April 14, 2024: Message: Freedom Is Joy | Scripture: Ezra 6:13-22 | Speaker: Pastor Stephen Choy
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Introduction
If able, please stand with me as I read to you from Ezra 6:13-22. TWoL: 13 Then, according to the word sent by Darius the king, Tattenai, the governor of the province Beyond the River, Shethar-bozenai, and their associates did with all diligence what Darius the king had ordered. 14 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; 15 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.
16 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. 17 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. 18 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.
19 On the fourteenth day of the first month, the returned exiles kept the Passover. 20 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. 21 It was eaten by the people of Israel who had returned from exile, and also by every one who had joined them and separated himself from the uncleanness of the peoples of the land to worship the LORD, the God of Israel. 22 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.
We finished last week in Ezra 6:1-12 on a cliffhanger. You know great shows, stories, books keep you hooked season after season or book after book on cliffhangers. We all know the feeling. We’ve invested a lot of time in this thing where all of the tension between good and bad is leading up to some final confrontation—some final resolution, and if the writer has done a good job, it’s a resolution that you can’t predict—it’s unexpected—there’s one you hope for, but you need to get to the end to know if that hope will be satisfied.
And as the season of your show or the final chapter of your book comes to an end, there’s a sense of resolution, but it’s not complete. There are all of these other loose ends waiting to be tied up, and in that moment—as you realize not everything will be completed here in what you’re given, you’re hooked. You’re left asking, “what happens next?”
I remember watching one show that’s based on a popular series of movies called The Terminator. This particular show was called The Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles, and it’s a prequel to the movies about the mother of John Connor—the guy who saves the world, only in this show, the mother actually saves the world first, and sets the stage for her son who will become the greater saviour.
So, I finished the first season. Loved it. Moved onto the second, and as I came to the final few episodes of the second, the writer was really building up to this incredible finish where Sarah would meet her future son, John, and fight the Terminator together, and the season ended on this cliffhanger—Sarah seeing her son—having the answers for him. And because the second season had been over for a good while, I went to search for the first episode of the third season only to find out that the network had canceled the show long before I had even started the first season.
I remember being angry with having wasted my time. But more than anger, I was heartbroken because I had hoped for joy in Sarah’s life—joy to see her son succeed where she could not—joy to see the defeat of the Terminator—joy in having the show tie up its loose ends, and I would never get that. I would always be bound up in the tension—in not knowing what happens—in not having my hope satisfied.
See, there’s an enslavement in that, isn’t there? The bondage of never being able to see how the writer of the show intended to bring it all to an awe-inspiring and joy-filled close. And last week, in Ezra 6:1-12, we ended on a kind of cliffhanger. We ended with the Jews building the temple, the Samaritans being unhappy and asking for vindication from the king, and the king answering the Samaritans, but not in the way they expected. Rather, he responds in support of the Jews, and verse 12 is the king’s demand that the Samaritans do the same, and we’re left asking, “what happens next?”
How will the Samaritans respond? What happens to the Jews? And the answer that we get in our text is that freedom happens. Freedom from the tension. Freedom from the waiting and suffering. Freedom from enslavement and freedom to joy.
Today, we get a glimpse at where God’s cliffhanger of history is leading us, and no matter how many people try to cancel him, he will not leave the story unfinished. He means not only to show us his sovereignty, but he means to give us the fullness of his freedom, and it is a freedom of joy—a freedom to joy—a freedom that is joy, and he calls us, in our text, to rejoice in that free gift. Let’s not delay our rejoicing, then, by looking at our first point:
1) Celebrate His Priority of Place
We don’t have to wait long before the tension and cliffhanger from verse 12 of our story comes to a resolution in verse 13. But it’s written in such a way that if you’re not paying attention, you’ll read past it as if nothing truly remarkable has happened—as if what we read in verse 13 was reasonable. Yet, our passage begins with words that are anything but reasonable. They are, perhaps, the most unreasonable words in the whole book of Ezra-Nehemiah: after receiving this rebellion-inspiring and insurrection-encouraging decree from Darius, the governors who, only a short time ago wanted the Jews to suffer by discouraging them, terrifying them, and bribing officials to frustrate their purposes—these governors who clearly valued their position, people, and power—we’re told that they act, with all diligence, exactly how Darius the king ordered them to act.
