Collierville First Baptist Church

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My name is Les Helton. I am blessed and honored to be the pastor to mature and senior adults, which is really all adults that are mature.

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(Congregation Laughing) No, we started that a couple of years ago

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for me to be able to reach all adults like me that mostly the kids are out of the home and maybe still working. And so it's adults above what they would call the active families, which are the ones who have the teenagers and the elementary school age kids because those are being ministered to through Will and his ministry there. So anyway, let me just share with you a couple things and we'll pray and get started. First of all, Pastor Chuck says, "Hello." He will be back here on Wednesday night next week.

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They did not arrive home until today.

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They were supposed to arrive home yesterday. There were some delays and things. And so they're very tired. I was planning on being here today anyway, just because he did not have the planning time,

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but they are home. And so he is looking forward to being back on this Wednesday night, studying next week. He will be starting the book of Daniel. I'm gonna mention just a little bit more on that in just a moment.

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And then also I wanna thank you for your patience in our carpet work that's being done

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as you came up and read the messages that tried to give, because we've got several equip groups going on in our church tonight and we needed to make sure everybody could get in. So one more reminder that you cannot go out these two doors right here.

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This is where they're working. This is the only place that they're working. So restrooms are back that way. They're right outside that door. There's even some up in the front lobby up that way. But anyway, I'm looking forward to tonight and doing this study with you. And we'll get into that in just a moment. We're gonna have a word of prayer. And I put this on the church prayer wall today

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as we pray and there are 100 needs out there that we can all pray for. And I know everyone is important, but just today, we found out about a young couple, family friends of ours that we've actually ministered to many, many years ago, especially when their mom was here and we were more friends with their mom and she moved away, if any of that makes sense. But Patrick and Elizabeth, they still live here in this area.

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Newly married couple for the last few years and she was expecting twins and she was involved in a car accident today and is critically ill and has lost the children, lost the twins.

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And so that was gonna be our friends' first grandchildren.

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We are immediately, Lisa and I began praying that this would be something that would draw them more to the Lord, closer to the Lord if they already know him. But we've been ministering to them and we just hope that that does that. So I'm gonna be praying for them. And if you think about it, and I've got them on the prayer wall to be praying for them, I've already received emails that people are praying for them. But let's just do that just now as we begin. Father in heaven, Lord, we thank you

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that you are a God who has given us your word. You've given it to us in a form where we can take it and absorb it and use it. It is to feed us and nourish us. And I pray that that's what would take place tonight from your word that you have given to my heart to share with this group tonight and to put into their hearts and into their minds.

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Lord, I pray for every need, the greatest needs of every heart in this room.

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Praying, Lord, that you would attend to those needs as we pour out and cry out to you, Lord, for many, many things. But Lord, I pray for Tricia and her children, her son Patrick and his wife Elizabeth, and the difficulty going through right now, Lord,

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that you would use this time to glorify yourself in their lives. And we thank you, Lord, for these moments together. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.

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You've got your worship guide there. Turn to the book of Ezra.

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I'll give you about eight minutes to find it.

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And we're gonna look at the book of Ezra. The real reason I thought about this is that Pastor Chuck had already shared with you and shared with the church and in personal conversation that he's gonna be teaching on the book of Daniel.

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Ezra is similar to that time in the Old Testament. It is later than the timing of Daniel, although so many of the books, as we're gonna see, kinda jump around in the timing of their history. If you've ever studied the Bible chronologically, you kinda know that. You almost sometimes take these few chapters and you put it over here into these few chapters and it works out that way. And we're gonna actually see kinda how that works tonight in the book of Ezra.

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First and second Kings, first and second Chronicles, Ezra-Nehemiah, that's where Ezra falls in the Old Testament.

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This is the way we're gonna do this. We're gonna look at the entire book of Ezra. It's only 10 chapters. We only have an hour, I understand. And so we'll get this done. And I've wanted to do that in tonight's study. It kinda reminds me a little bit of, I've been the pastor of senior adults here for about 18 of the 22 years that I've been here. Wouldn't do anything different, wouldn't do anything else. I love it. I love the people, love the church, love my pastor and the people I work with. But this reminds me a little bit of what we're gonna do tonight of talking to a senior adult and asking Miss Nettie Sue, how's your brother-in-law doing, Nettie Sue? And Nettie Sue begins to give me a story with minute details. And she starts saying, well, he's doing all right. He was in the hospital in Birmingham. No, it wasn't Birmingham. He'd gone back down to Mobile and he was in the hospital. They put him in on Thursday. No, I think it was actually Tuesday that they put him in the hospital. You get what I mean? Okay, we get all these little fine details and all I want is a flyover. Okay, just give me a little flyover. That's kinda what we're gonna do with the book of Ezra tonight. We're gonna do it in a flyover while pointing out just a few things here that are very important with one of my favorite things that you see in the Old Testament, which really is all throughout the Old Testament is what God is doing in the Old Testament and how it blends in with our lives as we walk with Christ today, in this very day and age today. And God is doing that through Ezra. So let's take a look at this.

