1. The first account transfer is from one house to another.
2. The second account transfer is from one hand to another.
3. The third account transfer is from one land to another.
EZRA 1:7-11
In 1985, the year that I graduated High School, do you know what the #2 song on the Billboard charts was? It was a song by Madonna called “Material Girl.” And if a song ever embodied the times, it was that one. You could probably consider that song the national anthem of shopping malls, couldn’t you? We’re coming up on that time of the year when it seems that everything is geared around material things. But are material things bad? In and of themselves, are things bad? No—materialism is bad. But in and of themselves, material things aren’t bad. It’s how they’re used that makes them good or bad. There are people in the world today that believe things are inherently bad. We call them monks. Or Buddhists. Or Hindus. Or New Agers. Or Wiccans. They believe that the only way to be free from evil is to be free from material things—including your own body. The Bible teaches something very different. The Bible teaches that in and of themselves, material things are good. Why? Because God created them. In reality, material things are good gifts from God. It’s just that most of the time we use them for the wrong purposes. You remember that Israel had spent years using everything God had given them for the wrong purposes. God gave them the Law—they ignored it and disobeyed it. God gave them the land—they abused it and were disobedient in it. God gave them the temple—they worshipped idols in it. So God sent them into exile. Now it’s time for Him to bring them back. Israel underwent four stages of restoration before the Lord deemed they were ready to rebuild the temple foundations. Isn’t it interesting that the first stage was about restoring stuff? Restoring material items? It was about restoring the items God had sanctified for the purpose of His worship. Do you remember back to the book of Exodus? Remember when Moses came down from the mountain the second time with the stone tablets in his hands? After Moses gave the people the Word of the Lord, what did they do? They started making stuff. They created material things—the tabernacle, the ark, the altar, the priestly garments. All the stuff that was to be used in the worship of the Lord. And that material stuff must have been pretty important to God because He spent the last 5 chapters of Exodus describing it in the minutest detail. God is creator of all. And as creator of all, He owns it all. Material things are important to God, otherwise He wouldn’t have created them. But the reason material things are important to God isn’t because He needs them. They are important to Him because of how we use them. God created material things for us to use to glorify Him. The problem is, we have placed His stuff in the wrong account. Have you ever put your money into someone else’s bank account? That can cause a lot of problems, can’t it? We have put God’s stuff in the wrong account. And all you have to do is open your eyes to the world around you and you can see the problems it’s caused. We have taken God’s stuff out of His glory account and transferred it to our materialism account. And when it’s in our account, it’s not being used for His glory like He intended. We need to fix that tonight. Tonight, I want us as a church to restore the use of God’s things for His glory. We’re going to look at three account transfers we need to make for that to happen. The first account transfer is from the account of one house to another. Look with me in verse 7:
EZRA 1:7
The first account transfer is from one house to another. Can you imagine what an awful sight it must have been to see the beautiful vessels of God’s temple in the hands of pagans? They had been specially created for use in the worship of God. They had been made from only the finest gold and silver. They were decorated by only the most skilled artisans. And after all that, they were sanctified with the blood of a pure animal. All of that care and attention to insure they were only the best. To guarantee they were always pure. To make sure they were the finest and most presentable they could be before they were placed into service for the Lord. But not only were the items the purest they could be, they couldn’t be used by just anybody. They were only allowed to be used by the priests. Priests who were called out and set aside specifically by God. Priests who had to cleanse and purify themselves with water and blood before touching them. Priests who could only use them in specifically prescribed ways to honor and glorify God. It was bad enough when those priests began to misuse them. But can you imagine what it was like after the temple was destroyed and those vessels were carried off? They weren’t just carried off for their resale value. They weren’t just carried off so they could be used by ordinary people. They were carried off so they could be used in the pagan temples of idols. Vessels that God called for. That He provided the materials for. That