This word for diligence implies a completeness—a fullness—a humble submission like a servant who is pleased in what his master has required of him. And in our case, this servant is someone who has the power to usurp and make his master’s life extremely difficult. In other words, I hope it is not lost on us, as we read this verse, how remarkable and inexplicable these few words in verse 13 are. They are entirely not what the Samaritans would have expected of themselves. They are not what the Jews could have rightly expected in their historical experience in this land. And they are not something that we, in our reading, could have properly expected in our human nature.
See, we expect greed. We expect anger. We expect revolt and dissension. We expect that these governors would throw up their hands, saying, “how could the king betray us like this? Does he know who we are?” And we expect this because it’s how we would act. It’s what we think when things don’t go our way. We think how could our King—our God betray us like this? How could he not see what we’re worth to his kingdom, and what we could do to harm his kingdom if he doesn’t esteem us the way we deserve?
And perhaps, it’s because the divine author of our text knows this about us that he inspires the human author of verses 12 and 13 to write them as simply as he does. Perhaps he wants our hearts to feel the weight of the strangeness of these words, and how the tension—the cliffhanger—seems like no tension or struggle at all. Why? Because God and our author want us to see how small a thing it is for God to accomplish this—how small a thing it is for him to do the impossible—to do that which would be unreasonable for us to do.
In one verse, he brings the whole world of our sinful expectations upon us, and by it he exposes something about how little our faith is and how big he, our God, is. More than that, God uses extraordinary means to do it—he uses the Samaritans! He doesn’t use Jews! He doesn’t use those we’d expect him to use! The Jews do no conquering here. Christians are not the heroes of the story! No, God is. He has always been. He will always be. He brings the proud and arrogant low. He makes the haughty spirit fall. He shows his faithfulness. He gives us his fellowship when we were desperately unfaithful and unworthy.
And yet how many of us this week read over verse 13 like it was nothing? How numb have we become to seeing our God as an incredible God, able to do things that we cannot fathom? Worse yet, how numb have we become to asking our God to do the incredible, while thinking more about ourselves—how well we’ve done in this or how great we are in that—that we are incredible, and that we should be acknowledged as such.
Verse 13 is given to us to tell us we aren’t so incredible. We aren’t as intelligent, as powerful, as rich, as worthy, or as deserving as we think we are, and this is a good thing. These verses we’re reading about today are good verses—some of the happiest in Scripture. And the way we indulge in that happiness and the freedom it means to give us is if we start here: with a God who does the incredible for those who aren’t very incredible.
He does here an incredible thing by changing the hearts of these Samaritans with the fewest details possible simply because this is what he does—and this is what we’ll miss if we’re too busy putting ourselves first. We need him to change their hearts. And just as well, we need him to change ours too, which begins by having our priorities in order.
Verse 13 is nothing short of miraculous because the enemies of the Jews suddenly become their friends. Yet, don’t you see, it is also miraculous because a change takes place in the hearts of Israel, too, almost without us noticing. And it’s because they’re prioritizing things rightly for once—they’re listening to their prophets, they’re not competing with the nations. If you remember back in Ezra 4:2, the Samaritans asked the Israelites if they might be able to build the temple with the Jews, and at that time, the leaders of Israel said no. They couldn’t fathom being partakers in this ministry with these outsiders.
But here, by the decree of God, which is what leads to the decrees of Cyrus and Darius—and later Artaxerxes in Nehemiah’s story, as well—the Samaritans become partners and helpers in the project to both their own joy and the joy of all Israel. Where Israel was stubborn once to do it their own way, they are now ready to acknowledge and participate in a better way.
And this is what we need to understand: when we prioritize God and allow him to do what only he can do, he changes the course of history—he changes our expectations—he changes our affections—he changes our hearts—all of us—Jew and Samaritan—Israelite and Gentile—White and Black—Asian and Latino—foe to friend. When God works, there is peace in the land. When God works, tension is brought to levity. When God works, fear and uncertainty are transformed into hope and exuberant, unified happiness.
This is what we see in the completion of the building—not just happiness of one people, but a happiness of all people working together—harmonious—because God is given his priority of place. His decree brings freedom. His authority rights the hostility that exists apart from him. And in just four years—after two decades of human languishing and competing, God brings the temple to completion. The word that is used here in verses 14 and 15 for “finished” could also be translated as “perfected.” The temple was perfected. Why? Because God’s work, when it is God’s work, is always good, complete, and perfect.