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First of all, I've given you a little bit of information about him. He was of priestly descent of the tribe of Levi and a descendant of Aaron.

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He was a scholar in the word of God, the scrolls, specifically the Torah, the first five books of the Bible that we know of. He had a heart for worship. Oh, I love that part. We're gonna see that here in just a few moments. And I love seeing what Hebrew names and Hebrew words are here. His name, oh, oh, by the way, this is a fill in the blank test. I didn't know if you knew that or not.

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But here's the good part. Those of you that have heard me teach before, I love to teach this way. It kind of keeps you awake and you're listening for that next blank. Here's your first blank. His name in Hebrew means aid, A-I-D, aid. He is giving aid.

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And that's what his name means.

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His writings are very much filled with prophecy,

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excuse me, fulfilling prophecy.

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I want you to, I've given you these verses here. You don't necessarily have to turn them. So I think I've put those down and I believe they're also gonna be on the screen. This is amazing, these first two points of prophecy fulfilled by Ezra. In Isaiah chapter 44, 28, chapter four of verse 28 and 45, one, Isaiah the prophet names King Cyrus specifically. He doesn't just say a king is going to release the captives in Israel. He says a king named Cyrus. It is I who says of Cyrus, he is my shepherd and he will perform all my desire. And of Jerusalem, she will be built and the temple, your foundation shall be laid. Those are the words of the Lord that Isaiah prophesied naming King Cyrus. And then it says in 45, one, this is what the Lord says to Cyrus, his anointed, whom I have taken by the right hand to subdue nations before him and to undo the weapons built on the waste of kings to open doors before him so that gates will not be shut. If they had been in exile, they wouldn't be able to do that. And here is Isaiah hundreds of years before recording this. And Daniel and Jeremiah record that Israel will be in exile 70 years and Ezra one, one, look at that with me. Now in the first year of King of Cyrus, King of Persia, there it is.

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In order to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, King of Persia, so that he sent a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and also put it in writing saying verse two, thus says Cyrus, King of Persia, the Lord, the God of heaven has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and he has appointed me to build him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Something very, very interesting about that verse and a few more verses later, my Bible opens up this way. I've got Ezra over here and second Chronicles ends over here. Okay, yours may be like this too, or you may have to flip a page. I want you to look at the last two verses of second Chronicles. I don't even have to turn a page. I want you to look at the last two verses. Now in the first year of Cyrus, King of Persia, doesn't that sound familiar?

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Okay, well, Ezra is believed to be the writer of first and second Chronicles and the book of Ezra

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and the book of Nehemiah.

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Nehemiah sounds like first person, but as it begins, it says, these are the words of Nehemiah and Ezra writes it in first person term from the point of Nehemiah. That information probably given to him personally by Nehemiah because Ezra and Nehemiah were contemporaries.

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So the end of second Chronicles and those first few verses of Ezra are almost exactly identical.

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So here's what, oh, I need to give you one more blank here. I love this part right here. There are many, many scholars that believe

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Ezra wrote Psalm, any guesses?

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One, 19, the longest chapter in the whole Bible because of its focus on God's word. That's how much he loved the word. There are others that believe it was Daniel and Daniel wrote that during exile, but most scholars believe because we don't know the writers of many of the Psalms, Psalm 119 being the one that we're not really 100% sure about, but many believe it was Ezra that wrote that and then that book of Psalms was put together through all of the years and it was a compilation of praise and prayers to the Lord. So what's happening in the book of Ezra is he is giving an account of the release of the Israelites in their 70 years of exile or really captivity. They were exiled to Babylon

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and this is the time of the release. This is what they've been praying for. This is what they had been prophesied to have to happen and they knew was gonna happen and then all of a sudden it happened. 70 years of captivity and Ezra, as you see, he is gonna be narrating this from a sense of history because he's not involved in this first part of it. You'll understand that as we go through all of this, but I love how he begins in the kind of the second phrase of verse one, in order to fulfill the word of the Lord. For him to be able to say that and for us to look at prophecy and understand that today, we have the canon. We have the entire Bible that the Lord has put together and we can go back in and look at it. Ezra had to study the scrolls and come up with this and so for him to boldly say to fulfill the word of the Lord, but he knew it because he was familiar with the scriptures in order to fulfill the word of the Lord.

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Now, in verse three, King Cyrus is giving permission for the Israelites, all of the Jews to return to the land of Israel. It is not a command. It is not a command. And so the people have a choice. The people of Israel have a choice. A little bit more about that in just a moment. Now, this may have been an omission that Cyrus was at least fearful of God. There are many who believe that King Cyrus actually knew the Lord and had a saving relationship with him. It probably could have been Daniel

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that spent more time with him than anyone

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to lead him to a relationship, a saving relationship with God looking forward to the Messiah coming. There are many that think he was still pagan at this time and God was just using him and speaking his prophecy through him. That's not something that we're gonna decide or even have to decide tonight.

