1. "Life often seems to be divided between those times when we don't feel we need to trust God, and those times when we feel we need to, but we just can't."

2. "Tragedies, terrible tragedies, don't unhappen. But we begin to see a marked example of a twisted and torturous path leading to a place in which God's people know God and His holiness and His love better, and begin to think and look and love more like him."

3. "If God doesn't speak, we are sunk. We are done for. But the whole Bible is proof that the true God is marked off and distinguished from false gods by the fact that He has spoken. And because God speaks, we must listen."

4. "When you have shallower joys, they lead you to do other things, some things that God disapproves of. But when you find the right joys, then you follow the example of Christ."

5. "These passages that have been pressed into terrible service against interracial marriage in the past have entirely misunderstood what's going on here. The separation that God was calling his people to have from the nations was not finally an ethnic or a racial separation, it was a moral and spiritual separation."

6. "The heroes are not Cyrus and Darius. The hero is the Lord. The hero of the story is always the Lord. He takes very crooked sticks, even sticks like you and me, and with them draws straight lines for His own purposes, for His own glory."

7. "You can't be so rich that He can't touch your body in a moment. And you can't be so poor that He can't find you and give you the sweetest fellowship with Him and the most radiant eternal blessings even beginning in this life."

8. "We can't protect ourselves from His providence or hide from His rule. We can't get ourselves in such trouble that we are beyond His finding us."

9. "We don't stand on this corner for 140 years to grimly tell you that there are consequences to your actions. Yes, there are consequences to your actions, but beyond that, there is a God who shows mercy."

10. "If you know what your situation is and that you have acted in such a way that deserves God's judgment, you can also become an object of his mercy. If you will turn from your sins and trust in him."

Observation Questions

1. According to Ezra 6:1-5, what did King Darius find when he searched the archives, and what specific details did Cyrus's original decree include about the rebuilding of the temple?

2. In Ezra 6:6-12, what commands did Darius give to Tattenai and the other governors regarding the Jewish temple project, and what resources did he order to be provided to the Jews?

3. According to Ezra 6:14, what two sources of authority are credited for the completion of the temple, and whose prophesying helped the elders of the Jews build and prosper?

4. What does Ezra 6:18 say was the basis for how the priests and Levites were organized for service at the temple in Jerusalem?

5. According to Ezra 6:21, who participated in eating the Passover—what two groups are specifically mentioned, and what had the second group done to qualify?

6. In Ezra 6:22, what reason is given for why the people kept the Feast of Unleavened Bread with joy, and what title is used to describe the Persian king in this verse?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why is it significant that both "the decree of the God of Israel" and "the decree of Cyrus and Darius" are mentioned together in verse 14 as reasons for the temple's completion? What does this teach us about how God accomplishes His purposes?

2. The sermon emphasized that God's concern for His people's purity in Ezra was spiritual rather than racial. How does verse 21's description of who could participate in the Passover support this interpretation, especially in light of passages like Exodus 12:48?

3. Why might the author of Ezra refer to the Persian king as "the king of Assyria" in verse 22, when Assyria had fallen to Babylon generations earlier? What theological point might this anachronistic title be making about God's judgment and mercy?

4. The passage repeatedly mentions that the people celebrated "with joy" (verses 16, 22). How does this joy connect to their obedience, and what does this suggest about the relationship between following God's commands and experiencing genuine happiness?

5. How does the rebuilding of the temple and the resumption of Passover celebrations in Ezra 6 demonstrate the fulfillment of God's promise in Deuteronomy 30:3 to restore His people after judgment if they repented?

Application Questions

1. The sermon noted that on normal days we rarely think about trusting God, but when tragedy strikes, trust feels impossible. What specific daily practice could you establish this week to cultivate trust in God during ordinary times, so that you are better prepared when difficulties come?

2. Verse 18 shows that God's people organized their worship "as it is written in the book of Moses." In what area of your life have you been relying on your own preferences or cultural norms rather than looking to Scripture for guidance, and what concrete step will you take to align that area with God's Word?

3. The people who participated in Passover had "separated themselves from the uncleanness of the peoples of the land" (verse 21). What relationship, habit, or influence in your life might be compromising your devotion to God, and what would it look like to establish healthier boundaries this week?

4. The sermon emphasized that God can turn the hearts of kings and use even pagan rulers for His purposes. How might this truth change the way you pray for government leaders—whether you agree with them or not—and will you commit to praying for specific leaders by name this week?

5. The returned exiles celebrated with joy because they recognized God's sovereign hand in their circumstances. Think of a current situation in your life that feels discouraging or confusing. How might acknowledging God's sovereignty over that situation change your attitude, and how will you express trust in Him practically?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Genesis 50:15-21 — This passage shows Joseph declaring that what his brothers meant for evil, God meant for good, illustrating the same doctrine of God's sovereign concurrence emphasized in the sermon.