So, too, must our lives start with God as he builds us up as his final temple—as his church—and makes us perfect in his sight—not in ours. And this isn’t to say that we, in this life, will ever be perfect, that temple in Ezra’s day was far from what Solomon’s was—the church of God will, from now until Christ returns, always be a work in progress. But the perfection isn’t in what we see in ourselves or in how we compare ourselves to others. The perfection and the freedom comes from God—from having God—who is doing the work on our behalf. A work that we cannot do.
Do you know what the difference is between a self-exalting, self-pleasing church and a God-prioritizing church is? The first thinks of how they’ve done everything they can to get themselves to God, whereas the second realizes that only God can bring us to him, and that whatever work he’s done—big or small—it has not been and will not be in vain. And this second church is the kind of church that I hope we might be. It’s the kind of church that has something to rejoice in (1 Cor 15:58)—that God is glorified in us when we are most satisfied, submitted, and prioritizing of him, as John Piper says.
This is a happy passage, one that calls us to celebrate the free gift that God gives us in himself. But we can only have that kind of celebration if he is our first priority. Pay special attention to him, then. Place your hope and expectation in him over yourself, and he who began a good work in us will bring it to completion—to perfection—at the day of Jesus Christ (Phil 1:6).
2) Celebrate (With) His Joyous Community
What, then, ought to take place when God completes—perfects—his house? What ought to characterize the Christian’s life when we prioritize him over ourselves? Two things ought to happen. The first is that your life ought to be filled with joyous praise of him.
As soon as the temple is finished the people of Israel do what? They make their offering—it’s not an extremely lavish offering, especially when we compare it to what Solomon offered the Lord when he completed the first temple (1 King 8:63). But this offering is sincere both in its posture of gratitude for God’s kindness AND in its posture of contrition—they provide an offering for their sin as this temple goes up because they know that if this is the house of God—if God is to dwell in it and with them—then the building isn’t enough.
So too, if we desire God’s abiding presence in our lives—if we want to know that he is with us and not against us—then we need more than a building—more than outward acts of piety and religion. No, there must actually be something that happens in and to your heart. There has to be actual gratitude for God’s loving kindness—that God has orchestrated all these things for your good. There has to be actual contrition and hatred of sin leading to repentance, knowing that he has secured your good by nailing his own Son to a cross, bearing your guilt, because God is a holy God, and we are to be a holy people.
And these things put together, repentant contrition and gratitude—being sorrowful, yet always rejoicing—this is called worship. It’s called praise! It’s called becoming what is good and acceptable and perfect to the Lord. God has done everything—built up the temple and made us its people—so that we might be filled with the joy of salvation and give him praise.
When I was younger, I came across the theological idea that God glorifies himself and has made us to give him glory and worship. And I thought to myself isn’t God kind of narcissistic if he made us to worship and glorify him? What’s it that the Westminster Catechism says? The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever? Isn’t he hypocritical if he tells us not to worship or glorify ourselves but turns around and says that he exists to bring glory to himself?
So, I searched for an answer, and I came across these words from C.S. Lewis: “the most obvious fact about praise—whether of God or anything else—isn’t that it’s merely a compliment, approval, or the giving of honour. It’s that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise. […] The world rings with praise—lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favourite poets, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favourite game. […] I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes—perfects—the enjoyment. Praise is the appointed end of our joy.”
Brothers and sisters, the most important and necessary ingredient to what makes a person free is that they get to pursue and possess that which brings them the most joy, and I use that word “most” very specifically because a lot of things in this world can make us happy. The praise of man, for example, can make us really happy for a time, but it is not the ‘most’ happy we could be because it ends, and we will always be in want for more of it.
But God is infinite and perfect in himself, which means he is the most of everything good and happy in all places for all time, which means if we desire to be most happy—if we desire to be most free—then we ought to desire God. This is what led John Piper to say that the Westminster Catechism had it partially right, but he made one small adjustment: what is the chief end of man? It’s not merely to glorify God and enjoy him forever, but to glorify God in enjoying him forever.
