Happy Builders

And now let's pray together. Father in heaven, thank You for the Word of God; no matter where we turn in this book, there is nourishment, there is enlightenment, and we need it. Oh, how we need it today. Help us as we study together, and may we find joy in our ministry, we pray in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.

In the year 538 BC, Cyrus the king of Persia issued a decree, and this decree permitted the exiled Jews to return to their land, to restore their nation, and to rebuild their temple. Well, about 50,000 Jews left Babylon, traveled that difficult route, some 900 miles, and came to Jerusalem. And there they set up the altar and they offered sacrifices. They celebrated the Feast of Tabernacles, and they laid the foundation of the temple. You find all of this in Ezra 1 through Ezra 3. And then the trouble started; then the difficulties came. Look at Ezra 3:10.

When the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord, the priests stood in their apparel with trumpets, and the Levites, the sons of Asaph, with cymbals, to praise the Lord, according to the ordinance of David king of Israel. And they sang responsively, praising and giving thanks to the Lord: "For He is good, for His mercy endures forever toward Israel." Then all the people shouted with a great shout, when they praised the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. But many of the priests and Levites and heads of the fathers’ houses, who were old men, who had seen the first temple, wept with a loud voice when the foundation of this temple was laid before their eyes. Yet many shouted aloud for joy, so that the people could not discern the noise of the shout of joy from the noise of the weeping of the people, for the people shouted with a loud shout, and the shout was heard afar off.

Well, it isn't necessary for us to take sides today. You know, here on earth, life is not always tears and life is not always cheers. Heaven is a place of unclouded joy and praise. Hell is a place of unending tears and sorrow. In heaven, it's all joy and all praise; in hell, it's all tears and sorrow. But here on earth, there is a mingling, just like this shout. There is a shout of praise and there's the sound of weeping. Here on earth, I fear we're going to have, until Jesus comes or until He calls us home through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear we're going to have days of darkness and days of delight, hours of weeping and hours of praise. Life is this way; God has made it that way.

Romans 12:15 is a familiar verse; I hope we all practice it. I need to practice it more. Romans 12:15: Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep. Now, He's not telling us to be chameleons who change just to please people, no. Paul is saying: Identify with the joys and the sorrows of the people of God. Now, most of us have little problem identifying with the sorrows. When there is death in the church family, or sickness or accident or some tragedy, we are able to identify with that. But when people get a promotion, when there's some blessing, I wonder how easy it is for us to rejoice with those who rejoice.

Paul makes another statement that relates to this in 1 Corinthians 12:26. He's talking about Christians being members of the same body, and he says this: And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; or if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it. Now, that's the way it ought to be. It's true of our bodies. If a part of my body is not functioning properly, the whole body knows about it. Get a blister on your foot, or get a pain in a tooth, and my, it seems like your whole body is full of pain. At the same time, when healing comes to one part of the body, it helps the whole body.

Now, in Ezra 3, let's rejoice with the young men, and then let's weep with the old men, and let's find out how God wants us to serve Him. Let's rejoice now with the young men. I can think of many reasons for rejoicing. First of all, I would rejoice with these young men because of their occupation. What were they doing? Building God's temple. Now, they could have been doing something else; they could have been back in Babylon, for that matter. They could have been involved in sin somewhere. There were a great many Jews in Babylon; only 50,000 of them decided to come back. Others came later. But here we have a group of young men—get that now, young men—and all they had really known was life in Babylon. And yet they said: "We want to go back and build the temple of God." Now, this was a fulfillment of a prophecy Isaiah had made decades before.

Isaiah 44. Oh, God is talking about the restoration of His people, that God had remembered them and God would not forget them. Isaiah 44:21: O Israel, you will not be forgotten by me. God had forgiven them. I have blotted out like a thick cloud your transgressions. That's good news, isn't it? Then He says you're going to be restored. He said: "I'm the God who is the God of the heavens." Verse 24: I've stretched out the heavens, I spread abroad the earth. I frustrate the signs of the babblers, talking about those who try to divine the future. Verse 26: Who confirms the word of His servant, and performs the counsel of His messengers; who says to Jerusalem, "You shall be inhabited"—there’s good news—and to the cities of Judah, "You shall be built, and I will raise up her waste places."