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The reason he didn't make it a command is that he may have wanted to have many of the Jews stay, just remain in Babylon under his command. But what we do know is that God is sovereign and he uses leaders lost and saved for his purposes in his own way, right? Amen about that.

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All right, so verse five and six show us that those then who are gonna rise up and return to Jerusalem, 70 years of captivity, and those that are gonna rise up is really a small group in comparison to the number of people that were in the Jews it was that were in captivity in Babylon. If you do the math in chapter two, okay, just turn over there and look at that, okay, all those numbers and don't do that right now, okay.

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But if you do the math, you will see that it's almost exactly right at about 50,000 people of the millions of Jews that rose up and began the journey back to Jerusalem. And then when Ezra returned later on that we'll read, there was only a few thousand, 5,000 or so that they think went up to him. So when you look at this group in verse five of chapter one, then the heads of fathers' households of Judah and Benjamin and the priest and the Levites arose, even everyone whose spirit God had stirred up to go and rebuild the house of the Lord, which is in Jerusalem. So when you look into detail into that passage right there, it's an older group, okay. They're an aged group that God stirred up. There was a reason, we don't really know why some chose, there's a couple of things that we're gonna look at. Why had some chosen, more of them chosen not to go.

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And we know this other fact too, that the Jews had multiplied during the 70 years, they had been fruitful and also they had been very blessed during with physical needs, with monetary things in captivity.

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Jumping back now to verse four, it says here that they had been blessed in making good homes and good livings in Babylon. Every survivor, whatever place he may live, let the men of that place support him with silver and gold, with goods and cattle, together with a freewill offering for the house of God, which is in Jerusalem. So they had things to give.

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How did that happen? They had a tremendous amount of wealth. Well, very briefly, what had happened was,

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Belshazzar, and I hope I'm saying the right name, I'm trying to do this by memory, had taken the things of Israel and out of the temple and stored them away. Cyrus had them brought out, and not only did they have them brought it, he brought them out to use, but he brought them out in order to pay the work of the Jews that were doing the work there. And so they were regaining the gold and silver and precious things that actually had been put away

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by the evil king, and now Cyrus was bringing those out. And so they had gained wealth during their 70 years of captivity. So there's two schools of thought about those who did not go up to Jerusalem. Okay, the first one is, most of them had settled down,

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they were younger generations, and they began, it was a pretty good life. It was a pretty good life there.

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At whatever place he may live, they got to choose in Babylon where they wanted to live, which refers to their home. And they had valuable assets, and they gave as a free will offering. So things were going pretty good for them, and so maybe they were just happy living in exile,

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but they were out of the will of God.

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Things were really not in their favor,

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as we see in the story of Esther. Write that down there. Okay, when you look at the story of Esther, this is during exile, they had their houses, they had their goods, but they were still slaves, being treated as slaves in exile, and wanted to be free, wanted freedom in their lives.

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There was no spirit of enmity, enmity, make sure I don't say, you don't hear me say enemy. No spirit of enmity among those who stayed, and those who left. I think that's very appropriate, very good, because they supported those who went. So that's one school of thought. The second school of thought is, perhaps those who stayed were strictly in the will of God. It was God's will to leave them there as missionaries in that land.

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What they were doing was they were being missionaries in Babylon, but they were sending out missionaries. That's kind of like what we do as a church.

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Not everyone needs to go out into the mission field, but we can support them, and we can stand behind them, we can pray for them. In the US military today, it is estimated that for every soldier going out in warfare on the front lines, there are at least 10 people behind him providing some sort of some kind. And that's what they were doing there. I found this quote from bible.org that I gave you. We should realize the courage and faith of those who chose to return. We know that some of those who made this trek were very elderly. This trip was approximately 800 miles, taking several months for them to travel. There were grave dangers involved in such a journey, especially for a group that was carrying so many valuable objects with them, but the Lord blessed them in their journey. So as we live on this side of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, what we can learn about this is, just like they are freed from the slavery

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and the bondage that they had in Babylon, we are free from the bondage and the slavery of sin.

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There's no wall around us as believers, keeping us in one place, keeping us in sin. We are freed from that. Do we fall back into sin still? Yes, because we're imperfect human beings and we're looking forward to being perfect one day. That's one of my favorite things about heaven, thinking about is no more sin, no more sin.

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And so we can be freed from that, but thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching which you were entrusted. And after being freed from sin, you became slaves to righteousness.

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We can be unified with God.

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I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. We don't have to go to someone else to have fellowship with God. God, the Holy Spirit lives inside of us. We can use our resources to worship and serve the Lord freely. First Peter 4.10 says, as each one has received a special gift, employ it in serving one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. Now, these next two blanks, you're gonna have to fill in here, okay? I'm not pointing fingers.