Finding your joy and freedom in God is not separate from praising and glorifying God. No, enjoying leads to praising. God isn’t narcissistic or hypocritical. He’s watching out for your greatest good! He’s generous and gracious because by glorifying him, we are set free! By making God the object of our worship, we are made the most happy that we can possibly be, and it’s a staggering insanity—it’s a tragic sin—when we choose not to do so.
“Indeed,” says C.S. Lewis, “if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the gospel, it seems that our Lord finds our desires [apart from him] not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea. We are far too easily pleased.” We were made to give God our praise because we were made for joy.
And when we are filled with joy leading to praise as the perfected temple of God, what is the second thing that needs to happen? What happens when we’re filled with joy? We’re meant to gather with those who we desire to share that joy with. This is what the Jews do in verse 16. They don’t only offer sacrificial praise, but they do it by coming together and celebrating what God has done with joy. True joy is experienced most completely in community!
I’m going to be very honest with you, and it may seem strange to hear, but I hate being the center of attention. I’m so easily embarrassed and filled with pride that the possibility of looking like a fool freaks me out. Yet, when Candace agreed to marry me, I invited everyone I knew to our wedding—our sanctuary was filled with over a thousand people—half of whom I was barely friends or even acquaintances with. But I wanted them to see my joy. I wanted them to share in my happiness—to know that such a thing in a world full of sin is possible, and that the graciousness of God is incredible.
Is this how we are with that even greater thing called the gospel? You know the Bible talks about Christ and his church as the most magnificent of unions in the universe. Are we clamouring to see it in our own lives? Are we clamouring to bring others into it and welcome them into it—a joy incomparable to anything or anyone else?
Let me quote C.S. Lewis one more time: when we love something—when we find a great joy in something, “we don’t only praise it, we urge others to join in the praise with us: Isn’t she lovely? Doesn’t this food taste sublime? Isn’t this word so full of life?” When we’re happy and free, we can’t help but bring others into that happiness and freedom with us because it overflows out of us. It’s what we are, and we must be who we are.
People who hide their joys and their pleasures only do so because they think their greatest happiness is found in themselves, and we are finite and limited. We can’t be shared. But God is infinite, his happiness is unlimited, and he wants us to share him with the world. More than that, he desires us to be with people who enjoy sharing him so that he might complete our joy—so that our joy might be perfected.
This is what it means, then, to be free: to rejoice in God in the company of his people not so that you might lose anything in sharing him but so that he might increase in your life and that your joy might abound as you experience him both personally and amongst other needful sinners and Christian’s alike.
3) Celebrate His Enduring Work
This is how our text ends, and how our third point, celebrate his enduring work, concludes in verses 19-22. It ends with more happiness and not less as the people of God gather together. It ends with greater worship in the observance of Passover—this is the highest holy day in the Jewish calendar. In verse 17, they offered a sin offering, but here, this is THE day of atonement in THE temple of God. This is when THE lamb is slain, and THE blood is poured out over the altar signifying God’s continued covenant with them. Their joy was something in verses 16-18, but now it becomes something more.
And not only is their happiness increased in this greater act and experience of worship, but it’s increased by their number. Those observing the Passover aren’t only the exilic Israelites, but anyone and everyone who might join them and have their sin atoned for through the blood of the lamb. Samaritans, Gentiles, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet. The kingdom of God was something when they left Babylon, but now it becomes something more.
And not only is their happiness increased in their worship and in their number, but it is also increased in their days. The Passover ended, but they observed the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which was a reminder not only of how God had saved them from slavery and exile, but how they were to depend upon him to keep doing so, and they did so with joy. They knew God’s sovereign grace then, but the grace they were meant to know now, and the grace that was to come was still to be something more.
And behold, something more has come. Our Christ is the greater Passover lamb. Our Christ brings a greater invitation to the peoples of every land, of every tribe, of every tongue, and of every nation. Our Christ died so that we might repent of our sin, believe in his effective salvation, and look forward to greater joy and everlasting life with him.
Our God does not leave us with cliffhangers. He satisfies our hope. And he liberates us from the enslavement and the tension of our wickedness in the gospel of Christ. Rejoice in this God who’s given us the free gift of Jesus. Give him his place. Worship him in joyous community. And do these things knowing that there is still more to come.
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