2. Proverbs 21:1-3 — These verses teach that the king's heart is in the Lord's hand and that righteousness matters more than sacrifice, reinforcing the sermon's points about God's sovereignty over rulers and the call to obedience.

3. Jeremiah 29:10-14 — This prophecy promises restoration after seventy years and is the specific word God fulfilled through the events of Ezra 6, demonstrating that God keeps His promises.

4. Acts 4:23-31 — The early church's prayer acknowledges that Herod, Pilate, and others did what God's hand had predestined, providing the clearest New Testament example of the doctrine of concurrence taught in the sermon.

5. Psalm 119:97-104 — This section of the great psalm celebrates delight in God's law and meditation on His Word, expanding on the sermon's call to listen to God through Scripture.

Sermon Main Topics

I. Life Alternates Between Not Feeling the Need to Trust God and Feeling Unable to Trust Him

II. The Historical Context of Ezra 6: God's People Rebuilding After Tragedy

III. Listen to God: He Has Spoken Through His Word

IV. Obey God: Repentance and Holy Living Bring Joy

V. Trust God: He Is the Sovereign Ruler Over All

VI. The Gospel Call: God Shows Mercy After Judgment

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Detailed Sermon Outline

Life often seems to be divided between those times when we don't feel we need to trust God, and those times when we feel we need to, but we just can't.

You know what I mean?

I go through a day, a normal day, I feel okay. Connie is well. Meetings are interesting. They even seem to accomplish their purpose.

In times like that, how much do I think about God, let alone trust Him?

Other days, unplanned things happen. My schedule's interrupted. A task isn't finished. Or worse, I get bad news about a friend, his church, or his child.

Pastor friends in closed countries email me and tell me their church has been forbidden from meeting again by the authorities. I turn on the news and I hear appalling statistics of abortions and even some state legislatures encouraging them, and too few people seem to understand what those numbers mean.

Or a virus is threatening to become a pandemic.

Or an impeachment trial seems to enrage everyone. Even if for different reasons, and the ability and willingness to trust seems dangerously strained or even torn in our nation, and even more gut-punching, we hear of an unexpected helicopter crash and the sudden ending of nine young lives, including a beloved athlete and his daughter.

Am I just imagining this? We think, Is this a bad dream? But everyone else seems to be having the same bad dream. No one's waking up. It's no dream.

Can tragedy be undone?

No.

Are there lessons we can learn?

Put black boxes in helicopters.

Have stricter regulations against flying in inclement weather, anything else?

We remember that there have been other tragedies before this one. And we reflect on how those tragedies have affected our lives and shaped them. Sometimes looking back helps us to have the courage to go forward. And memories which may seem small and insignificant when remembered and reflected upon can grow like the morning sun and help us to see our way forward.

That's exactly what's going on in the history of God's people in the Old Testament. That's what we find in the study of the book of Ezra that we're in right now, which is at the very end of Old Testament history. Tragedies, terrible tragedies, don't unhappen.

But how can we put it? Resolve. We begin to see a marked example of a twisted and torturous path leading to a place in which God's people know God and His holiness and His love better, and begin to think and look and love more like him.

Ezra is the account of a Jewish Bible scholar moving from Babylon to his ancestral lands and sorting out some significant problems there. That's chapters 7 to 10. The first six chapters that we've been considering rehearse the events two generations before them, events that should help people in Ezra's own day to trust and obey God.

The great event in the first six chapters of Ezra is the return of the exiles to Jerusalem. And this climaxes in the account in chapters 5 and 6 of their rebuilding the temple to the Lord in Jerusalem, the physical focus of the nation's worship of the one true God. Chapter 5 we considered last time as we saw some problems that they encountered which delayed them in their rebuilding. Royal officials came, I assume, at the behest of some troubled neighbors and sort of pulled permits, as it were. And perhaps because the project was 20 years old, these documents were not readily available.

The officials graciously said that the building had gone on for the time, but confirmation would have to be found. Well, chapter 6 is the account of what ended up happening. And it contains surprises at a number of levels, surprises that not only interest us while listening this morning, but which may feed us and instruct us as we go out into the weeks and months that God may have before us. So the account laid out here in Ezra chapter 6 has three encouragements for us. Let me tell them to you.

You see if you can find them when I read the chapter to you. First, we should listen to God.

Second, we should obey God. And third, we should trust God. First, we should listen to God. Second, we should obey God. And third, we should trust God.

See if those are clear to you in this part of Ezra, Ezra chapter 6.

Then Darius the king made a decree and search was made in Babylonia in the house of the archives where the documents were stored. And in Akbatana, the citadel that is in the province of Media, a scroll was found on which this was written: a record. In the first year of Cyrus the king, Cyrus the king issued a decree concerning the house of God at Jerusalem: 'Let the house be rebuilt, the place where sacrifices were offered and let its foundations be retained, its height shall be sixty cubits and its breadth sixty cubits with three layers of great stones and one layer of timber. Let the cost be paid from the royal treasury. And also let the gold and silver vessels of the house of God which Nebuchadnezzar took out of the temple that is in Jerusalem and brought to Babylon be restored and brought back to the temple that is in Jerusalem, each to its place.

