Prioritizing Worship

All right, you can be making your way in your Bibles to Ezra chapter 1. Ezra chapter 1. As I look out on all you lovely people, your smiling faces, I can't imagine any of you have had to wait long for anything.

I just can't imagine it. Right? That's not true, is it?

You have to wait a long time for all kinds of things. I remember when I was a kid, it seemed to me like the worst thing in the world was going with my parents to a funeral viewing. We don't really do that around here, it seems, but a viewing was where you go to the funeral home the day before the funeral and visit with the family. You hug, and you have conversations about the deceased. It's kind of an informal time, but as a kid, it was pure misery.

I remember sitting in the basement of funeral homes or some side room for what seemed like an eternity, just waiting for my parents to decide they were done visiting and were ready to go home. In hindsight, we probably weren't there all that long. For a little kid, it just seems like an eternity. Maybe an hour or two.

In the book of Ezra, we're at the point where the people of God, specifically the people of Judah and Benjamin, the two tribes of the southern kingdom, have waited a long time. They've been in captivity for 70 years, and now it's time for them to go home. So in this first chapter of Ezra, we get to see what happened after the 70 years of waiting, after this long time.

Let's read this chapter. It's not very long. We will get into a little bit of chapter 2 this morning as well. Last week we looked at just the first verse, and then we went through basically the whole Old Testament. So if you missed it, you can go on YouTube and watch it, but we did go through the whole Old Testament in one sermon.

Ezra chapter 1. "In the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and put it in writing.

"Thus says Cyrus, king of Persia, 'The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever is among you of all his people, may his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and rebuild the house of the Lord, the God of Israel. He is the God who is in Jerusalem. And let each survivor, in whatever place he sojourns, be assisted by the men of his place with silver and gold, with goods and with beasts, besides freewill offerings for the house of God that is in Jerusalem.'

"Then rose the heads of the fathers' houses of Judah and Benjamin, and the priests and the Levites, everyone whose spirit God had stirred up to go up to rebuild the house of the Lord that is in Jerusalem. And all who were about them aided them with vessels of silver, with gold, with goods, and with beasts, and with costly wares, besides all that was freely offered.

"Cyrus the king also brought out the vessels of the house of the Lord that Nebuchadnezzar had carried away from Jerusalem and placed in the house of his gods. Cyrus, king of Persia, brought these out in the charge of Mithredath the treasurer, who counted them out to Sheshbazzar, the prince of Judah. And this was the number of them: 30 basins of gold, 1,000 basins of silver, 29 censers, 30 bowls of gold, 410 bowls of silver, and 1,000 other vessels. All the vessels of gold and silver were 5,400. All these did Sheshbazzar bring up when the exiles were brought up from Babylonia to Jerusalem."

So this is the beginning of the return. Cyrus makes this decree. He lets the people know what he wants to happen. He wants them to go back to Jerusalem, and he wants them to rebuild the temple. And he's going to provide them with the resources necessary to do this.

In Ezra chapter 1, and to a certain extent Ezra chapter 2, we're going to see three realities played out. First of all, God cares about worship above everything else. It is the most important thing. We're also going to see that God cares about people. And when we put those two things together, we see that God cares about his people's worship. This is of vital importance to him. Worship is always the top priority. It's always number one. It takes the first spot.

So maybe we should ask the question: what is worship? If worship is the most important thing, if worship is God's top priority, what even is worship? Well, here's a textbook definition: an act or practice expressing devotion, reverence, and adoration toward God. It's the things we do to express our devotion, our reverence, and our adoration toward God. It is honor and reverence that is due to God. We owe it to him. He deserves it. He is worthy of it. And so worship is the act in which we offer it up to him. He alone is worthy of it.

The Bible makes this crystal clear. This is an Old Testament thing. It's a New Testament thing. It's a thing for every person, for all time and eternity. In fact, if we go back to the book of Exodus, Exodus chapter 20, where God gave the people the Ten Commandments through Moses on Mount Sinai, what is the first commandment? "No other gods before me." Let's just establish that. You're not to worship anything or anyone above me. "You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God."

So in those Ten Commandments, God establishes this reality. There's no other God. You're not to worship any other God, and you had better not make anything representing any other god or deity or being that you worship. Because there's only one God, you should only worship and serve me.