Now, how’s He going to do this? Verse 28, He names the man who would do it: Who says of Cyrus, "He is my shepherd, and he shall perform all my pleasure"; even saying to Jerusalem, "You shall be built," and to the temple, "Your foundation shall be laid." Isn't it exciting to be busy building God's temple, fulfilling the very Word of God? That's exciting to me. You see, God's temple was important to the Jews. They had to have the temple to have an altar, and they had to have an altar to have a sacrifice. They had the priesthood; they had to put up the altar and get ready to serve the Lord. Now, you and I ought to be occupied in building. Anybody can tear down. There are people who have dedicated their lives to tearing down, but we are here to build. God wants us to be builders. And they are building God's temple.

Matthew 16:18, the Lord Jesus says: I will build my church. He's a builder. When He was here on earth, He was a carpenter, and He’s still building. He's building us a home in heaven, and He’s building a church. In 1 Corinthians 3:11, Paul tells us that we, the local church, we are God's building, and he says there's only one foundation: Jesus Christ. Now, let's build together the church of Jesus Christ that will glorify Him. I like his words in Ephesians 2. If ever you get confused about what Christians are supposed to be doing these days, read Ephesians 2:19: Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a habitation of God in the Spirit. You and I are involved in building.

Let's rejoice with the young men in their occupation and in their consecration. The first thing they did was put up the altar. You read that over in Ezra 3:2. They arose and they built the altar of God, the God of Israel, to offer burnt offerings on it, as it is written in the Law of Moses the man of God. I like these young men; they're obeying the Word of God. They said: "What does the Bible have to say about this? What does God's Word have to say about it?" I like when people talk like that in the building of the church. Not just "What does the constitution say?" "How do the bylaws read?" "What do the elders and deacons say?" No, "What does the Word of God have to say?" Well, the Word of God says you have to have an altar, and so the first thing they did was put up the altar. Before they laid the foundations or anything else, they put up the altar. It was a mark of consecration to God, dedication to God. They put the burnt offerings, total dedication symbolized by the burnt offerings, and the fear of God came upon the people. Then they celebrated the Feast of Tabernacles. They were obeying the word of the Lord, offering their gifts to the Lord. I like these young men.

I rejoice with them at their occupation, at their consecration, and I rejoice with them at the foundation. They got down to the foundation. The most important part of any building is the foundation. Without foundations, you can't build. They'd already put up the altar, they had already offered their sacrifices, now they are laying a new foundation.

In a day of discouragement, David in Psalm 11:3 asked this question: If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do? And the answer is: Lay them again. That's why we need a new generation. I get excited as I see the new generation coming along. The day comes when some of us have to step aside and make room for the new leaders and the new preachers and writers and those whom God is preparing for His church. And if we have not been faithful, they have to lay those foundations again. And these young men said, "All right, the temple was destroyed, let's lay the foundations again." If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do? Lay them again. And I rejoice at this. You know, the victorious Christian life is a series of new beginnings.

You know, the victorious Christian life is a series of new beginnings. George Morrison used to say that; I think he got it from Alexander Whyte, the great Scottish Presbyterian preacher. This is true of a nation. Every once in a while, some foundations are destroyed: foundations of virtue, foundations of principle and integrity. And those foundations have to be laid again, and that's our job. The new generation has to come along and see what we did, and they might say, "You know, you didn't do a very good job here. We're going to lay these foundations again." Oh, it rejoices my heart. I rejoice with these young men. There is always a need for new leaders and new foundations.

But now let's weep with the old men. Now, that's where I am as far as my age is concerned. I don't always feel it; sometimes I feel much older. But you know, those of us who are older have got to be very careful. Now, this was a normal response. The young men were shouting with joy: "Hallelujah! Praise the Lord! He is good! The mercy of God is so wonderful! The foundation of the temple has been laid! Hallelujah!" And then the old men start to cry.

Now, not all the old men did this; some of the older men also praised the Lord and shouted. I thank God for the older saints, the senior saints, who are not looking at the future in a rearview mirror. No, I understand their response. There are times when I weep. There are times when I see some of the things that are going on and it just distresses my heart. But let's be careful about talking about those "good old days." Oh, the good old days. Well, sometimes the good old days are a combination of a bad memory and a good imagination. The good old days. You read the New Testament and you find that they had problems in the churches. You read church history and you'll discover there've always been times of distress and weeping.

