Zerubbabel

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

But I'm excited to be with you here today. I'm going to be with you again next week to continue this series that Pastor Drew has been leading you guys through this summer on Hidden Figures. And I'm very thankful to Pastor Drew for inviting me to do this because it has been eye-opening to me, which we'll get into, but it's been an awesome series, and I'm excited to talk to you guys today about Zerubbabel. And that is a mouthful of a name. And if you're like I mean, probably maybe haven't heard of him before. I didn't really know about him until I started studying for this sermon, but we're gonna be in Ezra chapter three, verses eight through 13 today. If you wanna go ahead and turn there, we'll get there in a little bit, but that's gonna be our main text for this morning. And so something I think that we can all relate to, that we can all say we have a shared experience over,

is that of COVID-19. I'm sure me just saying that causes some of you to stiffen up a little bit. I just got over COVID-19 this past week. I'm negative now, but last weekend, I definitely was in the full throes of it. I can say it is not fun, it was not pleasant. I felt like I got hit by a truck and then a very bad sinus infection cold for a couple days, and then now I'm feeling better. But I did miss some work out of it, which means I lost some business. It was not a good time, and I can tell you two and a half years later after the beginning of this pandemic, it is still around, it is still affecting us. In fact, many of us I think can say we probably share an experience around loss that has happened because of COVID. People have died because of this thing and you either know somebody that you have somebody that you love that has passed away from this or you know somebody

that has. Our family experienced this this past spring and any time that we gather as a family now that absence is still felt. I know that's true for many of you as well. I also know that this virus, this pandemic, has caused a lot of relationships to be destroyed. That there are differing views, there are hard stances on policies and procedures around this pandemic and people have taken sides and because of that loved ones relationships have been destroyed. I'm sure me saying the word mask or vaccine will probably cost some of you to flinch a little bit because there have been incendiary things said about these things. COVID-19 has turned our world upside down. In the business world, professionally, we've had to accommodate for this virus. If there's another outbreak, there may be another lockdown, local, state, federal policies and procedures that go into place that all give us all a headache, give us all

anxiety. And then one entity that has definitely felt the impact of COVID-19 is the church. The church has definitely changed because of this pandemic. Some ways good, some ways not so good. One of the positives that's come out of it is there's most churches now have some sort of online presence where they didn't before, whether that's being live on Facebook or prerecording it and releasing it on Sunday morning so that those that aren't able to be at church on a Sunday morning can still connect and worship with their local body. That's a great thing. That's awesome. But the downside of that is that there are some people that have left the church because of it. There are people that are still afraid to come back. They're still afraid of the virus. And there's also some people that just got out of the rhythm of it. They got out of coming, they stopped being in community, and they fell away.

And those are sad, unfortunate outcomes of this COVID-19 pandemic. And so now churches are having to revamp and rethink how they do discipleship, how they do evangelism and outreach, because we're no longer just trying to reach the unchurched, we're trying to reengage with the previously churched. COVID-19 has laid flat almost the foundation of what the church is or how, of what we knew the church to be. And so we've had to sort of rebuild coming out of it. Not totally, we have the bones, the structure of what the church was, of what it used to be, and we can use that, but things have had to change. A new foundation has had to be relayed. And I wanna ask you today to imagine what it would be like if the entirety of Christianity was looking to you to lay the foundation of what the church would be coming out of the pandemic? That's a little hard to imagine because the church

is at one building, it's not one entity, it's not one concept even. Two churches on the same block could look completely different, let alone around the globe. But what if, what if Christianity was looking to you to lay the foundation of what the church would be going forward? what kind of faith would it take to build such a foundation? And that's what we're going to look at today. A man who was in that position, this man, this figure of ours, Zerubbabel. He is a hidden figure of sorts. If you, we find him in the books of Ezra and Haggai and Nehemiah and, I'm sorry, not Nehemiah, Ezra, Haggai and Zechariah, and if you blink while reading these books you're going to miss Zerubbabel. He doesn't stand out off the page, and I don't know if you're like me, I'm guilty of this, but I'm reading the Old Testament and I come across names that are hard to pronounce or that I don't recognize, I kind of skim past

