They Finished The Temple Series

Introduction

1. We’ve been on quite the roller coaster ride with the Tribes of Benjamin and Judah…

• They basically embarked on returning to their homeland…

• After 70 years of captivity..

• On their own.

• The other 10 tribes of Israel didn’t relish leaving the homes and the lives that they had built up during that 70 year captivity…

• They didn’t want to face that long journey…

• And the hard work of rebuilding the Temple…

• Rebuilding their city…

• And rebuilding their homes once they arrived back in Jerusalem.

• So the Tribes of Benjamin and Judah made the long hard journey…

• When they finally made it back to their homeland…

• They put first things first…

• They started in rebuilding the altar…

• And worshipping God.

• But, it wasn’t always easy…

• They faced challenges of many kinds…

• And ultimately, the church was stopped dead in its tracks…

• The people allowed the circumstances of life to interfere with the rebuilding effort…

• And, for 15 long years…

• They left the Temple to deteriorate…

• The weeds began to take over…

• Little critters began to make their home among the remnants of the building materials…

• And, by and large, the people didn’t seem to really care that the Temple was falling apart…

• They were so focused on building their own homes…

• Rebuilding their own lives…

• They got so busy…

• That the Temple…

• And the worship of God…

• Took a back seat to their own plans for their own comforts…

• Then, God sent 2 prophets to stir the people to action…

• Haggai and Zechariah laid it on pretty heavy…

• And the people really took it to heart…

• They responded to God’s message to the people…

• And they began to re-build the Temple once again…

• Of course, whenever the Church starts to grow…

• Whenever the Church starts to accomplish something of eternal value…

• There are those who will try to stop it…

• And, thankfully, as we saw last week in Ezra chapter 5…

• The peope didn’t allow the challenges to interfere with the building of the Temple…

• They didn’t give up..,.

• They decided to keep on keeping on…

• And that’s where we find God’s people as we come to Ezra Chapter 6.

Read Text: Ezra 6:1-22

Body

1. God will provide

A. As they continued working…

• a search was made of the government archives…

• And thankfully, after almost 20 years…

• They were able to find 1 lost paragraph…

• the one paragraph where Cyrus issued his decree…

• and the current king, Darius, embraced the decree…

• and allowed the work of God’s Temple to continue…

B. Not only that, but Darius told the governor of that region…

• a man by the name of Tattenai…

• that, not only was there to be no inference in the work…

• they actually had to help finance the work…

• In verse 8, we see that the financing of the work of rebuilding the Temple…

• Would come from the revenues of Trans-Euphrates…

• The very place where Tattenai was Governor!

C. The story is told about a Christian lady who lived next door to an atheist.

• Everyday, when the lady prayed, the atheist could hear her.

• Many times while she was praying,…

• he would go over to her house and harass her, saying

• "Lady, why do you pray all the time?

• Don’t you know there is no God?"

• But she kept right on praying.

• One day, she ran out of groceries and she didn’t have any money to go shopping…

• So, as was her custom, she began to pray to Lord

• explaining her situation…

• and thanking Him for what He was going to do.

• the atheist heard her praying and thought to himself…

• “I’ll show her."

• He went to the grocery store,…

• And bought a whole bunch of groceries,…

• Then he took them to her house,…

• dropped them off on the front door…

• rang the door bell…

• and then hid in the bushes to see what she would do.

• When she opened the door and saw the groceries,

• she began to give praise the Lord for providing her with groceries in answer to her prayer…

• Just then, the atheist jumped out of the bushes and said,…

• "You ol’ crazy lady, God didn’t buy you those groceries, I bought those groceries!"

• Well, she started jumping up and down…

• Shouting and praising God…

• When he finally got her to calm down…

• She said, "I knew the Lord would provide me with some groceries, but I didn’t know he was gonna make the devil pay for them!"