Then remember from last Sunday how and why the people of God got into the position they were in to begin with. How and why are they in captivity? It's because they didn't obey this command. They worshiped other things. They worshiped other gods. Sometimes they worshiped God, but not God alone. And God pursued them time after time after time, for centuries, for thousands of years, calling on them to repent and sending prophets to prophesy the coming judgment of God if they did not repent. And yet they refused. They insisted on doing things their own way.

We can go all the way to the book of Revelation, Revelation chapter 4, verse 11, and we have angels declaring, "Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created." Even the angels in heaven understand and acknowledge that God alone is worthy of worship and deserves worship.

In Deuteronomy chapter 6, Moses brings the people to the edge of the promised land before they go in. They're going to go in under Joshua, but one of the things Moses does before they do that is remind them of their history and remind them of the laws that God had given them. He reminds them that the most important thing is to remember that there's only one God, and they're supposed to serve and worship him only. "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might." "It is the Lord your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear."

This is an established reality for the people of God. There is only one God. He alone is worthy of worship. Worship is what we should do. We should worship him.

So in Ezra, remember, where are these Hebrew people? They're in Babylonia, as Cyrus says. What once was Babylon, now under Persian rule, is what is now modern-day Iran. They're far from Jerusalem. They're in captivity. Jerusalem lies in ruins. The temple had been burned and torn down by Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian army. All the vessels and instruments of worship that were reserved for the activities of worship, all of the things that hadn't been destroyed in the conquest, had been carried away to Babylon. It's the plunder of war. The people who weren't killed in the invasion, who weren't deemed too poor to bother with, had been carted off from Jerusalem to Babylon to live in captivity. And they've been there for 70 years.

If you think about that, many of the people who went have died. But that also means many people have been born who know nothing of the promised land that was promised to Abraham, the land Joshua led the people into under the divine armies of God. They don't have any firsthand knowledge of this place. They've never been there. Some of them have, but certainly lots of them haven't, and this is going to be all brand new. But the time has come for them to return to Jerusalem.

As we talked about last week, this is something Jeremiah had prophesied. Jeremiah 29:10: "For thus says the Lord: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill my promise and bring you back to this place." This is part of the promise. The promise in Jeremiah 25 is, "Guess what? You're going to be taken into captivity." But the continuation of that promise is, when 70 years are done, you're going to go back.

So now Babylon, the conqueror, has been conquered. Persia is in charge, and now it is time to go home. God, through Cyrus, the king of Persia, arranges for his people to return.

But in this return, what is God's number one priority for these people? Look at Cyrus's decree. He says that the Lord, the God of heaven, "has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem." And then he says this: "Whoever is among you of all his people, may his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem and rebuild the house of the Lord, the God of Israel."

So this wasn't just an additional verse to the Beatles song "Get Back." Okay? They are going to get back to where they once belonged, but that's not ultimately the purpose. That's not the number one priority. The number one priority isn't just to get back there. The people are going home, but they're going home with a very clear goal. They have a clear objective. And what is that objective? Rebuild the temple. Why? Because worship is the number one priority. That's the most important thing.

They're going back to a land that's in complete rubble. It's in shambles. The city has been in ruins for 70 years. Let's just imagine that you didn't do anything to your house. You just locked the front door and left it for 70 years. And you came back to it. What would it be like? It'd probably still be there, but it's strange how, when you just don't maintain a house, it begins to crumble and decay and goes back to being rubble. Well, this city was rubble before they even left, and they've been gone for 70 years. There have been poor people eking out an existence there, but they haven't been rebuilding anything.

What God is basically saying through Cyrus is, "You're going back, but when you get there, everything else can wait until this temple is rebuilt. This is the most important thing." There's going to be a lot of important things when you get back, but the top of the list is the priority of worship.

Think about why you are in this country to begin with. Why are you in Babylon? Because you did not prioritize worship, and in fact, you began to worship other things. You turned your back on me. So when you get back there, if you want to have any hope of succeeding, you need to make worship the top thing in your life, the thing under which everything else is subordinate.

I want you to think about that for your life right here in Dixon, California, and wherever you reside, but we're in Dixon right now. We are not in captivity. You and I are free to live our lives as we determine. So when you think about how you live your life and the things that you prioritize, the things in which you invest your time, energy, and resources, where does the proper worship of God rank on the scale of your priorities?