You shall put them in the house of God. Now therefore, Tatnai, governor of the province beyond the river, Shethar-bozenai and your associates, the governors who are in the province beyond the river, keep away. Let the work on this house of God alone. Let the governor of the Jews and the elders of the Jews rebuild this house of God on its site. Moreover, I make a decree regarding what you shall do for these elders of the Jews for the rebuilding of this house of God.

The cost is to be paid to these men in full and without delay from the royal revenue, the tribute of the province from beyond the river. And whatever is needed, bulls, rams or sheep for burnt offerings to the God of heaven, wheat, salt, wine or oil as the priests of Jerusalem require, let that be given to them day by day without fail, that they may offer pleasing sacrifices to the God of heaven and pray for the life of the king and his sons. Also I make a decree that if anyone alters this edict, a beam shall be pulled out of his house and he shall be impaled on it. And his house shall be made a dung hill. May the God who has caused his name to dwell there overthrow any king or people who shall put out a hand to alter this or to destroy this house of God that is in Jerusalem.

I, Darius, make a decree, let it be done with all diligence. Then, according to the word sent by Darius the king, Tattnai, the governor of the province beyond the river, Shethar-BozNai and their associates did with all diligence what Darius the king had ordered. And the elders of the Jews built and prospered through the prophesying of Haggai the prophet and Zechariah the son of Iddo. They finished their building by decree of the God of Israel and by decree of Cyrus and Darius and Artaxerxes, king of Persia. And this house was finished on the third day of the month of Adar in the sixth year of the reign of Darius the king.

And the people of Israel, the priests and the Levites and the rest of the returned exiles celebrated the dedication of this house of God with joy. They offered at the dedication of this house of God 100 bulls, 200 rams, 400 lambs, and as a sin offering for all Israel 12 male goats, according to the number of the tribes of Israel. And they set the priests in their divisions and the Levites in their divisions for the service of God at Jerusalem as it is written in the book of Moses. On the fourteenth day of the first month, it's about three weeks later, the returned exiles kept the Passover for the priests and the Levites had purified themselves together, all of them were clean. So they slaughtered the Passover lamb for all the returned exiles, for their fellow priests and for themselves.

It was eaten by the people of Israel who had returned from exile, and also by everyone who had joined them and separated himself from the uncleanness of the peoples of the land to worship the Lord, the God of Israel. And they kept the Feast of Unleavened Bread seven days with joy, for the Lord had made them joyful, and had turned the heart of the king of Assyria to them. So that He aided them in the work of the house of God, the God of Israel.

Friends, at one level, this may seem very straightforward to you. Back in 586 B.C., the Babylonians had conquered Judah and its capital, Jerusalem, and destroyed the temple of the Lord, which had been built by Solomon several hundred years earlier. And carried off tens of thousands of people to Babylon. About 50 years after that, Babylon fell to Persian forces under King Cyrus. And it was that king who in 538 BC, you know, the numbers are getting smaller as we go on because we're going toward the birth of Christ, so that's why people who are not used to history get confused sometimes.

The numbers run in the opposite direction. So 538 is later than 586. So in 538 BC, that king issued a proclamation allowing the Jews to return to Judah and to Jerusalem and even to build their temple. Well, within a couple of years, thousands had returned and the foundations of the temple, including the altar, had been rebuilt. But then the work was halted for about 20 years.

We see a summary statement in Ezra chapter 4, the very last verse, verse 24. Then the work on the house of God that is in Jerusalem stopped.

And it ceased until the second year of the reign of Darius, king of Persia. At that time, God spoke through His prophets Haggai and Zechariah, commanding the Jews to recommence their building and to finish His temple. When they did, the royal official in the region began to make inquiries to make sure this was all right. We have the record of the memo they found there in chapter 6, verses 1 to 5. And then in verses 6 to 12, you see Darius reissues the order.

And then in verse 13, the Persian governor, Tattenai, obviously telling the elders of the Jews, and in verse 14, the rebuilding is completed, and with verse 15 giving us the date. So it had taken them just a little more than four years to complete the rebuilding once they got stuck into it. From what had begun 20 years earlier when they initially returned. Verses 16 and 17 tell of the celebrations of the public worship as it recommenced there. In verse 18, of the reordering of the priests and the Levites that would serve at the temple.

And then the chapter's final paragraph, verses 19 to 22, tells us about their first celebration of the national founding, Passover of Egypt and all. That's their national feast. That's the celebration of their identity.

When God as a nation pulled them out of Egypt. It happens annually and it reminds them of their indebtedness to God. Now our question is simple. In the midst of these royal decrees and temple building and dedicating and Passover keeping, what are we here today in 2020 to learn as those who are and who would be the people of this very same God. What are we to learn?

