Memorizing The Word Series

Memorizing the Word

Jeffery Anselmi / General

Reclaim- The Book of Ezra

INTRODUCTION

• Have you ever forgotten something that was important not to forget?

• Maybe it was a step in the process of building something, or perhaps it was a birthday or anniversary.

• It is easy to forget what is essential.

• When we forget what is essential, we usually find ourselves in some trouble or the dog house. 😀

• One of the things that can cause us to forget what is essential is information overload.

• We are so overloaded with information these days.

• Information overload can contribute to pushing out and forgetting the information we need, the most critical information for our lives.

• It's easy for people to forget important matters.

• The pace of life is another contributing factor.

• In our fast-paced, information-driven society, the present is closer to mind than the past, whether it's where we left the car keys last night or what happened twenty years ago.

• God constantly challenges his people to remember and prescribes rituals to help us do so.

• In the book of Joshua, God commanded the Hebrew children to build an altar after they crossed the Jordan to remind future generations of what happened in the wilderness (Joshua 4).

• The Jewish feasts and festivals, like Passover, were created to help people remember God's faithfulness in history (Leviticus 23:4–8).

• God knows we tend to forget important things.

• Today we will look at an event that will help punctuate why we need to memorize and remember God's Word.

• We touched on the event we are going to examine today a couple of weeks ago.

• From the story of the rebuilding of the Temple, we will see some principles that will apply to help make sure we allow God's Word to be in the forefront of our minds.

› Our Big Idea of the Message is: God will reclaim and recall to our minds the truth we have forgotten.

• One of the blessings of memorizing the Word is that even when we seem to forget it, or when it seems our proverbial hard drive is full, God will help bring to mind what we have put into our minds as we need such wisdom!

• We will use the story of the decree of Cyrus as a metaphor for the Word of God in the message today.

• Let's begin with Ezra 5:17-6:5

Ezra 5:17–6:5 (CSB)

17 So if it pleases the king, let a search of the royal archives in Babylon be conducted to see if it is true that a decree was issued by King Cyrus to rebuild the house of God in Jerusalem. Let the king’s decision regarding this matter be sent to us.

1 King Darius gave the order, and they searched in the library of Babylon in the archives.

2 But it was in the fortress of Ecbatana (Ek BANT TANA) in the province of Media that a scroll was found with this record written on it:

3 In the first year of King Cyrus, he issued a decree concerning the house of God in Jerusalem: Let the house be rebuilt as a place for offering sacrifices, and let its original foundations be retained. Its height is to be ninety feet and its width ninety feet,

4 with three layers of cut stones and one of timber. The cost is to be paid from the royal treasury.

5 The gold and silver articles of God’s house that Nebuchadnezzar took from the temple in Jerusalem and carried to Babylon must also be returned. They are to be brought to the temple in Jerusalem where they belong and put into the house of God.

SERMON

I. Forgetting what is essential.

• As we covered a couple of weeks ago, we remember that the Jews spent 70 years in captivity in Babylon.

• King Cyrus of Persia defeated the Babylonians in 539 BC.

• The rise of Cyrus was prophesied in the Bible by Isaiah years before it happened.

• Also, according to God's revelation through Jeremiah concerning the timeline of the captivity, the 70 years in Babylon waw reached.

• Cyrus made a decree in 538 that said that any Jew wanting to go back to Jerusalem was allowed to rebuild the Temple.

• Two years later, in 536, the work of rebuilding the Temple began.

• During the time of rebuilding, the Jewish people faced a lot of opposition from those surrounding Jerusalem.

• The opposition became so intense that from 530 to 520, the efforts to rebuild the Temple came to a halt.

• Cyrus dies in 530 BC.

• One thing that is important for us to grasp is that in the Medo-Persian Empire, once a King issued a decree, that decree could not be changed or revoked, even when the King who issued the decree died.