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We can never be too old,

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too weak or too poor

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to be in God's will for sending out his love and light to a world that needs it so much. We can never be too old. I remember hearing when I was a child growing up in the same church for my first 18 years of life, of these older ladies in the church, and I knew them by name, I saw them. It was a church of 300, so we kind of knew most of the folks in there, and they were just known as great prayer warriors. And I remember thinking, well, you know, that's probably all they can do. And I wasn't thinking of that in any kind of humorous way because that's all they could do. They were prayer warriors, and they were supporting the work of the Lord, never too old.

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Now, we're gonna quickly look at chapters two and three. God is blessed and blesses us when we worship him. First of all, God is gonna prepare us for his work. I'm gonna run through a couple of these things that I need to just jump through. When you look at chapter two, and there's all these names and all these numbers and all these families and people and cities in here, in verse two, you see Nehemiah and Mordecai. These are not the Nehemiah and Mordecai that we know because their timeline does not fit this very moment right now, just a common name, all right? But I wanna point out something else. Look down at verse 23, okay? And it has to be one of these unusual names.

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The men of Anathoth,

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128, okay? If you're reading all of these names, the sons of, the sons of, and then all of a sudden you get to the men of, all of a sudden it's not talking about a family, it's talking about a place, the men of. So Anathoth is a city,

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and it refers to the men as others. In fact, look down a few more verses and you see, or actually back a few verses and you see Bethlehem. There's the city where our Lord was born. It's talking about these cities. And so this particular city, Jeremiah was in prison. You read about this in Jeremiah chapter 32. He was in prison. He was just at a lowest of low, but the Lord came to him and gave him a really interesting and specific thing to do while he was in prison. The Lord said, "I want you to buy a city."

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Kind of an odd thing. The Lord, I'm hearing in house arrest, it was more like a house arrest. He was not in a dungeon at this time.

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And he could go out to the courts of the house where he was actually in under house arrest. And God says, "I want you to buy a city." So Jeremiah's thinking, "Well, okay." Well then all of a sudden his uncle shows up one day. This is true. This is in Jeremiah 32. I'm paraphrasing this. His uncle shows up and says, "I've got a city, Jeremiah, I want you to buy it. You are the kinsmen redeemer. You are the rightful redeemer to buy this city." Jeremiah says, "Okay, I think I'm gonna do that." And the word of the Lord came to him and says, "Of Anathoth, people will live there and build their houses and fields and vineyards again will be bought in this land." And so this land was gonna be brought back to Israel again. Another unusual thing about these chapters that have numbers in them is that there were 128 right this down, singers, 128 singers who returned. Verse 41, "These people talented, they totaled more than the temple musicians, the gatekeepers, the guardians, officials, judges and craftsmen combined. You read some things in here where the sons of the gatekeepers or the sons of the craftsmen, but the actual craftsmen and gatekeepers, the singers were more than all of these combined. There was a serious time of worship involved and these people going back, a spirit of praise and worship in their return to Jerusalem.

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Very briefly, this chapter ends with some who were permitted to return, but they didn't have a pedigree as a Jew. I'm gonna use that word. They didn't have a pedigree as a Jew because their children had intermarried. They were priests and their children had intermarried during this time of exile. And so they were not considered priests or clean enough in their family line to go and be a priest, but they were allowed to return. To me, this shows, and that's at the end of chapter two, this shows in the New Testament, 2 Peter 3.9, "The Lord is not slow about his promise

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as some count slowness, but is patient towards you, not wishing for," read this with me, "any to perish, but all for come to repentance." I believe it's that same thing there that is showing us the same thing that these people, although they had allowed their children to intermarry,

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were still allowed to return back to Jerusalem. Now, also in chapter three, they put first things first.

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Chapter three, "Now when the seventh month came and the sons of Israel were in the cities, the people gathered together as one man in Jerusalem. Then, Jeshua, the son of hard word, and his brothers and the priests, and Zerubbabel, the son of another hard word, and his brother, Rose, and built the altar of God to Israel and burnt offerings on it, as it is written in the law of Moses, the man of God.

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So they set up an altar on its foundation, for they were terrified because of the people of the land, and they offered burnt offerings on it to the Lord. Burn offerings morning and evening." This was the first thing that they did. They went in and they set up altars and worshiped the Lord.

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Then what this did was this perpetuated, a big word there, a life of worship, a perpetual life of worship, like we should be doing today. Worship doesn't just happen when the music starts, or when our favorite song comes on, or when we're here at 1045.

