we suddenly heard a knock on the door.
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Not the doorbell, but a mysterious
knocking.
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Immediately one of my grandsons
grabbed hold of my arm.
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“It’s OK,” I said. The knock came
again, and I started to the door.
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My grandson followed me, but he hung
on to my leg and hid behind me as I opened the door.
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It was one of my son’s friends who
had dropped by unexpectedly.
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After the person had left and I’d
closed the door, my grandson, still holding on to my leg, said in a strong
voice, “Bubba, we don’t have anything to worry about, do we?”
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And I said, “No, we don’t have
anything to worry about. Everything’s fine.”
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You know why he was strong? Because he was
hanging on to protection. As long as he
was clinging to grandfather’s leg, he didn’t have to worry about a thing.”
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Because God is faithful and
good, He will help us conquer our fears.
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