I don't think we would ever say this, but we tend to build the structure of our lives first. We figure out how we're going to live, what we're going to do, and then we think, "Now where can I fit worship into the spaces that are left over? I've got work to figure out, I've got school to figure out, I've got sports, I've got vacations, I've got my kids, everything. And after all of that is wrapped up in a bow and I've got a few little nooks and crannies around the edges, where can I tuck worship in? After I've taken care of all the stuff, what do I have left over for God?" I don't believe any of us would say that, but practically speaking, that's often how we live our lives. And we justify it by saying, "But all those things are important." And they are. But worship has to always be at the top of the pile. It always has to be the first thing, the priority to which all other priorities submit. If it's not, then the priorities are misaligned. You're living life backwards or upside down.

And maybe you wonder, "What do you mean by top priority?" Let's just imagine, for the sake of illustration, that you had been in prison for several decades, and you're finally released. You're finally able to begin a new life in the outside world. What is the first thing you want to establish and anchor down in your life? That's the kind of mindset I mean when I think of a top priority, the most important thing.

You and I don't have a temple. We don't need to rebuild one or build one. But what we do need to do is look for the cracks in our worship. Where has our worship been torn down? Where has our worship crumbled? Where is our worship broken and in ruins? Where do the priorities for worship in our lives need to shift?

Think about why this temple was destroyed to begin with. In many cases, as we looked at last week, it wasn't so much that they had stopped worshiping. It's that they had brought other things alongside in their worship, or the worship had been diminished in its significance in their lives. Remember the condemnation against so many of the kings, even those who worshiped the Lord. The condemnation was that they didn't tear down the altars in the high places that had been built up to these other gods. So it's almost like asking, where am I in my life tolerating worship being given to things other than God? Where am I letting the worship of God take second place or third place or fourth place?

Maybe we also need to think about in what way our life is like living in Babylon, where we're surrounded by idolatry and so perhaps we're growing desensitized to it, and maybe to the role it plays in the decisions that we make. But whatever the case, the people of Judah are going back to Jerusalem, and the priority is worship. The priority is to rebuild the temple. That's always the priority for us. Worship is always the top, the most important, the thing under which everything else submits.

But as we continue to look at what's going on here, we see that the people are important. The people are important to God. The return to Jerusalem involves the king, right? Cyrus kind of begins this. He's instrumental, a tool that God uses. But then as you look down, it also says in verse 5 that there are the heads of the fathers' houses of Judah and Benjamin. So we've got the heads of the houses within these two tribes. We have priests, we have Levites. And then at the end of the verse it says, "everyone whose spirit God had stirred up to go up to rebuild the house of the Lord that is in Jerusalem."

It wasn't just the rich and the powerful. It wasn't just the religious leaders. It wasn't just the intellectuals. It wasn't just the construction workers. God was pleased to enlist, that is, to stir up the hearts of everyone. Not that everyone went, but he stirred up the hearts of all kinds of people. And what you see is that even those who didn't go or couldn't go, and as these two books, Ezra and Nehemiah, play out, we're going to see that the people actually return in waves, those people who didn't go or couldn't go are stirred up to support the efforts to rebuild. "And all who were about them aided them with vessels of silver, with gold, with goods, with beasts, and with costly wares, besides all that was freely offered." They gave them aid. They themselves couldn't go, but they supported the effort. They provided them with the resources they would need, both for the journey and, when they got back, to accomplish the task that God had given them.

Now, there's a lot of debate about who these people were, where it says "all who were about them." I believe it only makes sense that these were Hebrew people who were living in captivity but who themselves were not going back to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple. Cyrus supported the worship practices of many people groups. This wasn't the only group of people he was doing this for. The Persians had a very different philosophy of governing than the Babylonians. The Persians believed that happy people were easier to govern because they were less likely to rise up and riot and rebel and run amok. If you allowed them to live relatively normal lives that aligned with their culture and their religion, so long as they paid taxes and understood who was in charge, the Persians were fine with that. They were happy to allow people a certain amount of cultural autonomy and even, as we see here, provide the means for them to reestablish themselves in that way. That was the way the Persians ruled these people.

This is relevant for us because if the wider Persian community did that for every group of people the kings of Persia sent back to live and worship according to their culture, they would all be broke. That's why I think it was basically only the Hebrew people who were willing to part with their resources to help those going back to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple.