those just because I'm looking to get to those greater known figures, right, the the likes of David and Jacob and Abraham and those kinds of guys, right? The people that we know. But again, I'm thankful for Pastor Drew taking this route through Hidden Figures because these are people that we can identify with, these are people that we can see how God used them and the Old Testament to be part of God's plan and how we can be a part of God's plan today. And so Zerubbabel, he had a faith to build a foundation. He's an interesting man with an interesting story, like I said, he's easy to miss. We see him, like I said, in the books of Ezra, Haggai, and Zechariah. And some important context, Haggai and Zechariah, if you didn't know, they are mentioned by name in the book of Ezra. These are prophets at this time and they have their own books in the Bible. All right, they're the Haggai and Zechariah, they're the last, they're in

the last three. It's Hagia, Zechariah, and Malachi. And then Ezra, Nehemiah, takes place right after Chronicles. So, into the canon of our scripture, the order in which our scripture is laid out. There is a lot of pages and a lot of books between these three books, I'm sorry, but know that the stories, the events that are happening in these books are happening concurrently. And so So in the first two chapters of Ezra, we see the Israelites returning from exile. It's been 70 years since the Babylonians came in, conquered Jerusalem, and brought the Israelites back with them, and they've been in exile, they've been in captivity for the last 70 years. And then at the end of the 70 years, the king of Persia, King Cyrus, comes in and takes over Babylon and by a moving of the Holy Spirit he allows the Israelites to return to Jerusalem to build the temple. And we know that this is a moving of the Holy

Spirit because one scripture tells us that it is but also this is a fulfilling of prophecy from the book of Jeremiah. So we know that the Lord is moving he's allowing the king of Persia to allow these Hebrews to return home and to build their temple, a temple that to a God that these persons don't believe in. So the Holy Spirit's moving. And his return is led by two men, Joshua the high priest and Zerubbabel the governor. Now just again Joshua, this is not the same Joshua from the book of Numbers and Joshua the successor of Moses. This is Joshua the high priest. That's different guy, just so we know. And then Zerubbabel, he's the acting king of the governor. And another important note to make is that in Hebrew culture in Society of the Sime, there were three emphasized roles. There was that of the king, that of the prophet, and that of the priest. The king represented God's presence here on earth. The priest

represented the people's ability to connect with God, and the prophet represents the voice of God. And all three of these roles are present here in the book of Ezra. Now we rarely see any of these roles doubled up in one person. One name that does come to mind that did embody two roles was the priest-king Malchizedek, if you've heard of that, right? He was a priest-king so he had both of those roles. The only other person in the Old Testament that comes close to embodying all three is that of King David, but he never embodies all three at the same time. We don't ever see that until Jesus Christ. But these two men, the king and the priest, they're leading the charge back to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple, which makes sense because the temple is that representation of God on earth and it's where the people go to connect with God. So it makes sense that these two men are the ones leading the charge back. But

But again, our focus is on Zerubbabel. Joshua is over sort of the sacrifices and the offerings that would be taking place. Mr. Zerubbabel was more of the chief of operations. He's overseeing the construction. He's the king or the governor. And so Zerubbabel is tasked with this rebuilding. They get back and they're getting ready to do it and they immediately encounter some opposition. We see this play out in Haggai chapter 1, verses 2 through 6. And we see these Israelites, they come back and they want to build back their homes immediately. They are tasked, the whole point of going back was to build the temple, but they get back and they want to build their homes. And in verse 2, they say, the time has not yet come to rebuild the Lord's house, meaning the temple. They want to focus on building their own homes. And if we put ourselves in their shoes, it's easy to see why.