You see, these old men saw the past as a master, not as a servant. They saw the past as an anchor to drag them back, not as a rudder to move them forward and guide them in the right direction. Now, some things do break our heart. Increase Mather, the Puritan pastor, said this in 1721—that's a long time ago—1721, the Puritan minister Increase Mather wrote these words: "I am now in my 83rd year, and having been for 65 years a preacher of the gospel, I cannot but be in the disposition of those ancient men who had seen the foundation of the first house and wept with a loud voice to see what a change the temple had upon it. The children of New England are, or once were, the children of godly men. What did our fathers come into this wilderness for? Not to gain estates as men do now, but for religion, that they might leave their children in a hopeful way of being truly religious." Then he pens these words: "O degenerate New England, what art thou come to at this day! How are those sins become common in thee that once not so much were heard of in this land!" So said a Puritan preacher back in 1721.

Well, there are some things to weep over. There are. Where are the missionary volunteers? Where is the missionary support money? Where is the unity of God's people? Where is a holy horror of sin? Where is the fear of God? Yes, some things have changed. But let me ask you this question: Does it do any good to stand around and weep? Oh, we need to weep and pray. Nehemiah did that; he knew how to weep and pray, and he built the walls of Jerusalem. But consider the consequences of these tears. They divided the people. This is the first disunity you find in the book. In Ezra 3:1, they gathered together as one man to Jerusalem; there was unity. They put up the altar; they were gathered around one altar. They were following one law of God given by Moses. They were offering the same sacrifices. They were enjoying the blessing of the same Feast of Tabernacles. They were doing everything as one. Ezra 3:9 says that the leaders rose as one to oversee the people working on the house.

Up until now, there's been unity. Now there's division. Why? Because the old men are not looking forward; they're looking back. Oh, I know they were, they were missing the good old days. But remember, we can't change the past, but the past can change us if we aren't careful. They should have been on their knees saying, "O God, forgive us. It was our generation that brought the nation into sin. It was our generation that brought the judgment of the captivity." They divided the people. They discouraged the workers. When you see a group of people standing around weeping, you say, "Well, what's the sense of doing anything?" Complainers—the Word of God says do all things without murmuring and complaining. They discouraged the workers. Fact of the matter is, the work did stop until the year 520. There was a delay there and for 16 years or so, nothing was done on the temple. They discouraged the workers because they doubted the Lord.

Now, the Lord was at work. We need to know that. In 520, when they started the work up again, God sent Haggai and Zechariah the prophets to encourage them. Here's what Haggai has to say in Haggai 2:3: "Who is left among you who saw this temple in its former glory? And how do you see it now? In comparison with it, is this not in your eyes as nothing?"

But now here's his message: "Yet now be strong, Zerubbabel," says the Lord, "and be strong, Joshua, the high priest, and be strong, all you people, and work; for I am with you." Now, that's all we need to know. If God is with us, don't look back, look ahead. Oh, may I say a word to those of you who have been in leadership for a long time? Don't discourage the young people as they come along and want to serve the Lord. As long as they are at the altar, as long as they are obeying the Word of God, join in their shoutings. Rejoice when the foundations are laid again. How today we older ones need to be an encouragement to the younger ones who have come along, that the Lord may work in their lives and bring about revival in His church. Let's dry our tears, let's rejoice with those who rejoice.

[Interview]

Now here’s Arnie Cole with Warren Wiersbe on today’s Back to the Bible.

Arnie: Thank you, Warren, for being in our studio today. It's so great to have you here again. So, there are so many lies in our culture today—lies about relationships, lies about who God is, lies about what's right and wrong. And our young people in particular, they're being seduced by these lies. So, what's the best way to help people grow and know the truth?

Warren: One of the problems we face today has been caused by our universities. They start teaching relativism; there are no absolutes. And yet, there are absolutes. You go into the hospital for surgery, they have absolutes. "Well, what are we supposed to take out today?" "Well, what difference does it make?" Nobody would talk like that. So, today our kids are surrounded by this relativism that is so dangerous. Proverbs says: Buy the truth and sell it not. That's a great verse, Proverbs 23:23. The truth costs something, and today we've got to teach our young people that you stand for the truth. You stand for the truth because that's the only way to let the truth control your life. Buy the truth and sell it not.