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It should happen in our lives all the time, perpetual worship, verses four and six. They celebrated, of chapter three, verses four through six, "They celebrated the feast of booths as it is written, and offered the fixed number of burnt offerings daily, according to the ordinance as each day required. And afterward, there was a continual burnt offering, a continual burnt offering that was always going, because they wanted worship to always be a part of their lives." First Corinthians 1031 says, "So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God." In my life as a recreation pastor and minister, handling sports in that way, and sharing Christ through that, I've always used this verse as a base verse in this, whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. That's why we have upward basketball. That's why we have some fields and some playground out here. That's why we have our music programs. That's why we have wonderful children's programs. All of these programs and events are drawing people to worship, to worship the Lord Jesus Christ.

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Then there was a result of unity.

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This is probably the most important part of all of this in the book of Ezra that we're looking at. Verse eight in chapter three, we're still looking at this.

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Zerubbabel, I'm kind of starting in the middle of verse. There's Zerubbabel, the son of, well, there's hard word again. And Jesuah, the son of Jezodak, and the rest of the brothers, and the priests, and the Levites, and all who came from the captivity began the work.

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Then verse, and then down there in verse nine, the sons of brothers, the sons and brothers stood united.

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I love that phrase. Verse 11, skip down a little bit. They sang, praising and giving thanks to God. And all the people shouted with a great shout.

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You know, that just tells you right there, we make fun of this, singing a joyful noise.

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But everyone should praise the Lord vocally if you can. Everyone should praise the Lord. Even if you're just speaking the words out loud while we're singing songs, or to yourself, or in the car, or at home, or anytime you're worshiping the Lord. So when God's people gather and stand and work together, God can do amazing things. Goals can be accomplished. God is glorified. Romans 15, five and six says, now may the God who gives perseverance and encouragement grant you to be of the same mind with one another according to Christ Jesus, so that with one accord you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Do you think there Paul, the word one is important to Paul in that verse? He repeats it several times in unity together. And then in Philippians, he wrote, make my joy complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose. I heard someone say one time, if there were to be an 11th commandment, if there were to be an 11th commandment, it would probably be there shall be unity. God can do so much through unity. But then there was an unusual response. I want you to just look at this for just a moment in wrapping up chapter, this part in chapter three right here. While praise was going on, verse 12, yet many of the priests and the Levites and heads of the father's households,

[01:33:42;58 - 01:34:35;55]
the old men who had seen the first temple wept with a loud voice when the foundation of this house was laid before their eyes, while many shouted aloud for joy. To go and read it says, some people standing around couldn't even tell the difference between the weeping and the joy. Why did they weep? Well, they may have been thinking, these younger folks have no idea what that old temple looked like. I wish they could see, I wish they could, probably Ezra wasn't there at this time, but they were probably like Ezra who we believe was born in captivity. And they're just thinking that, and it'll never be as good. Maybe their crying was negative. Maybe it was more of realizing that their choices as young men, parentheses sin,

[01:34:37;05 - 01:34:42;32]
led to the fall of the kingdom and the destruction of the temple in the first place.

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They were thinking back to better decisions that they could make. Warren Wiersby says, the past must be a rudder to guide us and not an anchor to hold us back. I liked that. Did I put that in your notes? Do you have that Wiersby quote?

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So the things that are remarkable about this group right now, I've given you the first letter. Can you come up with that? Unity.

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And then the second word is, what I'm giving you about worship is zeal. I love the word zeal and zealous. They had a zeal and then obedience

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according to the word. They worshiped according to the word that God had given them. And then the final word being worship.

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Boy, what a great plan to follow. Unity, zeal, obedience, and worship.

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God is faithful even through opposition and fear. We move on into the next few chapters here.

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Opportunity and opposition.

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I put the word usually in your notes right here, but I'm gonna go ahead, I scratched that out this afternoon. Almost always go together.

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Opportunity and opposition almost always go together.

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Chapter four, verse one. When the enemies of Judah and Benjamin heard that the people of the exile were building a temple to the Lord God of Israel, they approached Zerubbabel. Zerubbabel was the leader of this first group of 50,000 that went back to Israel. And the heads of the father's household and said to them, let us build with you for we like you seek your God. And we have been sacrificing to him since the days of a charadun, king of Assyria who brought us up here. And while they were saying that, this is what they were doing. Y'all know what that means. Are y'all old enough, can you see my fingers?

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That's just what they were doing. Yeah, we'll help you, we'll help you do that. They were actually tricking them because they wanted to foil their plans.

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And so the people of Israel began to realize,

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we don't need you to come in and help us. Sometimes help sounds good,

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but it's like fellas, it's like sometimes when we walk through the kitchen, we're in the way, okay, when a meal's being prepared. Sometimes help is good, we think we're helping, but we don't really need to be helping.

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But we've got to maintain a separated position and not hinder God's work. However, separation should never become isolation. These people that were coming to them already lived in and around Israel. They had come in during that time of Israel and they had set up their homes there. And then here these people are coming back, they're gonna take over the city and they're gonna build this temple and there's no telling what they can do. We hear there are millions left over there that are gonna come back. So they didn't want this to happen.