They had just been in captivity for the last 70 years. They've been in exile. They've probably heard many of them born in captivity, and they have been hearing stories of who they are as a people of God, this Hebrew nation, and this once great people that they were and now they've been in excellence. Now they're returning and I think they want to build something for themselves. They've been owned, now they want to own, they want to have some security. What do they, I imagine that they're thinking what are they gonna, they all gonna live in the temple, they're gonna sleep in the temple, they're gonna feel safe on the, huddled it around in the temple. I'm sure they were all huddled together wherever the Babylonians were keeping them. They wanted to go back and build their houses because they could. They finally could. Maybe not because they should. And I relate to this

because when it comes to finances. Now depending on the time of year, our budget is kind of on a roller coaster. I don't know if anyone can relate to that. Sometimes in the year we are sitting comfortable, we're sitting okay. Other times of the year we're hanging off our dear life. And in those times where we're hanging off our dear life, I am not a pleasant person to be around. You can I'm stressed out, I'm high strung, I am counting every dollar, I'm making sure that every cent is saved and when we do have to spend money it is a dagger in the heart. But then as soon as the paycheck hits the account and we're comfortable, I'm a new man. I'm relaxed, I'm good, everything's fine. In fact, yesterday spending $30 on eating out was going to give me an ulcer but today let's go do it. It's like, I want to spend that money to make me feel good, to make me feel like I have security.

And I think that's what these Israelites were doing. They had faith, but they had a faith to build comfort and security. They wanted to rely on what they could do to make themselves feel better, even though they were tasked with rebuilding the temple first. And thankfully, Zerubbabel had a faith to build a foundation. So we see the Lord's response to these people. It says in verses 3 through 6, it says, Then the word of the Lord came through the prophet Haggai. Is it time for you, for yourselves, to be living in your paneled houses, while this house remains in ruin, meaning the temple? Now this is what the Lord Almighty says, give careful thoughts to your ways. You have planted much, but harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink but never have your fill. You put on clothes but are not warm. You earn wages only to put them in a purse with no, with holes in it.

Ouch. That hits me right in the gut. See, I think like the Israelites, I am prone to do whatever I can to make myself feel like I have that safety and that security. And again, thankfully, people like Zerubabel exist and they know that they have a faith build a foundation because Zerubbabel knew that God had called them to build a temple. And if they didn't do that, whatever comfort and security they built through houses or whatever it means would not last. That's not what they were back for. So finally, the Israelites get into gear, Haggai and Zechariah, they whip them into gear and they get to rebuilding the temple, which we see in Ezra chapter 3 verses 8 through 13. And so let's read that together. In the second month of the second year, after their arrival in the house of God in Jerusalem, Zerubbabel, there's our guy, son of Sheol Tiel, Joshua, son of Jazadak, and the rest of the

people, the priests and the Levites and all who had returned from the captivity to Jerusalem began the work. They appointed Levites 20 years old and older. I don't know who is appointing 20 year olds to such an important task, but that's what they did. To supervise the building of the house of the Lord. Joshua and his sons and brothers, and Kadmiel and his sons, descendants of Haudevia, and the sons of Hennadad and their sons and brothers, all Levites joined together in supervising those working on the house of God. When the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord, the priest and their vestiments and with trumpets, and the Levites, The sons of Asaph with symbols took their places to praise the Lord as prescribed by David king of Israel. With praise and thanksgiving they sang to the Lord. He is good. His love toward Israel endures forever. And all the people gave a great shout of praise to the Lord because the foundation of the

house of the Lord was laid. But many of the older priests and Levites and family heads who had seen the former Temple wept aloud when they saw the foundation of this temple being laid, while many others shouted for joy. No one could distinguish the sounds of the shouts of joy from the sounds of weeping because the people made so much noise and the sound was heard far away." I think we can relate to that in our current political climate, shouts of joy and weeping. But this is an interesting passage in Zerubbabel, our guy, he's only mentioned once. At the very beginning, that's why I was saying earlier, if you blink, you'll miss him. He's easy to read right over, but the more you learn about who he is, his role, the more he stands out. You see, he was the king. So one, we have to think that these Israelites who were building their houses instead of building the temple. They were in direct rebellion of him. These older

generations, these older families that were complaining, they were complaining directly to him. Can you imagine complaining to the king, hey king, you're not doing it right. And why were they complaining? Because what it doesn't tell us here, but what we know is that the temple they were building back was smaller than the previous temple, the one that Solomon had built. And that might seem like a silly thing to complain over, but again, if we look into who Zerubbabel is and what their hopes were, it makes a little bit more sense. Because he's Zerubbabel, he was a direct descendant of King David, meaning that he was in that messianic line. He was potentially the next Messiah to these people. Now we have the benefit of knowing that he was not Jesus Christ, but He is an ancestor of Jesus Christ. And so he was in position to potentially be the Messiah. And I mean, he led them out of exile.