Three simple lessons. Listen, obey, trust. Listen, obey, trust.

First, listen.

If God doesn't speak, we are sunk. We are done for. But the whole Bible is proof that the true God is marked off and distinguished from false gods by the fact that He has spoken. And because God speaks, we must listen. Do you see that in our passage?

It's there at least a couple of places. Look down to verse 18. Notice the last phrase that explains the origins of the divisions they reestablished among those who worked at the temple in Jerusalem. You see that phrase in verse 18? As it is written in the book of Moses.

We know that Jesus and other Jews of His time used this expression to describe the earliest books of the Bible. But did you know this expression was used even during the writing of the books of the Old Testament? The later books of the Old Testament realizes these are books of Moses and they describe them as that. Ezra does here. Nehemiah will do that in Nehemiah.

Even in 2 Chronicles a couple of times. Those earliest books are referred to as the books of Moses. The people of God were marked then by an understanding of the authority of the scriptures in their life together. Just consider it when they had lost their land.

And lost their temple. What had they kept hold of? Their Scriptures. They kept them. They took them with them.

They read them. They brought them back with them. And now they turn because they understand them to be God's Word written down. Friends, what marks the righteous man in Psalm 1? His delight is in the law of the Lord.

And on His law he meditates day and night. This delight is celebrated in stanza after stanza of the great 119th Psalm. Seven times a day I praise you for your righteous laws. I obey your statutes, for I love them greatly. Your law is my delight.

What does it mean for us to be people today who delight in God's law?

Is it a willingness to come and give an hour a week to sit and listen to a sermon on it? Is it a desire that so drives us that we order our days so that we get up early, not just for the gym or breakfast, but even for time in God's Word, reading it, reflecting on it, praying about it for our own lives? Friend, what does it mean for you today to have your joy connected to the fact that God has spoken. 2 Chronicles 17 has the record of Jehoshaphat sending his officials and Levites out. We read, They taught in Judah, having the book of the law of the Lord with them.

They went about through all the cities of Judah and taught among the people. That's just what Moses had prophesied about the Levites that they would do. Back in Deuteronomy 33, They shall teach Jacob your rules and Israel your law. In fact, King Josiah, when the book of the covenant is refound in the temple, read in the people's hearing all the words of the book of the covenant, which had been found in the temple of the Lord. In fact, this is the very ministry that Ezra would be involved in when he and Nehemiah returned They bring the Levites with them, and we read in Nehemiah 8 of them.

They read from the book of the Law of God, making it clear and giving them meaning so that the people could understand what was being read. Ever wonder where we get the idea of the church services that we have? Friends, this is the pattern we see again and again of God's people being given God's Word with clarity and with time given to explain it. The whole piety of the Bible doesn't lead us to trust in our own dreams and visions and impressions.

Of course, God is sovereign. As such, He can use any means He desires. But as a congregation, we affirm that the Holy Bible has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth without any mixture of error for its matter; that it is the true center of Christian union and the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and opinions should be tried.

Ezra's day was in the period when God was inspiring new Scriptures, captured in the preaching of the prophets we read of in verse 14, which had just recommenced for the first time since the people's return from exile. Look there in verse 14. It says that the elders of the Jews finished their building by the decree of God. That's interesting. How did they know what God had decreed in that matter?

Well, look there in verse 14, Through the prophesying of Haggai the prophet and Zechariah the son of Iddo. Friends, you can read their books when you go home this afternoon. Haggai is very short and Zechariah is not very long.

Through them, God instructed the people to finish the temple as a tribute to their allegiance to Him. This is, after all, the God who speaks and who keeps His promises. Through His prophet Jeremiah He had said, When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you My promise and bring you back to this place. Friends, it was now seventy years since that prophecy, and like clockwork, God's Word showed itself true. That's why we, as God's people, listen to it as we do, as we're doing even right now, because we understand that God has spoken in His Word.

So listen to God in His Word. But this listen doesn't just affect our thoughts, it determines our actions. The second lesson that we learn from this sacred record of God's people of old is that if we would be God's people, we too must, number two, obey God. Obey God. Friends, according to the Bible, God is holy.

That means He's completely, perfectly good. And we are not. We are not.

Therefore, in order to follow Him, we must change. Or to use the Bible language, we must repent. We must turn from our path of doing just whatever we want to doing what He has made us to do and instructs us to do in His Word. As we continue in this book of Ezra over the next couple of months, we'll see that there's material in this book that people badly misconstrue. That is, some misinterpret God's concern for His people's purity as if it were a racial concern rather than a spiritual concern.

Look in our chapter at verse 21. Look at who it says kept the Passover.

It was eaten by the people of Israel who had returned from exile and also by everyone who had joined them and separated himself from the uncleanness of the peoples of the land.

To worship the Lord, the God of Israel. Okay, we understand that first group, the people of Israel who had returned from exile. But they weren't alone. Look who joined them in this feast of their identity as God's specially delivered people. And also by everyone who had joined them and separated himself from the uncleanness of the peoples of the land to worship the Lord, the God of Israel.

