After a break of a couple of weeks, for Matt’s preaching series, Graham picked up on his Ezra series this morning. With a large helping of fascinating historical insight as is often the case when Graham is preaching.

Sermon Ezra [ 38:05 ] Play in Popup | Download

Ezra Part 3

Ezra 2:1, 64 – 3:13

Previously:
I drew attention to the matter of the people returning. I asked why they would have wanted to have returned and leave behind the sophistication and ease of Babylonia. We noted that the people responded as communities. I refered to the church body, corporate actions like prayer, worship, hearing public reading of scripture. They travelled in groups. Whole communities travelled. Families worked together.

Each person responded as an individual.

I said when one person makes a stand right, others are effected. The people moved as a community, who responded in obedience first? Not all followed, some stayed there in Babylon.

I suggested:

  • Hear your call.
  • Know your call.

This week I have three questions:

1) In What Way did the returners worship?
Generously
See the generous giving – “freewill” “according to ability” verses 68,69.
See the worship of verse 3:10-13, and the shouting and weeping.

Deliberately
They settled in their towns (2:70), they were doing that for three months, then they started work and worship.

2) What did the returners feel?
Look at the huge numbers returning in verse 64.
Were they motivated by a sense of nationalism or was it more? We know a bit of how they felt for they later wrote about it. See Psalm 126. I think they would have anticipated a restored relationship with God now possible through the forgiveness available through the temple sacrifices.

See Psalm 51. David must have had a previous quality of relationship with God (verses 10-12) and “joy of salvation” in verse 12. Is this what the returners were experiencing, the joy of salvation? Like the man lowered by his friends who broke through a roof to place their sick friend before Jesus for healing. Jesus forgave his sins. How would he have felt?

About Tishri:
3:1 The seventh month (Sept to Oct) was Tishri. This timing would have had special significance to the returners.

About Gedaliah Ben Ahikam
During their exile they would have been observing the ‘Fast of Gedaliah’. Celebrated on the third of Tishri in remembrance of the tragic fate of Gedaliah, governor of Judah. See his story in the book of Jeremiah (40:5-41:3; 2 Kings 25:22-26).

After the destruction of the First Temple and the fall of the Judean kingdom in 586 BC, and the exile to Babylonia of most of Judah’s population, Nebuchadnezzar appointed Gedaliah Ben Ahikam to administer affairs in the conquered land.

Gedaliah was looked back upon as a good man but his governorship was brief. The neighbouring Ammonites had him assassinated. Despite being warned of the conspiracy, Gedaliah went ahead and chose to entertain his enemies at his own home in Mizpah, where they murdered him and his bodyguards. The surviving Jewish loyalists, believing that Nebuchadnezzar would interpret the assassination of his governor as an act of rebellion, ignored Jeremiah’s advice and fled to Egypt for safety. Nebuchadnezzar viewed their fleeing not as rebellion but as a confession of guilt. He therefore carried away more of the surviving population into exile in Babylonia.

These events shattered the last Jewish hopes for a peaceful restoration of the land. During the exile the murder of Gedaliah was associated with Judah’s final collapse. The Bible tells us this all happened in the month of Tishri and later tradition records the actual date as 3rd Tishri. This then was observed as the “fast of the seventh”

See Zechariah 7:5 (in 518BC)
Ask all the people of the land and the priests, ‘When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months for the past seventy years, was it really for me that you fasted?’

Zechariah 8:19 This is what the LORD Almighty says: The fasts of the fourth, fifth, seventh [the fast of Gedaliah] and tenth months will become joyful and glad occasions and happy festivals for Judah. Therefore love truth and peace.

These quotes from Zechariah are dated about 518 BC. Even after their return from their exile, God was continuing to call them to him. Thought they started off well upon their return, their faithfulness did not continue. That would be the theme of Zechariah’s prophetic ministry.

3) Why did the returners weep?
Some looked back to loss, others looked to the future. The past is not always easily forgotten. Repentance may cover our mistakes but there is still loss.

This section to be completed next time.