He was coming back to build the temple. There was probably a lot of hope going into who Zerubbabel was and what he was doing. And then when he started laying the foundation and they saw that it was smaller than the old temple, there might have been some questions. thinking that the temple, this was the representation of God to the world. If South Burleson Baptist was the representation of God to the world, we want it to be probably a little bit bigger, right? Now this is a great building, but if it was the representation, we might want it to be a little bigger, right? And this is the opposition that Zerubbabel is is facing. You see, I think again these older Israelites, they had great faith, but I think they were putting their faith, they wanted a faith that built tradition to go back to what was. I mean the temple that was there was laying in ruin. It was visible to them.

They wanted to rebuild that. They wanted to go back in time and stay with what was comfortable, they knew. And I think as churchgoers we can all relate to that. Change is hard in general. Change in the church, that will ruffle some feathers. One of the biggest offenders of this is music. Have you ever been a part of a church that went from hymns to modern worship music? It's hard. People leave over that kind of thing. Right? When there's turnaround, when the new guy comes in and he's not doing things the way that the old guy did it, there's friction there. And we've all experienced it coming out of COVID. The changes that have had to take place, it's hard. And we cling to what used to be. But church, I want to tell you today that if we put our hope and we put our faith in tradition, it's going to fail. Because traditions change, thankfully. I mean, I'm thankful that we don't do

church the way that it was done in the 1800s and 1600s. And I'm sure when we get 200 years from now, I probably wouldn't like the way church is done then. But change happens. And the Lord uses the church to reveal Himself, to bring Himself glory, however He does that, it's good. But we hang on to tradition is meaningful to us. Change is hard. But thankfully, he's a ruba-beau. again, he had the faith to build tradition, or to build a foundation. Despite the resistance he persevered, despite the opposition he persevered, he built the foundation, he built the temple, and it was then that these structures, the comfort, the security, the tradition, those things could be built. Without it they would fall. You see Zerubbabel had a lot to live up to. He had a lineage to honor. He was the potential Messiah, the end of Haggai, a sort of an exhortation, ordination of Zerubbabel. He probably believed he could be the Messiah,

but he didn't rely on any of that. He didn't rely on his own ability to rely on who he was supposed to be. He relied on the Lord. And we see that in Zechariah 4 chapter 4 verse 6 which says, So he said to me, This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel. Not by might nor by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord Almighty. See, this is how Zerubbabel laid the foundation, by relying on the Holy Spirit. And he did, he, through this reliance that he would lay the foundation, he would see the temple rebuilt, but he wouldn't see much past that. In fact, there's some question on whether he actually did get to see the temple rebuilt. And we know that he wasn't the Christ. He wasn't the Messiah. Thankfully, right, Zerubbabel Christ doesn't have quite the same ring to it. The Church of Zerubbabel Christ, that's not, that doesn't apply, right? But What he didn't know, what he was preparing for, is that this foundation that he laid,

this temple that was built, Jesus Christ would not some 500 years later walk the floors of it. He would study the Word and preach the Word within its walls. He would change the world from within this temple that Zerubbabel laid the foundation for. Can you imagine being in that position of building something that Jesus Christ would walk on that he would live in almost, that he would study within. It's a lot of pressure. It's a kind of faith, what kind of faith it would take to build such a foundation. And again I wasn't very aware of Zerubbabel before this sermon series. If there was any trivia questions where Zerubbabel was the answer I would have not got that question right. But as I studied more about him and got to know who he was the more I began to see myself in him. Not because I am a king or a governor. I don't have a royal lineage, at least I don't think. I think my life