Okay, who is this second group? Would it include the Jews of the land who had not been carried into exile?

I think it would. They were together with these returnees, together embracing their identity as the delivered people of God.

But a couple more questions. Would it have included all the Jews of the land?

No.

Neither among the returnees nor the Jews who had been living in Judah throughout would any of them be welcome to keep the Passover who were still associating with the uncleanness of the peoples of the land. They were not welcome to keep the Passover. What did that mean? Well, that meant those people whose obedience to the distinctions that God had given for His people had vanished, who didn't circumcise their male children, who didn't keep the Sabbath, who didn't keep the food laws, or those who did join in the worship of local pagan deities. None of these Jews would be welcome to keep the Passover.

What's more, we read back in the books of Moses of non-Jews joining God's people, becoming part of them, not by birth, but by choice. We read in Exodus 12:48 at the original Passover, the very first observance in Egypt itself, quote, if a stranger shall sojourn with you and would keep the Passover to the Lord, let all his males be circumcised, then he may come near and keep it. He shall be as a native of the land. There shall be one law for the native and one for the stranger who sojourns among you. A couple of years later in the second Passover in the wilderness, as the people are nearing the Promised Land in Numbers 9, this is repeated.

If a stranger sojourns among you and would keep the Passover to the Lord, according to the statute of the Passover, according to its rule, so shall he do. You shall have one statute, both for the sojourner and for the native. So friends, understand this. I don't know how your understanding of the Old Testament has been. Maybe it's been Old Testament people of God, ethnic.

New Testament people of God, spiritual. That's kind of true if you don't press the details. But if you press the details in a situation like this one, you begin to see, actually in the Old Testament, it wasn't strictly ethnic. There was a kind of ethnic core to it. But there were those of that ethnicity who were not part of the people of God, by the way they related to God, and there were those who were not of that ethnicity that joined the people.

So most comprehensively, you couldn't say that the basic distinction of the people of God in the Old Testament, even in the Old Testament, was race. It was grace. People misunderstand the book of Ezra when they think it's only about race.

And with all due respect, those people are just not reading it very carefully. They're not putting it in context of the Old Testament. They're not seeing what's really going on here. What's really going on here is God is continuing to refine His people. He's continuing to find those whose hearts are soft to His Word as He creates a people who will hear and believe His promise like our father Abraham did, and will act on it.

That's what distinguishes God's people from the people around.

We'll talk a lot more about this when we get to Ezra chapters 9 and 10. But these passages that have been pressed into terrible service against interracial marriage in the past have entirely misunderstood what's going on here. And they haven't really understood the nature of the separation that God was calling his people to have from the nations. It was not finally an ethnic or a racial separation, it was a moral and spiritual separation, which reflects the nature of the people of God today. Well, something else about this obedience, I do want you to notice, this obedience to God's commands was not a kind of sullen resolve.

No, it brought them a good and right joy. Did you notice that in the passage? Like in verse 16, look at verse 16. There we read that they celebrated the dedication of this house of God and how did they do it? With joy.

Or down in verse 22, why do we read that they kept the week-long feast of Unleavened Bread? In verse 22, They kept the Feast of Unleavened Bread seven days with joy, for the Lord had made them joyful. Good and right joy is a source of obedience, isn't it? When we find our joy in the right things, it motivates us to live as God would have us live. As He made us to live.

In fact, doesn't this sound like Jesus?

When you have shallower joys, they lead you to do other things, some things that God disapproves of. But when you find the right joys, then you follow the example of Christ whom we read of in Hebrews 12:1. Why does it say He endured even the cross for the joy that was set before him.

Friends, if you have some other plan for your life, will you just change it up? Will you just realize that it's God's way that is the right way? So what you want to do is to understand what does God say in his word? What does he tell me to love, to desire, to rejoice in? And oh God, how can I do that?

Show me how I can do that. Friends, that's what you want to do even with this time today. Obey God in everything He's told us.

Now, Ezra was writing in the 450s of what had happened a couple of generations before him in the 510s, and he was recounting the great acts of God to encourage the people of his own day, and those of us since then, to listen to God, to obey God, And one more lesson, number three, to trust God, to trust God. You see that in our passage? That perhaps is the most basic lesson of all in this chapter. It's simply that God rules. And if that is so, what does that teach us as those who are His people?

That we should trust Him.

We see God's rules so clearly throughout this chapter. But for one example, just look at the last verse. And they kept the Feast of Unleavened Bread seven days with joy, for the Lord had made them joyful, and had turned the heart of the king of Assyria to them, so that he aided them in the work of the house of God, the God of Israel.

So why did Cyrus and later Darius help the Jews rebuild the temple? I'm sure they had their own political reasons, their own religious reasons, perhaps their own personal reasons. They were no mere puppets. But above and behind and beyond their reasons was the work of God in such a way that we read here that the Lord had turned the heart of the king. The author is echoing the language of King Solomon from Proverbs 21:1, the king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord, he turns it wherever he will.