There are also many people who want to see a one-to-one correlation between this return to Jerusalem and the Exodus from Egypt. In the same way that Pharaoh implored the people of Israel to leave and go, they see that paralleled in Cyrus telling the people to return to Jerusalem. And in the same way the Egyptians gave up their gold and silver and beasts and resources to the people of Israel as they were leaving, they want to see the same thing happening here. Even though there are similarities, I don't think this is a one-to-one correlation, for many reasons. Number one, all the people didn't leave Babylon to go back to Jerusalem in the way that all the Israelites left Egypt. But also, I don't believe it was the same situation, where you have the people gathering around the Hebrew people and giving up their resources so they could go back and rebuild the temple. It's clear why they gave these things. They were aiding them in this quest to return to Jerusalem and reestablish worship by building the temple.

So basically, what is happening here is that God is using people, even people who can't return, to have a positive impact on the rebuilding work. It's very similar to the way we support missionaries and mission trips. Not all of us can and should go to these other countries, and yet we support the work by praying for them and by giving money to help support their efforts. Not everyone can go, but we can support. That's what I think you see happening here.

What I love about the way this is laid out is that it reminds me of how God has designed the church to function. Believers are given different gifts and even burdened by God in different ways for different aspects of ministry. But Scripture is clear that all are necessary for the health of the church. The work of the ministry requires that all believers use the gifts and the talents and the resources that God has given us to support the ministry and do the work. I see the same principle applied to the people of God in captivity. It's necessary that people from a wide spectrum of life within captivity go back. Yes, we need heads of houses, and we need priests and Levites, but we really just need everyone, anyone who can go, anyone who can contribute. And if you can't go, you can aid in the effort by giving resources.

I also see echoes of the gospel here, because the gospel is for everyone. There's only one gospel. The apostle Paul is clear about this in his letter to the Galatians, that there is neither Jew nor Greek, nor male nor female, slave nor free. The point is not that those categories just disappear, but that those categories aren't relevant to the gospel. There's only one gospel. There's a gospel for Jews and Greeks, males and females, slave and free. There's just one, but it is for all. John 3:16: "For God so loved the world, that whoever believes in him." The whole world. Every corner of the world.

So believers are given different gifts, and we're all needed. And the gospel, the one gospel, is given for all. We're supposed to go into all the world and make disciples. That is to say, we're supposed to go into all the world and evangelize, to preach the gospel. The God we are to worship is also the God who has ordained to save ordinary sinners. Not just the rich, not just the mighty, not just the intellectual, not just the powerful, not just the really clever, not just the artistic. Everyday ordinary sinners are saved by the gospel. So worship is the top priority, but people matter to God as well.

And then what I love that we see here is how people worship, and what gets emphasized is that sacrifice is an essential act of worship. We did a short series on joy before we started to dive into Ezra. One of the keys we emphasized when it comes to glorifying God and enjoying him forever is the things we need to change in order to glorify God and enjoy him. We have to change the things we want. We have to change our desires. We have to change the things we hold on to. We have to change the things we do. In other words, the key to glorifying God and enjoying him forever has to do with reorienting the priorities in our lives. But this can be painful. This can be difficult. There are things we hold dear that we have to let go of. This is a sacrifice. But compared to Christ, compared to knowing him, compared to living for him, it is a small sacrifice.

But think about that. I mentioned that so many of these people had not known life in Jerusalem, had not known life in the promised land. They were born here in Babylon. This is the life they knew. No doubt it had become familiar, maybe even comfortable. The journey back would have been hard. They would have traveled on foot. They would have come home to ruins. They would have come home after a hard journey to hard work. They weren't going to come back and then sit on the back porch and sip iced tea. That's not what was going on.

You guys know that a couple of months ago, truthfully, our family went to North Carolina for a vacation. One of the things I loved about it was that the hardest decision to make was, do I want to go take a nap on the beach, or do I want to sit on the back porch and just look at the ocean? That was my big wrestle, right? That's not the life these people were going to. It wasn't, "We made it all the way back to Jerusalem. We're in the promised land now. Let's just kick back." It's more like the Pilgrims who came over to the New World on the Mayflower. When they got there, there was nothing there for them. They had to build houses. They had to figure out how to find shelter because winter was coming hard on them. After this arduous journey across the ocean, now they had to get into hard work.