would be a little different if it was, but because we both have a mission that is bigger than ourselves. Caesar Rubibel, he had to build the temple, the monument of the Jewish faith, of the representation of Yahweh. And we, you, me, we have the mission of sharing Christ and maybe that's evangelizing maybe that's going on mission trips maybe that's just loving our neighbor maybe that's loving our brothers and sisters who have different political views than us in any case it's a mission that is bigger than ourselves that we're not able to do on our own we have to rely on the Holy Spirit we have to rely on on the power of Jesus Christ. And it's then that we can carry out that mission. And you see, like Zerubbabel, we may not see the fruits of our labor. We may not see the outcomes of the conversations we have, the love that we share, but that's not what we're called to do.

We're called to rely on the Holy Spirit, to rely on Jesus Christ. It's by the power of the Holy Spirit that we were able to do what we're called to do. And Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians chapter 3 verse 16 that we are considered the temple of God Because we house the Holy Spirit within us so the question I want to ask you is what Foundation is your temple built on is it built on? Finances on your work on your own ability on family or like the Israelites is it built on comfort and tradition and security And if so, how long or will your foundation last?

Short answer is no, because the only way it'll last is by reliance on what Jesus Christ has already done. Having a faith that builds on the foundation, which is Christ Jesus. Then no matter what life throws at us, our temple won't fall. So I have a challenge for you today is to pray a dangerous prayer. I don't know if you've ever thought of prayers as being dangerous, but I don't know if you've ever asked God for something or asked him to do something for you, to reveal something, and you didn't like the answer. I mean, have you ever prayed for patience? Not often that God just gives you patience. He tries you, right? And then at the end of that, you get some patience. So this is a dangerous prayer. It's praying the words of Psalm 139 verses 23 through 24, which says, search me God and know my heart. Test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way of the everlasting.

See this this prayer is dangerous because it's asking for conviction. I don't know about you, but I don't necessarily like feeling conviction. I'm thankful for it, don't get me wrong, but being confronted with my sin is not a good feeling majority of the time. And so this prayer is asking for it. It's asking for God to reveal in you where you are building your foundation or where your faith is being built. And I believe if you pray this with sincerity, He's going to reveal those places to you and show you how you can start building on the foundation that is Christ Jesus. Because again, whatever life throws at us, be it COVID-19, be it finances, political turmoil, wherever our country is heading, gas prices, goodness, whatever life throws at us, your temple won't fall because you've built on the foundation that is Christ Jesus. Maybe today you're going, I don't know what that looks like, I don't

how to begin that process. I have an okay relationship with Jesus, but I'm not building anything on Him. That's kind of weird. We want to help you with that today. We want to pray with you. We want to talk with you, so don't leave today if you have questions. If you need prayer, we want to do that with you, because we want to help you build again on that foundation that is Christ Jesus. Let's pray. I thank you for showing us that that you are the foundation. That when we put our faith in you, that when we build on you, that no matter what life throws at us, that we will stay standing. And that whatever we're trying to build around us, whether it be comfort and security, or that it's if it's in you, then it's going to be good. It'll last, it'll stay. Even if times are even if we're hanging on for dear life. Father, I ask that you move this morning that you continue to speak to your people,

that you go before them and lead the way that you stay behind them and cover them and you walk alongside them to lift them up and to remind them that you are their foundation. Thank you, Jesus. We love you, it's your name we pray. Amen. Thank you, Justin, I appreciate it. This is our time of response where we go to the Lord in song and it's an opportunity to respond to what you heard, to be thinking about where you possibly could be building your foundations. If that's not on the rock, that is the Christ, then you're going to face destruction. It's not going to fail. And so, as we go into the time of worship, now's a good time to be praying through that. If you want somebody to pray with you, I'll be up here. you know if there's a brother sister beside you that you want to pray with do that as well so but let's go ahead and enter our time of response

that we'll receive, we'll welcome pardon, flesh, relief, because thy broad eye come. I want to thank everybody for coming today. Obviously, we're always here if you need to talk to us. Make sure you shake a hand, hug a neck, and we'll see you again soon.