He gifted artisans to design. That were supposed to be for the sole purpose of bringing Him honor and glory. And there they were in the temples of false gods. Temples where the most vile, immoral, disgusting things took place as part of their worship. Temple prostitutes, orgies, even human sacrifice went on there. That was where God’s vessels were when the Babylonian king Cyrus brought them forth. Years before when Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the temple, he took the vessels from Jerusalem. He took them from Jerusalem and brought them to Babylon. He took them from God’s house and placed them in the house of demons. And now it was time for them to be transferred back. God’s resources were being transferred. They were being transferred from pagan houses to God’s house. That’s the great thing about things, isn’t it? Things are really just resources. And when resources have been used for the wrong purposes, all it takes to change them is a transfer. I want you to think about the resources God has given you. Think about the vessels He’s given you. What have you devoted your precious vessels to? Just like the vessels of the house of the Lord, God called for your vessels. He provided your vessels. He gifted you to earn and build and maintain your vessels. So what have you done with them? Have you devoted them for service in His house? Or have you allowed the pagan god of materialism to plunder and defile them? In our passage, God’s precious vessels had been taken away to the houses of demons. But now they were being restored. They were being transferred from pagan houses back to God’s house. Not only were they transferred from one house to another, they were transferred from one hand to another. Look at verses 8-10:
EZRA 1:8-10
The second account transfer is from one hand to another. The people involved here are very significant. They’re not exactly household names, but they are significant. The only thing we know about Mithredath is what we see in this passage. But verse 8 tells us he was Cyrus’ treasurer. We don’t know if he was THE treasurer or just A treasurer. But we do know that he was a money guy for the Babylonian empire. And he was the one that King Cyrus directed to handle the transaction. He was to make sure the resources passed from Babylon’s account to Israel’s. And that’s how he viewed it. He viewed it as a money transaction. Notice that he didn’t list all the different types of vessels. He didn’t describe them by their uses. He didn’t describe them by their function. Instead, he described them by grouping. This many gold things. This many silver things. It was exactly the kind of inventory you would expect an accountant would give. When those items passed from his hands, it sounded like a cold inventory. But whose hands were they received into? Sheshbazzar. There is some debate among scholars as to who Sheshbazzar was. I think it’s pretty clear from the text—not just here, but later on in the book. Here in verse 8, the text says he was the prince of Judah. So who would that be? The only one who could legally claim the throne of Judah. The only one who was in the line of David. The only one who could rightfully become king, had God allowed it. Sheshbazzar is the name the Babylonians gave him, but his Hebrew name was Zerubbabel. He’s called the prince of Judah because Cyrus was the king of Babylon. Judah was still a territory of Babylon so it would be considered sedition if he were called a king. So that’s the people who were involved. The vessels of God were transferred from the hands of a treasurer to an heir. Picture it like this. If you were to transfer the contents of an art gallery from an accountant to an artist, how would it sound? Here’s how it would look to the accountant. Monet--$100,000. Van Gogh--$50,000. Picasso--$75,000. Painting—amount, painting—amount. No meaning, no attachment, no feeling. But once they passed from the accountant’s hands into the artist’s hands, how would it sound? Here’s how the artist would receive them. He would carefully and passionately examine every contour and texture and brushstroke. He would receive them with emotion and attachment and passion. They would mean so much more to him than simply a list of dollar amounts. As a matter of fact they would be priceless to him. I imagine that’s how Zerubbabel felt as he received the precious vessels of God. It wasn’t just a collection of bowls and knives and vessels. It was the restoration of the resources God had provided to worship Him with. When Zerubbabel saw those items, he saw the promise of the future temple. He saw what God was working in them. He saw what God was going to do through them. As those items transferred from Mithredath to Zerubbabel’s hands… they went from being just items on an accountant’s spreadsheet to items of hope. The same thing happens when you watch your resources transfer from your hands to God’s hands. They move from being just numbers in your checkbook register to a source of joy and hope. They move from simply being squandered away on your passing needs of the moment… to pricelessly being invested in the future hope of the Lord’s work. God restored His resources by transferring them from one hand to another. From a hand that was focused on the cold, hard facts of the moment… to a hand that was passionately and hopefully focused on God’s future. Which hand are your resources in? Are they in the hand that says, “money—bills. Money—bills. Money—bills?” Or are they in the hand that receives everything with an eye on how God will use it for His purposes? Transfer from one hand to the other. God’s precious vessels had been transferred from one house to another and from one hand to another. They were also transferred from one land to another. Look with me at verse 11:
