2/25/24 Ezra 3:10-4:5 “You Can Start to Be Really Free!”

22 Feb 2/25/24 Ezra 3:10-4:5 “You Can Start to Be Really Free!”

2/25/24   Ezra 3:10-4:5           “You Can Start to Be Really Free!”

It’s sometimes interesting being in our house.  Several times a year, Sharon is creating something from a play or skit to a poem.  She is quite good at this and I love the talent that she and several other people in the area display.  At the same time, I am creating a message every week for our Sunday services.  So we have two sets of creative juices flowing and there are times when we don’t hear each other.  Plus, we are both a little hard of hearing.  But we have learned to deal with this and I don’t think we have ever had any sort of disagreement or jealousy.  There are no winners or losers in this process.  However, this isn’t always the case with other folks.  I sometimes wonder if we haven’t ‘raised up’ a ‘I can’t lose’ mentality in our society.  We start with not keeping score in the games our children play.  We have also decided that all schools have to be completely fair in everything that they do.  Then we get to college and we have decided that it isn’t fair that some students get in and others don’t.  Finally, we get where we are trying to decide that it isn’t fair that some people have more money than others so we try to take from the rich and give to the poor.  This is just another way to have socialism or

communism. This is just a short-abbreviated list of things that aren’t fair that we try to correct and usually we fail.

There are two key words here.  I don’t remember ever reading anywhere in the Bible that life is fair.  As a matter of fact, it says life is anything but fair but we have Jesus to help.  All you have to do is ask Him.  We should be teaching our young to get used to these types of things and then try to help them cope.  Help them to know Jesus.  I read some place recently that we lose or make errors something like 70% of the time.  I believe that our politics have devolved into this mentality to the point where they and we cannot lose at anything.  The second key word is ‘we.’  We don’t do anything.  Has anyone ever asked God what He thinks of all of this?  We just might be surprised by the answer.  Today, we are going to look at how Judah dealt with setbacks and hate as they tried to rebuild their Temple.  It might surprise you that things go so much better if you first ask God.

I read this several years ago about a man named Bob Lujano who contracted a rare form of meningitis at age nine and lost most of his arms, both legs and was almost pronounced dead.  Well he wasn’t dead and today he drives, cooks, lives independently and has a regular job.  He is also a champion wheelchair rugby player.  This is a story of a man for whom life was not fair.  But did he give up?  No.  He decided that he could still live and that is exactly what he is doing.

As we begin today, we find that King Cyrus of Persia had allowed and helped the Jewish people go back to Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple.  I think this shows once again how God will use people who don’t know Him to further His Kingdom.  I think that it is also important to note that all of the rebuilding of the Temple took about 100 years and there were four kings involved beginning with Cyrus.  Basically what happens is that Cyrus lets them go back and build and the kings who followed weren’t really that willing to let it happen.  God worked in Cyrus and Satan worked in the rest of the kings.  Let’s take a quick look at how Satan used these kings and their people.

First of all, Satan had the local people turn against the Jews as they tried to discourage them from building.  They used deception and fear.  It was a massive campaign against them rebuilding.  They even hired people to thwart their efforts.  When all else failed they wrote a letter of complaint to King Artaxerxes.  These people would not give up trying to stop the Jews.

This is just a page out of Satan’s workbook for today.  Whether or not you want to believe this is up to you but we are bombarded by a relentless stream of evil every day.  And we are to the point where these early Jews were when they felt ready to give up.  For example, today we have a war on drugs which has to be one of the biggest jokes ever perpetuated on the American public.  Closer to home we have an abortion mills running a sex education programs at local colleges.  Even in your own life you are doing things that are against God and you know it.  However, you just let it slide because everyone else is doing similar things.  Then we read that Satan is battling the Jews in the Middle East today.  It never stops.  You draw your own conclusions on this but I think these are all a very bad deal.

Anyway, the people around us are relentless in trying to get us to move away from God.  We have seen the advertising where you really can’t play sports unless you are using alcohol.  It is so bad now that we have to gamble on every sporting event and networks support this.  I cringe at some of the sex ads that are on prime-time TV so that all our innocent little children can lose their innocence.  We have talked about these things many times before and still no one says anything.  Everyone is silent and allows these things to happen.

Not only is Satan relentless in his pursuit of us but he is also everywhere.  These Jewish people, the remnant, were being attacked from all sides.  They had an ally in King Cyrus, but after him they had no one to help them.  The new king, Darius, issued an order to stop all building and that is what happened.  It would be 16 years before it started again.

This is something else that we talk about all the time.  I just mentioned a few of the places that Satan controls as he is trying to get rid of us.  The most tragic place that Satan is trying to control is in our churches.  Once years ago, I was so glad to find out that a new bishop was 100% dedicated to Jesus Christ, only to find later that he was 100% dedicated to Satan.  He was a wolf in sheep’s clothing!  I hope that this new Global Methodist Church can stay on track following Jesus.  We have such a great message to tell.  Other churches and denominations aren’t so fortunate.  They try to tell us how much they love Jesus but they act in ways that are totally against the Gospel message.  You can’t have it both ways.  You are either for Jesus or you are against Him.  I once read a book by Andy Stanley.  He talks about his dad, the late Charles Stanley, when he was first starting in the ministry.  He was turning a church around and growing it the way it is supposed to be grown.  He preached sin, repentance and personal salvation.  He was fired because this is not what the church elders wanted.  Can you believe it?  Churches are doing this type of thing all the time.