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Lost people are everywhere, so we can't really separate ourselves from the lost world. We don't want to associate with them and that being associate being becoming like them, becoming like them. We don't need to associate with them in that, but we associate with them in the aspect of being able to share Christ with the world. It's hard to be away from lost folks. You know, there's lost folks next door. There's lost folks down the street. There's lost folks in our home or in our family and we are there for a reason to share the gospel with them.

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We can't let fear come into our lives and lead us to be more interested in our own protection, our own self-interest. Even when it makes a little bit more sense to follow what the world is saying. These people that are adversaries of the work that's being done by the Israelites, they're saying in verse four, then the people of the land discouraged the people of Judah and frightened them from building. You know, that's scary. I don't think I'll continue on doing that. That's kind of scary. Now we need to be wise. We need to use the sense, the common sense that God has given us, but if God has given us a direction,

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then we need to move forward and be a part of what God is doing. We understand that when fear comes in our way.

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And then sometimes the people

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can look back at other failures. You know what they called them? They called them a rebellious city.

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In verses 12 and 15 of chapter four,

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the enemy called them a rebellious city. Now they may have just kind of been coming up with that as a name, but what they were probably remembering is what they themselves or their ancestors had seen

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in Jerusalem before Israel was taken into captivity. They were not living for the Lord.

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There was no difference in the Jews and how they lived and the worldly people. So they called it a rebellious city. They don't want another rebellious city here. And so that's why they were against Israel. So they stopped the work.

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The people of Israel stopped the work. Now, our response to worldly people is important.

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They began the work again. The priests got together, encouraged the people. And in chapter five, they began the work again. Five, one, when the prophets Haggai the prophet and Zechariah the son of Edo prophesied to the Jews who were in Judah and Jerusalem in the name of God of Israel who was over them. Then Zerubbabel, this is the leader, the son of Shealtel and Jeshua, the son of Jezodak arose and began to rebuild the house of God, which is in Jerusalem. And the prophets of God were there supporting them. So they started up the opposition again. And so more, I mean, excuse me, they started up the temple again, but more opposition came in. And we read that continuing in chapter five.

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And I'm gonna just kind of fly this part right here. We have got to act toward lost people with wisdom, peace and graciousness. Colossians four or five says, "Conduct yourselves with wisdom toward outsiders, "making the most of every opportunity. "We must submit to governing authorities." Romans 13, one says, "Every person is in subject to the governing authorities "for there is no authority except from God "and those which exist are established by God." God had Cyrus there for that very purpose and that very reason. God uses kings and laws to allow us to do his work.

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And then what's happening in chapter six is that the people came to him and they wrote, they wrote Cyrus a letter and the letter is in chapter five. And they said, this is what's happening. These people have come over, they had a rebellious city. They're not much different than we are, but we don't want them here. They're talking about some strange God of heaven. And by the way, I didn't say this when we first started this. In chapter one, when you read King Cyrus's decree, he says the God of heaven, it's the first time that phrase is used in the Bible. The God, and it was unusual. It was unusual that he used that. Well, because the reason it was unusual was that it was the God of the temple and that's the way the Jews had known of it. God would come down and manifest himself in the temple. He would speak to the priest or he would speak through the prophets. They would come out and then therefore tell the people what the prophecy, what God was saying. And so that's where God dwelled. And then they would see a pillar of smoke or fire or whatever go away. And they knew that God was not there at that time. That was kind of the God of the temple. He's referring to it as the God of the heaven over everything, over everything, the God of heaven. And so what's happening then is the enemy writes this letter to Cyrus and they said, they said these people have said that, no, excuse me, to Darius. I've gotten ahead of myself. I'm going so fast. Am I going too fast for you? Okay, hopefully your notes are okay and you can kind of follow up with that. So Darius, they write a letter to Darius, King Darius and they say, hey, they're saying that there's this King Cyrus and he gave a decree and this sounds real fishy. That's not the way words in here, but anyway, that's my paraphrase. And so we want you to put a stop to this. So what Darius does is he gets his people to start researching and digging literally to find this decree that Cyrus sent and they find it.

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And Darius reads it and he says, I agree with this. We're going to let them go ahead and build in chapter six.

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And so we need to remember in dedicating ourselves, remember God's faithfulness in what he says and what he does. Now, again, pointing out one little thing here,

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their worship in verse, so that's happened in verse 18. Let me read this. Then they appointed the priests to their divisions

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and the Levites in their orders for the service of God in Jerusalem as it is written in the book of Moses.

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So their worship was ordained by God. Put that in your last blank. Have I kept you up with the blanks so far? I think so. I think we've kept up here. Their worship was ordained by God. And so we read in that one verse that the worship included the word and music, the word and music as designed by God. And so we can have some pretty good worship if we just got together on a Sunday morning and just read the word and prayed.

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But we have worship. We get hearts and souls ready and stirred up by wonderful melodies and by wonderful words and just being a part of the worship, we get to be a part of that.