Friends, this is why a few minutes ago I led us in praying for the senators in the Virginia Senate and for the senators in the U.S. Senate, because it doesn't matter what party they are, ultimately as far as God's control. God is able to control the hearts of kings. They may even have bad motives for what they do, but that does not in any way inhibit God's ability to use them sovereignly for His purposes. This whole chapter is teaching this. It just screams it.

Even the very fact that there aren't one but two different Persian kings If you thought it was all Cyrus is doing, well it wouldn't happen without Darius reinforcing it. Or if you thought it was all of Darius is doing, well it wouldn't happen if Cyrus hadn't told him to do it in the first place. Friends, it's two different Persian kings. What does that let you know? That they are far from almighty.

These kings, they come and they go. But there is one will behind overruling and that is the will of the sovereign God. He is the one who is determining to use for good reasons or bad the motives that these kings may have to do his will.

But friends, this is more than simply echoing language of the book of Proverbs. This idea of concurrence, that's the theological idea if you want to write it down, concurrence. This idea of concurrence, of God working with His creation, is shot through the whole Bible. Back in Deuteronomy 8:18 we read, you, shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He who gives you power to get wealth. You see there these ideas of our abilities, our choices, but behind them the God who gives and who withholds.

That's why here in our chapter, in Ezra chapter 6, we can read in verse 14, did you notice those two different phrases in verse 14? This happened by the decree of God and by the decree of Cyrus and Darius.

You had your earthly king, but you had your heavenly king. So who is the true sovereign of the world?

Well, for a time, earthly rulers are of certain parts of it. So the Lord says in Ezekiel 26, verse 7, He referred to the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar as king of Babylon, king of kings. There's a great title to ascribe to an earthly king. Now, he could have just been using that because that's what Nebuchadnezzar called himself. So he was being polite.

Oh, great King of Kings. You know, he could have referred to him like that. It's possible. But it's also true the Babylonian king did defeat other kings, like the King of Tyre mentioned in Ezekiel 26. And so could in a real sense be said to be a King of kings, not King of all kings, not forever King of kings, but of some other kings for some time.

Similarly, if you just look in the next chapter here in Ezra, chapter 7, you look at verse 12.

We see a letter in which the Persian King of Ezra's own day, Artaxerxes, referred to himself as King of kings. Power goes to humans' heads, you know? Just what happens. Well, and again, this is not a false statement if it means Artaxerxes was a king of some other kings for some time. That's true.

It's a limited sovereignty, a real sovereignty, but a limited one for a while, yes, it's true. But it is clear in Ezra and throughout the Bible that it is God who is the true sovereign over all sovereigns forever. You see the difference? Please don't think this came from Handel's Hallelujah Chorus. King of kings and Lord of lords.

I mean, it's repeated there many, many times and it's glorious, but Handel was getting all that from the Bible. This is all over the Bible. Back in Deuteronomy 10 verse 17 we read, the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God. Psalm 136 verse 3 exhorts us, Give thanks to the Lord of lords, for His steadfast love endures forever. Paul writes to Timothy in 1 Timothy 6 referring to God as, He who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, to Him be eternal dominion.

In Revelation 17, the Lamb is called the Lord of Lords and King of Kings. Friends, that's the overall picture in the Bible of the supreme authority of God Himself. Now what that means very practically is that God can use pagan kings to aid His people. Do not think we had the evil-bad Assyrian kings who destroyed the northern kingdom, then the evil-bad Babylonian kings who came and destroyed Jerusalem and the temple. And then finally the good civilized Persians came in.

All praise to Persian refinement and culture. All praise to their policy of toleration. Now it is in fact true the Persian kings did have a different geopolitical strategy in dealing with local religions. They tried to make them allied to their own throne by giving them money for their religious practices. And they did it not just for the Jews, they did it to every major nation they'd conquered.

We have records of it elsewhere in Turkey, of the Persian emperors funding these local religions. They're kind of covering all their bets. You know, I think we can understand that they've got the clergy of the local place in their pay. I mean, there is sophistication to the move. There may also be genuine toleration in some sense, more like what you and I would think.

That could be. I don't know what all was in their minds.

But it's also true, you can read of this same Darius that when there was a rebellion in Babylon, he publicly executed brutally 3,000 of the most prominent citizens. Just to make a point, you shouldn't be doing that. So the idea that the Persian emperors are all sweetness and light and that's why they said to the Jews, you can go back home and I'll pay to rebuild your temple. No, no, friends, the heroes are not Cyrus and Darius. The hero is the Lord.

The hero of the story is always the Lord. He takes very crooked sticks, even sticks like you and me, and with them draws straight lines for His own purposes, for His own glory. That's what God is doing in this book of Ezra. So we're back to these ideas of concurrence and compatibilism, that one action may have multiple motives. Man may intend things for one purpose and God can use them for another.