I know that I get off on a tangent once in a while describing the atrocities in our society, but this is only to show you your sin.  Every person watching, including me, has one thing in common and that is that we are all sinners.  What makes some sections of the Old Testament so hard to preach from is that the authors lay the blame for sin right at our feet.  They don’t mince words.  If you don’t change your ways, you will be overrun by Babylon and taken captive.  Everything you know will be destroyed.  You will end up in hell!  It is hard to get the salvation message from all this but it is there.

There are many other factors that helped Satan to achieve his goals in the short term, like the distrust of everyone around us.  But I think I will move on here because we all know that Satan is everywhere we look.  I don’t think we need lessons on recognizing him but rather we need lessons on how to find Jesus Christ in the midst of all these bad things.

The people of Judah, the remnant, who came back to rebuild the Temple did a pretty good job in the beginning.  As a matter of fact, they got a lot done in the city of Jerusalem and the Temple before they were stopped.  They seemed to have the gift of discernment so they could detect the evil around them.  These were Godly people and they show their gifts as they continued to rebound after 70 years in captivity.  They refused much of the help of the enemy who tried to infiltrate their labor force.  Many times it might have seemed practical to accept this help from the enemy, but God didn’t want them to do it.  This is because God knows that if Satan gets any little foot hold on us, he will come pouring in and will disrupt our lives.

So these people used discernment to ward off the enemy.  This is the same thing that you can do.  I don’t think that discernment is something that just a few people have.  For the most part we have to discern things just to get through life.  I doubt if there is a day that goes by where I don’t have to weigh one thing against something else.  Therefore, we all have discernment to a certain degree.

Discernment of right and wrong may be another matter.  One of the reasons why this might be so tough in our modern world is that we try to teach our young that there is no right or wrong.  It is pretty hard to discern what is wrong if everything is right.  So, you see, with the help of the devil, we have kind of dug ourselves into a hole.  But do not fear.  Jesus will help us.

When you go to Jesus to discern a decision, He might not tell you the answer straight out.  Most likely, He will give you the answer in the form of a feeling.  If something just doesn’t seem right, it might be Jesus talking to you.  If you aren’t sure if it is Jesus or not, then think, “Does the answer correspond with the teachings of the Bible?”  Jesus will only give you answers to these questions in accordance with the written word in the Bible.

And when you are on the go and need a decision quick, then you have to rely on your training in Christ and do what you think is best.  Again, if you have a feeling that something isn’t right, don’t do it.  And if you have a feeling that it is more than right, then do it with celebration.  The more time you spend on your knees in prayer, the easier will be these kinds of decisions.

Then when you get all squared away with your decision, you are to go after whatever the project with determination.  God contacted these people to go back and rebuild the Temple.  When they got there, they went after this project.  It would take many years for it to be completed but they started out with a bang.  There weren’t many of them and they weren’t about to let some of the nearby peoples deter them in any way, shape or form.

You were made to be like this.  I don’t know of any place in the Bible where it tells us that we are to form committees where we can gum things to death without doing anything.  It is not there.  If you know that it is right to help out someone, then just go ahead and do it.  You don’t have to ask permission to help someone.  If you know that we need something or need to do something so that we can have more effective ministry, then just do it.  I used to have a slogan that I lived by at the Post Office, which by the way, is one of the most ineffective organizations in the world due to meetings and corruption.  All government is like that and all government is inefficient.  Anyway, I would always conduct business by asking my superiors for forgiveness after the fact instead of asking first for permission.   I can tell you many instances where this worked just fine except I got in a little hot water.  The government needs more people running things like this instead of using the bobble head theory where no matter what the boss says, you agree.  Anyway, you need to take charge of things and work with determination.

The last thing that we need is direction.  Please remember again that this was the remnant returning to Jerusalem.  This wasn’t very many people.  This was only a small percentage of the people who were carried off 70 years earlier.  Also, these were the people who felt that something was missing in their lives.  There was a big hole in their lives that couldn’t be filled except by God.  The rest of the Jews in exile were like most people in this country.  You know the type.  They say that religion is all right as long as it doesn’t interfere with anything else in my life.  The remnant had a goal.  They had a purpose.  They were missing God and they were going back to rebuild His house and get back into a right relationship with Him.

You need direction also.  In our times it seems that Satan is calling all the shots.  However, remember that Jesus has already won the war.  Therefore, it is ok to fight back against some of the things that I talk about that are dragging God’s world into a black hole.

But the question needs to be raised, “What direction do you need in your own life?”  Do you need some help to get you to the point where you can go up against some of these other factions?  This is where many people are at today.  Our personal lives get to be such a mess that we sometimes just want to give up.  We don’t want to rebuild the Temple.  But I say to you “Don’t give up!”  You have the way to salvation.  You have the way to love.  You have the way to greater, better and longer lives.  Jesus Christ will help you every step of the way but you have to turn to Him and you have to turn to Him all the time.  He is your direction.  He is your life.

Jesus has given each of us the tools.  You have gifts and you have talents.  When you start to discern the good from the bad, then you will start to live.  For the first time in your life you will be really free.  Then you can go after the goals God has set out for you with determination and direction.  I had never known what satisfaction was until I first started to follow Jesus.  This is the love that He wants everyone to have.  Thank you, Jesus, for all the love that you give to each of us.  Let’s pray.