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They had not celebrated the Passover in 70 years. And they were so excited because now they're celebrating the Passover in the temple. Very quickly, chapter seven and eight.

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This is the point where you actually fast forward about 62 years is what most of us come up with in this time. Ezra has now led a group of 5,000 to that journey himself, 800 miles. It was actually, as you look at one of the last few years, it was actually from east to west back over into Jerusalem that 800 mile trek, a hard trek. And he is now there in Israel as the temple is being built. And he's there to help lead the people once again, back into a true life of worship. And so everything that he's doing is a very important part and so everything that was written down before was written down as historical fact. Now he's writing down and he speaks as I in some of these next chapters and he speaks as Ezra, third person in some of these chapters. But anyway, he is there and he's writing this down as this takes place.

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Why would the Lord use this man Ezra? I want you to notice something.

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How many times it says, well, six times is what it says in chapter seven and eight, the good hand of the Lord was upon me.

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Despite all skills, ability, charisma, et cetera, a person has, if God hand is not upon us, he will not accomplish his will through us.

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Jesus said in John 15, apart from me, you can do nothing. It's worthless apart from God.

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God wants to bless the descendants of the godly, kind of jumping ahead a little bit of this.

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What if you have no godly heritage?

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Ezra may have godly heritage, you may have godly heritage. I have godly heritage in both sides of my family's mind and with Lisa's. What if you have no godly heritage? God still wants to take you and use you because you can learn and like Warren Roozve said, let your history be a rudder to direct how your future goes.

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Abraham Lincoln was asked about his heritage, specifically his grandfather, and this was kind of a heckler back in those days in the world of politics. Yes, 200 years ago, they were still doing that.

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And his reply was, this is so wonderful.

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I don't know who my grandfather was.

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I am much more concerned about what his grandson will be.

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Let me read that again. I don't know who my grandfather was. I'm much more concerned what his grandson will be, looking ahead and not looking back.

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So verse 10 of chapter seven. Let's just kind of look at this because there's incredible things in here. "For Ezra had set his heart to study the law of the Lord "and to practice it and to teach his statutes "and ordinances in Israel." That's why the hand of the Lord was upon him. God's word, he was gonna take it, he was gonna use it, he was gonna live by it, obey it, practice it, and he was gonna use it. Is that not the method of discipleship? John Aaron even talked about that Sunday. That is the method of discipleship. And that's why the hand of God was upon him. So his careful study of the word, his character lived out by the word and his cherished teaching of the word. He wanted to be a teacher of the word. So I've given you these words here to fill in that begin with the letter P. How will the hand of God be a teacher of the word? That begin with the letter P. How will the hand of God be upon us?

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We must have a prepared heart.

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Agree with me with the psalmist. Oh, now I love your law. It is my meditation most of the day. Is that right?

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All of the day.

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And gee, that comes out of Psalm 119. Isn't that good? We must practice God's concepts. Just like Ezra did. Practice God's law. Living it out in our daily lives.

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James says, "But prove yourselves doers of the word "and not just hearers who deceive themselves. "Then we must live in the power of the Holy Spirit."

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Understanding that we have the Holy Spirit that lives inside of us. We've not received the spirit of the world, but the spirit who is from God. We've received the spirit who is from God that we may know the things freely given to us by God so that we may know God's word. We also speak these things. Not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the spirit combining spiritual thoughts and spiritual words.

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Now the last two chapters are interesting in that it shows a little bit more of the activity of Ezra being there with the people. Chapters nine and 10. Being an instructor. It's always good to have an instructor. Today we have many modes of instructors. We have instructors on our phone. We have instructors on the internet. We have books that we can read and we can flip back and rewind and listen to that again and watch it. And I do that often. But it's great to have a personal instructor as well. And he was a personal instructor to the people there.

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So there is a picture here, a description of God's grace in these last two chapters.

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Ezra knew how to pray, especially in times of crisis.

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And he was, I love this phrase. I got a lot of this from J. Verna McGee's commentaries. I love that man's teaching and his commentary. He was on speaking terms with God at all times.

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The theme of this chapter is prayers of confession.

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If my people will humble themselves and pray

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and seek my face and turn from their evil ways, I will forgive them and heal their land. You know who more than likely wrote that? It's in First Chronicles, Ezra. Ezra wrote that. He talks a little bit about the purpose of not intermarrying. Now, I just wanna share this one thing with you real quickly. This is not talking about intermarrying of people of different nationalities, okay? Here is one of your last blanks that you actually fill in.

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Well, the second one. If that's true, how could the book of Ruth be explained? She was a Moabites and she married into God's family and she is in the lineage of Jesus Christ, our savior. So it's not nationality of intermarrying, it's morality of intermarrying. Not nationality, but morality. Don't be unequally yoked.

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So we understand, excuse me, we don't need to underestimate the power and prayers of one believer. Ezra wept bitterly, we read in chapter 10.