And we see this throughout the Bible, the Old and New Testaments. The old, you think of the story of Joseph and his brothers. You know that great dramatic story, Joseph is sold into slavery by his brothers. He rises, he gets prosperous. The brothers in desperation later come, they don't even recognize him because he's so great.

He's older, he's all dressed up, he's rich. But then finally when they do recognize him and they realize like, oh my goodness, he knows who we are, we treated him so badly, he's going to kill us. What do you see in the last chapter of Genesis? Joseph says, you, meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive as they are today. Friends, Joseph's trust was not ultimately in his brothers or in the might of Egypt and the wealth of Egypt, which came and went like every other culture.

His trust was in the Lord. It was God whose purposes would be fulfilled. Friends, today our public authorities, our armed forces do and should have responsibility for promoting the security of our nation. But we should never trust in them in that fullest sense. A human can't bear is not built to bear that kind of responsibility, to provide that kind of security.

Only God can do that. Do you remember what Paul said in Acts 17? God determined the times set for every nation of men and the exact places where they should live. Even Canada.

He is sovereign over a land no matter how large, no matter how empty.

He is completely in control of all the borders. God has set the times and places for all the people we read.

Friends, I make that humorous aside, but we are getting into the deepest waters in the entire Bible here. We are getting into the most glorious and marvelous mysteries. Paul is imprisoned and the Philippian Christians are scared. This crackdown is going to kill the gospel. Paul writes back.

Philippians 1:12, I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel.

The prison keepers, the officials, have their own reasons for imprisoning Paul. Paul is not worried about that. He knows that God will use these circumstances for His purposes. So the officials had one set of purposes in imprisoning. God had another.

Where am I going to go for the clearest and most concise example of this in all the Bible? I want a real answer here. Where am I going to go? Thank you. Jesus and the cross are always good answers at church and that's...

You are theologically correct.

You're looking for a passage of Scripture, the name of a book, the number of a chapter, where am I going to go? That makes this super clear. Yes, who said that? Yes. Tell me your name again.

Bryce. Really well done. Yeah, okay. Well done, Bryce. So let's go to Acts chapter 4.

It's worth turning there because this is what Ezra is all about. If you want to understand Ezra, here is a clear New Testament example of it.

Well, I think Calvin would say Romans 3:23. And while that's awesome, I agree with you that I think Acts 4 is so clear on this point.

Look at verse 23. When they were released, they went to their friends and reported what the chief priests and the elders had said to them. And when they heard it, they lifted their voices together to God and said, Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them, who through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit, why did the Gentiles rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against His anointed. For truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod, Jewish responsibility, and Pontius Pilate, Roman responsibility, along with the Gentiles so it wasn't just the ruler, and along with the people of Israel, wasn't just Herod, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.

Friends, you see how our very salvation is tied up in this. I said in point two that we're to obey God. Here's the problem with point two, we can't obey God sufficiently well. We don't obey God sufficiently well. So this holy God, looking at those of us here in this room and looking at those He made in His image, these people who are to exist to reflect Him, this holy God in His love sent His only Son to live and die a life of perfect reflection of His image, perfect love of God and neighbor.

Never sinning or doing harm or evil to anyone. And because of his moral perfection, he had no need to die. Death in Scripture is always connected with sin, whether it's the sin of Adam and Eve or our own sin. But Christ had no sin, no reason to die. We all know that Jesus died.

He died on the cross. Why did He die? Because He died in our place. Isaiah 53 explains this beautifully. He was pierced for our transgressions.

Our sins were laid upon Him. So we can know that the one who did not deserve death has taken death. As a substitute for all of us who would turn and trust in him. God raised him from the dead to show that he accepted this offered sacrifice. He ascended and presented it to his heavenly Father.

Friend, the good news for you is you can be forgiven for your sins. You can be reconciled to this God and to others. Friends, this whole chapter, in fact, the whole book of Ezra just screams out for us to trust God when we don't fully understand when God uses the most unlikely people.

Friend, you realize there are no circumstances in your life right now that stop God from being able to get to you in judgment or in blessing.

You can't be so rich that He can't touch your body in a moment. And you can't be so poor that He can't find you and give you the sweetest fellowship with Him and the most radiant eternal blessings even beginning in this life. We can't protect ourselves from His providence or hide from His rule. We can't get ourselves in such trouble that we are beyond His finding us. I love that old John Bunyan quotation about the length of the saving arm of God.

Sometimes a man is, as he apprehends it, so far off from God that they think themselves beyond the reach of God's mercy. But Bunyan writes, When we think His mercy is clean gone, and that ourselves are free among the dead, and of the number that He remembers no more, then He can reach us. This should encourage them that for the present cannot stand, but that do fly before their guilt, them that feel no help nor stay. I will say before thee, and I pray thee hear me, O the length of the saving arm of God, as yet thou art within the reach thereof. Do not thou go about to measure arms with God.