EZRA 1:11
The third account transfer is from one land to another. There they were, taking God’s resources from captivity in Babylon to freedom in Jerusalem. It had been 70 years since Judah had seen the precious vessels of the temple. As a matter of fact, it had been 70 years since they had seen the vessels, the temple, or Jerusalem. They had spent 70 years in a land that God had cursed. Years before they were even carried away in exile, God cursed Babylon for what they were going to do to His people. He spoke His curse through the prophet Jeremiah in Jeremiah 25:12-14: “And it shall come to pass, when seventy years are accomplished, that I will punish the king of Babylon, and that nation, saith the LORD, for their iniquity, and the land of the Chaldeans, and will make it perpetual desolations. And I will bring upon that land all my words which I have pronounced against it, even all that is written in this book, which Jeremiah hath prophesied against all the nations. For many nations and great kings shall serve themselves of them also: and I will recompense them according to their deeds, and according to the works of their own hands.” Babylon was a cursed land. Things were going great at the moment, but Israel knew the curse was coming. If the exile taught them anything, it was to take God at His word and listen to His prophets. Israel was in a land that wasn’t their home. God’s vessels were in a land they didn’t belong in. Did you know that they could have stayed if they wanted to? And the sad thing is, many of them did. They were pretty comfortable in Babylon. They had adjusted. They had made lives for themselves. So many of them chose to stay. Many of them chose to take the familiar comfort of the right now over the promise of the yet-to-come. But a remnant didn’t stay. A remnant chose to go where God wanted them to go. And a remnant chose to take what God wanted them to take. They took His resources with them. They took God’s treasure with them. They transferred God’s treasure from a cursed land to a land that God called the apple of His eye. They chose God’s future promise over their present comfort. And what a future promise that is. The Lord tells us about it in Isaiah 62:1-5. He says, “For Zion’s sake will I not hold my peace, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest, until the righteousness thereof go forth as brightness, and the salvation thereof as a lamp that burneth. And the Gentiles shall see thy righteousness, and all kings thy glory: and thou shalt be called by a new name, which the mouth of the LORD shall name. Thou shalt also be a crown of glory in the hand of the LORD, and a royal diadem in the hand of thy God. Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken; neither shall thy land any more be termed Desolate: but thou shalt be called Hephzibah [“My Delight is in Her”], and thy land Beulah [“married”]: for the LORD delighteth in thee, and thy land shall be married. For as a young man marrieth a virgin, so shall thy sons marry thee: and as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee.” That is where they were going. That is where they were taking God’s treasure. Their treasure was no longer going to be in a cursed land with no hope for the future. They were taking their treasure to a land of promise and hope. As they moved from Babylon to Jerusalem, they transferred the treasure from one land to another. Where is your treasure tonight? Is it stored up in a land that is cursed? In a land that is comfortable right now, but you know isn’t going to last? If it is, it’s time for a transfer. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus warned us about trying to leave treasure in Babylon. Matthew recorded His words in Matthew 6:19-21: “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” So, where is your heart tonight? You know how you can tell? By what you’re doing with God’s resources. Notice I said His resources. Just like those vessels were created for the sole purpose of glorifying God… everything you have was created for the same purpose. The Lord gave you everything you have to use for His glory. Are you? Jesus said, the answer to that question will tell you where your heart is tonight. Do you need to transfer some treasure tonight? Or would you rather let the moths and rust have it? Fleeting comfort for today or bright hope for tomorrow—the choice is yours.
