expanded version: Returning to the Lord (Ezra-Nehemiah) Nobody walks a straight path to God. We all veer off the path from time to time. Some more than others. Read the record: Adam started this departing, followed by Abraham who went down into Egypt. He had no business in Egypt where he bought a concubine named Hagar through whom he had Ishmael. His descendants have done nothing but cause trouble for the seed of Abraham and the world ever since. Then there are all the many mistakes Jacob the deceiver made. Time would fail to tell of all the Bible characters who got off the path. But thank God there is a way back. We may, by the grace of God, return to the Lord. I want to show the way back in the story that is given to us to show just that. The road back is just that, the road back. Nobody gets beamed up; returning is a process. We don’t leap frog back; we walk it back. To put something back together is much more difficult and time consuming than it is to break it. You can scald your spouse with a word, but it’ll take more than a word for things to get back where they were before. Returning to the Lord is a process. Judah backslid. God dealt harshly with them, as any good father would. Backsliding left Judah (and it leaves us) in bad shape. But God doesn’t leave them (or us) that way. Based on the promise of God they were returned to the land and to the Lord (Jeremiah 29:10). Christians today have precious promises of God’s relentless and unfailing love and faithfulness to His children. “For He Himself has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’” (Heb. 13:5) And, “Being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.” (Phil.1:6) Hebrews 12:5-11 tells us that “Whom the Lord loves He chastens and scourges every son whom He receives. If you are without chastening, then you are illegitimate and not sons.” There are two exoduses in the Old Testament (One from Egypt and one from Babylon) and in both of them God is calling His people back to Himself. The second one happened about a millennium after the first. And both were based on a promise given by God before they even backslid. (Genesis 15:13-14 and Jeremiah 25:11-12; 29:10-11) Backsliding is never a blowout; it’s always a slow leak. Jerusalem was brutally exiled into Babylon in three stages, each worse than the other. Now, 70 years later they begin to return to the land and to the Lord. Whenever Judah is not in their land, God is called, “The God of heaven.” But when they are in the land He is called, “The God of heaven and earth.” So a return to the land is a return to the God who gave them that land. It’s home to them. A return to the land is a return to the Lord. The return comes in three stages. The heart may return in a moment, but the life takes a process. Here is that process spelled out in detail in the one story of the Bible with the theme of restoration. I. Restoration – A Return to the Worship of God, Ezra 1-6; 1:2-3; 3:1-2; 6:14-16 The first wave of refugees to return were under Prince Zerubbabel and it was for the purpose of rebuilding the temple. The temple was the house of God and a foreshadowing of the New Testament house of God which is the church (Ephesians 2:19-22; 1 Peter 2:5). God may touch your heart out there in Babylon but you haven’t returned to the Lord until you are back in the house of God. The prodigal was awakened in a far country but he wasn’t restored until he was back in the father’s house. The first thing to be rebuilt in the house of God is the altar. That altar represents Jesus Christ, who is the real and true foundation of God’s house (1Pet.2:4-7). Without Him there is no house and there is no worship. God absolutely forbade His people to have an altar to worship God anywhere but at the temple in Jerusalem (Deut.12:4-5). This speaks of the uniqueness and sufficiency of Christ alone. When I say return to the house of God I am saying a return to the God who lives there. When the Prodigal Son first thought of going home he thought of his father’s house and those who lived there. And when he got up out of that pig pen he didn’t just go wandering about the countryside looking for his father; he went to his father’s house, because that’s where He lived and would be. You may be awakened to the need to return to the Lord in a pig pen, but you have not returned to the Lord until you are back in the Father’s house. In John’s gospel you will find Jesus at the temple in Jerusalem every time you turn around. He never missed an occasion to be at His Father’s house. And when He wasn’t there, He was, as was His custom, in a synagogue on the Sabbath. The first thing Abraham did when he got to the Promised Land was build an altar to worship God. The name of that place was Bethel, which means “the House of God.” And there he called on the name of the Lord (Gen.12:8). II. Revival – A Return to the Word of God, Ezra 7-10; Nehemiah 8:2-3 This is the definition of revival – a return to the Word of God. This cannot be done without the Spirit of God. And if it weren’t for the house of God there wouldn’t be a word of God, meaning there wouldn’t be a Scripture, for the Bible was written to the people of God, the church. In 2 Chron.34:15 King Josiah was told by Hilkiah the priest, “I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord.” That’s where the Bible was found and that’s where it belongs. Ezra was preeminently a man of the word. “For Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the Law of the Lord, and to do it, and to teach statures and ordinances in Israel.” (Ezra 7:10) To rightly worship the Truth we must know the truth, and the church is the pillar and ground of the truth (1Tim.3:15). The word of God is for the house of God. God calls and equips pastors, prophets, teachers and preachers to dispense the word to His people. Why would God go to all the trouble to call, equip and give these men if we didn’t need them? (Eph.4:11-13) III. Rebuilding – A Return to the Work of God, Nehemiah Nehemiah came to Jerusalem to rebuild the walls and this required work, and war. Worship and the word always results in work. Notice how Jesus ties these two together: “You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only you shall serve.” (Luke 4:8) We have not fully returned to the Lord until we are engaged in His work, for He has saved us for a purpose (Eph.2:10). The purpose of the word is to equip us for every good work (2Tim.3:16-17). We are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s building (1Cor.3:9). Of course this will require warfare. The workers on the wall had a trowel in one hand and a sword in the other (Neh.4:16-17). In Nehemiah you will read of the amazing cooperation of the workers so that they were able to build with breakneck speed; 52 days is all it took to rebuild those walls (Neh.6:15). This is why we need each other: to work together and to fight together. (Not to fight each other, but to fight together.) We can’t fight alone or without our sword. Whenever the work of God is progressing (either individually or corporately) there is sure to be opposition, from without and from within. There are forces inside of us and outside of us who do not want us returning to the Lord, because they know that is where we worship, work and war. Spiritual warfare is no joke; it is deadly serious (Eph.6:10-18). We need to be in the army to stand a chance to win these battles. Every construction site has many workers. The Bible is a worker’s manual and it is also a war manual. West Point cadets don’t sit around doing nothing after they graduate, forever studying the manual. This is a complete and thorough return to the Lord, and the appropriate setting for the Lord to come to us, as Jesus does in the New Testament. A prophet in the days of Nehemiah spoke for the Lord, “Behold, I send My messenger, and he will prepare the way before Me. And the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to His temple. Behold, He is coming, says the Lord of Hosts.” (Malachi 3:1-2) How perfect is the Bible! For us today this means, when we are all back in the house of worship, heeding the word and ready to work the Spirit comes, and Acts 2 comes to pass again. This is the restoration we seek in our day, to get back to Acts 2. This is a full return to the Lord. When this happens there is no more powerful a force in the earth. “Return to Me and I will return to you, says the Lord of hosts.” (Zechariah 1:3, another restoration prophet.)
Posted on: Thu, 11 Sep 2014 13:12:19 +0000