I mean, do not thou conclude that because thou canst not reach God by thy short stump, therefore he cannot reach thee with his long arm. Look again. Hast thou an arm like God? It becomes thee when thou canst not perceive that God is within the reach of thy arm, then to believe that thou art within the reach of his, for it is long and none knows how long.

My brothers and sisters in Christ, regardless of how untrue and unreliable people in this life have been to you, will you trust your Heavenly Father to be both willing and able to do for you good? Your prayers suggest that you are willing to trust Him like that. I sincerely thank God for the privilege of pastoring a congregation where so many of our members are happily able to come together each Sunday night to pray. Brothers and sisters, let's resolve in this new year afresh to go to our great God in prayer because He is able. And so we should trust Him in everything.

Now, friends, nothing that we've said today means that we won't hear of any more tragic helicopter crashes.

No reflections on the past can deliver us from the reality of continuing to live in a fallen and broken world. But they can equip us for how we take in and understand and even respond to tragic circumstances.

Those words Usher sang so movingly in the Staples Center on Friday night, the words to Amazing Grace were written by John Newton, a man who was a slave trader until God's mercy found him. His life completely changed. He put his faith in Christ. He repented of his actions. He became an early advocate for ending slavery and helped all he could.

He became an evangelical ministry, a minister for decades, and a prolific hymn writer, his most well-known hymn being Amazing Grace. When John Newton died, this is what he had asked to be put on his tombstone: John Newton, Clerk, Once an Infidel and Libertine, a Servant of Slavers in Africa. Was by the rich mercy of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, reserved, restored, pardoned, and appointed to preach the faith He had long labored to destroy.

Friends, as we pull the camera back from Ezra chapter 6, we find that the whole book speaks to us of the sovereignty of God and the fact that He can be trusted. In fact, the whole Old Testament teaches us the same thing. Back in Deuteronomy 28 and 29, God had warned the people of Israel that if they didn't obey Him when they came into the Promised Land, that He would in judgment disperse them into the nations. And that's what happened. But after the curses of Deuteronomy 28 and 29, there was also the promise of Deuteronomy 30, where the Lord promised that if they repented and returned to the Lord in their hearts, He would, Deuteronomy 30 verse 3 says, restore your fortunes and have mercy on you, and He will gather you again from all the peoples where the Lord your God has scattered you.

Friends, this sovereign God is a God who shows mercy after judgment.

This is the extraordinary story of this God in the Old Testament. We see it here in Ezra chapter 6 and verse 20, As the Passover Lamb is once again substituted for the sins of the people, as the spotless lambs annually taught the people about the truly innocent Lamb of God who was to come as their true substitute. Oh, time fails me to point out all the richness of the details of God's grace in this passage.

To here, the fact that the king is called the king of Assyria, the king of Assyria, that's funny because that's an anachronistic title. It's old. It doesn't fit anymore. That's two empires out of date. It is the same land, that's true.

And so we all know what you mean by it when you write it of Darius calling the king of Assyria. But the king of Assyria fell to the king of Babylon who then fell to the king of Persia. But why would the Holy Spirit inspire it to be written like that? Because he's reminding them that the 200 years of God's judgment fulfilling Deuteronomy 28 and 29 on an idolatrous people were now coming to a close. He was casting their mind back 200 years earlier when the Assyrian king had wiped out the northern ten tribes in judgment, in the right and good judgment of God.

Then a little over a hundred years later, the Babylonians came and attacked and took the first wave of exiles from Jerusalem. And then 586, they destroyed Jerusalem and the temple and they take them into exile. But that time is now ended. That 200 years is over. And after judgment with the God of the Bible, there is mercy.

Friends, we don't stand on this corner for 140 years to grimly tell you that there are consequences to your actions. Yes, there are consequences to your actions, but beyond that, there is a God who shows mercy. Friends, that's for you today. If you know what your situation is and that you have acted in such a way that deserves God's judgment, you can also become an object of his mercy. If you will turn from your sins and trust in him, there are literally hundreds of people around you that would love to help you understand what this could mean in your own life.

These books of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther bring us to the end of the record of the history of the Old Testament. And they leave us there as the people of God, having known God's blessing and known God's judgment and God's mercy, now waiting for the coming of the greatest blessing God would ever give. The coming Savior and Judge, the one who would come first in mercy and then return a final time to judge. The history of the Old Testament ends leaving us waiting for the Savior Jesus Christ whose faithful word is our final hymn says, you, can believe. Let's trust boldly in the mercy of Him who promised.

Lord God, forgive us for thinking our sins or even our circumstances are bigger or better than youn.

Unmask them to us, Lord. Help us to understand the wonder and beauty and joy there is in youn and in the life youe call us to in Christ. End the deception of sin in our lives. End Satan's lies about yout in our ears. Teach us the truth of youf sovereignty and of youf mercy.

Teach us to trust you today. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.