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Shekiniah that I've tried to read before became a spokesman for the people and he was humble and he actually included himself in the sins of that had been committed of not trusting the Lord and not living for the Lord. But his hope became a plan and he was willing to follow Ezra's direction.

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Ezra fasted and prayed that we read,

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which is the best way for a godly leader to do that in making critical decisions especially.

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But sometimes plans change. You don't want to change their plans. What happened was, Ezra was gonna take care of these people that had intermarried that were not Israelites. He was gonna take care of these people. He said, in chapter 10 he said, "Now what we're gonna do is, "we're gonna get rid of these wives and these children "and so I want everybody to send out this decree. "In three days I want everybody to be right here "and we're gonna give an accounting "and make sure that we have everyone "who is not Israelite by birth "and we're gonna send them out of the country." And then, so many people did come in but the people that came in said, "Hey, it's been raining.

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"Rain foiled their plans. "Something as simple as rain foiled his plans." So you know what Ezra did? He adjusted and sometimes we have to adjust to that. That's your last blank right there, by the way. Rain, something as simple as rain. Ooh, weren't you glad to get that rain today? We had rain here and Piper did it at my house.

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So we have to be willing to adjust to God's plan

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in remembering that God's got a plan for us and so they did that though, just to conclude and this is just the way the book concludes. Then they gave more time for all of the people to come

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and this is what sin does. All these women and children had to leave. That's how horrible sin is. They had to cast out these people that intermarried with the nation of Israel and sometimes that's what sin does it has horrible, horrible conditions to it.

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I wanna share this story with you about something about a leader, God using a leader that was not necessarily one of his children in my life. I was at a real critical turning point in college.

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Jumping over the fence in my life many, many times and knowing that was wrong, felt convicted about it. I was even in the process of trying to change my major cause I wasn't happy about all of this but I was asked to be on the leadership team of the BSU. Do y'all remember the BSU? It's BCM now, okay. Still very involved in the BSU but just kind of pulling away a little bit. I was asked to be involved and I said yes. So that was a good thing. Well, they were gonna have a leadership retreat with the whole leadership team. There was probably about 24 and they were gonna go away for a weekend and have a leadership retreat. And I was working at that time as a lifeguard. This sounds really cool. As a lifeguard, cause I had a lifeguard and certificate at the Natatorium. Did you know that's what a building is called that has a swimming pool in it? A brand new Natatorium that we had just built on the campus in University of Alabama. And my boss was a wife of one of the football coaches, coach, and she was proud.

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And she let you know about that, okay. And she ran us with a tight thumb, really, really. And she never seemed to be happy. She was always just kind of grumpy. And I just remember thinking, you got a life, you got money, you got all this going on. Why aren't you happy? She was just a tough, tough cookie. And no one wanted to be around her.

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So I was scheduled to work that weekend and so I didn't wanna go on that retreat, by the way. I didn't wanna go on this leadership retreat. I had a good excuse. I was scheduled to work at the Natatorium Saturday and Sunday. So I went in to speak with the campus minister and he said, "Les, I really, really would like you to go on this retreat." And I said, "I gotta work, you know, and everything." He said, "Look, let's pray about this. Let's pray about this. Would you pray with me right now and then I want you to go talk to your boss?" Oh, no.

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So we prayed and I went straight from the BSU and walked over to the Natatorium and walked in. And just outside my boss's office, the door was open. And I heard all this laughter and banter and everything going on. And I looked inside, is that her?

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And she's hugging this fella and everything, like friends would hug and everything. Oh, it's just so good to see you all. Thank you so much for stopping by. And he walks out and I stepped inside. I said, "Somebody you know?"

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And she said, "Yes." That was one of our dearest friends. I haven't seen him in a long time. And he just stopped by here to say hello. And it was just so good to see him. And I kept thinking, "Who are you?"

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And I said, "Well, I came in to ask, oh, I'm sharing Sunday,

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because I've got a retreat with the BSU to go on. Sure, sure, go ahead, go ahead. You can take off this week." And I walked out of that office saying, "God, you've done something special in my life."

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That retreat turned me around. I'll never forget it. The friends that I met, the people that I hung out with, because God used what I thought was a very mean person, my boss, to have a good time and allow me to be off, to go to that retreat so that my life could begin to be changed for God.

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Just the way God uses ungodly people sometimes, our leaders, governmental leaders and others, bosses and people who make decisions,

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we honor the God by honoring and doing obedient, living in unity and worshiping with a zeal.

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Amen?

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Let's end this way, stand up.

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And I want you to make this declaration with me.

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When we walk with the Lord In the light of His word What a glory He sheds on our way

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When we do His good will He abides with us still And to all who will trust and obey

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Trust and obey For there's no other way To be happy in Jesus

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But to trust and obey

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Amen and amen. Have a wonderful rest of your week.

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