But chapter 2 points us to the level of personal sacrifice they committed themselves to. Most of the chapter is devoted to listing the peoples and the groups that returned. I'll allow you the privilege of reading that on your own. I won't spend the time going through all of that. But I want you to turn to the end of chapter 2, to verses 68 and 69. "Some of the heads of the families, when they came to the house of the Lord that is in Jerusalem, made freewill offerings for the house of God, to erect it on its site. According to their ability they gave to the treasury of the work 61,000 darics of gold, 5,000 minas of silver, and 100 priests' garments. Now the priests and the Levites, some of the people, the singers, the gatekeepers, and the temple servants lived in their towns, and all the rest of Israel in their towns."

This is not an insignificant detail. This points to the level of personal sacrifice these individuals had committed themselves to, what they were willing to give up in order to see God's will obeyed. They gave freewill offerings, it says, and they lived in their towns. These people who returned to do the work of rebuilding the temple could have said, "We're paying our dues with labor. Our work is our gift." And they did do that. But verses 68 and 69 tell us that they made freewill offerings for the house of God according to their abilities. In other words, they made sacrifice on top of sacrifice.

Freewill offerings mean it's not compelled. They're not obligated to do this. This is something they give of their own volition, their own will. They see the need, they have the resources, they want to give, and they give according to their abilities. They weren't compelled to do it. They weren't judged based on what other people gave. It was given voluntarily, and it was given eagerly. It's the same type of gift that the people who couldn't go to Jerusalem gave before the others left. Those gifts were also freely offered. Interestingly enough, this is how the tabernacle and later the temple were built. The people of God gave freewill offerings to support the construction of those structures. It was part of them sacrificially supporting the worship of God.

And then it says they lived in their towns, and you're thinking, "Well, obviously, right? Why tell us that?" It might not seem like much, or it might seem obvious, but it shows that they are committed to the work. This is a permanent undertaking. They're home, they found a place to stay, they have no intention of going back. They're not keeping the door open for other options or more appealing offers in case they change their mind. They had left Persia to rebuild the temple, and that's what they intend to do. "We are here for a purpose. We value this. This is why we have come." Life is going to be hard for them. They've moved to a place that is completely destroyed, and they're figuring out a way to survive so that they can rebuild this temple.

For many of us, our relationship with the Lord could be so much better, so much deeper, so much more real. Our problem so often is that we just don't want to give up anything to strengthen that relationship, to grow it. We don't want to spend the extra time. We don't want to let go of the destructive habits or the time-consuming habits. We don't want to see the sacrifice as an investment. These people saw the freewill offerings they sacrificially gave as an investment, not just in the rebuilding of the temple, but in the prioritizing of the worship of God.

So my question to you, as you think about your life, and I've already encouraged you to make an assessment of your priorities, is this: what could your freewill offering to God be to help strengthen your worship? To help grow your relationship with him? To help deepen the intimacy you have? What do you need to let go of so that your worship can be built up, strengthened, and established?

We can look at these events as purely historical facts, that this is what happened and this is how it happened, but this is pointing us to priorities that God has for his people. And just because these are people under the old covenant doesn't mean there aren't similar priorities that God has for his people under the new covenant. We rejoice that Christ has fulfilled the old covenant and now we have the new covenant in his blood. That is, we understand that our forgiveness, our standing before God, is because of what he has done for us. And yet he still longs to have a relationship with us. He wants us to worship him. He wants us to prioritize glorifying him with our lives. So we have opportunity all the time to assess our lives and look at what we are holding back. What are the things we are clinging to that we need to let go of in order to better worship and glorify God?

These people can very much be an inspiration to us as we look at how God orchestrated the fulfillment of his promises in their lives, but also for a very clear purpose. And that purpose can extend even to us today.

Let's pray.

Dear Lord, we thank you so much for the lessons we are beginning to learn as we look at the situation of the people of Judah in this book. We thank you for your clear fulfillment of your promise in exactly the way you said you would fulfill it, in exactly the time you said you would fulfill it. These promises were not hypothetical or arbitrary but specific, promises that you kept, a further demonstration of your faithfulness to your people. As we study them and continue to deepen our understanding of both your Word and your plan for your people, may you help us to see how these point to how you would have us live today. Help us to be people who glorify you with our lives and strive to prioritize worship. Help us to recognize the beauty of the family of God, and that you have chosen for yourself people from every tribe, tongue, and nation. It's not just the rich and the mighty, the powerful and the influential, but people from all walks of life and all places around the world. May you help us to live for you and to point others to you with our lives. We ask this in your name. Amen.