Worship In the Rubble

Well, hello Summit Church. Howdy to everyone across all of our campuses in Raleigh-Durham. I was going to say thank you for being here, but let's face it, the only reason you and I are here is because we couldn't afford a weekend at the beach.

So, we are broken sinners and we're also broke. So, my name is Riddell and I've been attending the Summit Church for, wow, nearly nine years now. The last seven of those years I've been serving you in different things. Today I serve you as one of your directional elders, also as one of your pastors to our Spanish campus. If you ever want a cross-cultural experience and save the travel money, come down to one of our services.

We really do have 10 to 15 countries represented at each gathering there, so you're always, always welcome to come. I want to make a quick confession today. I was tasked over a month ago, a bit over a month ago by our leadership to preach on Ezra, and I confess that I tried everything to get out of it. Because, well, you know, when was the last time you heard somebody preach on Ezra? I was like, you know, can I preach on Nehemiah? It's sort of the same book. I don't know why I always get the angry passages.

I don't know. Really, it has been a challenge, but at the same time I see the beauty and the grace and the sovereignty of God operating in a beautiful way, and it is the Word of God, and the Word of God is enough. And we have the Holy Spirit, which we depend on, whether we're preaching from Ezra or Romans. So why don't we seek God in prayer today? We need to hear from the Lord in a world that's longing for restoration. So let us bow our heads and let's pray. Father, we thank you for this day. We thank you for your precious Word, all of it. God, we pray that you will shed light on our souls today. We pray that you will bring conviction, that you will bring consolation as well. And Father, even though this is a message for your people, for the church, I pray that in the mysterious and powerful ways of your Word, if there's someone wrestling with the faith as I did for years, that they would know today that hope and security is found in Christ alone. I pray this in your name.

Amen. In turn to Ezra with me, the context of Ezra is pretty much this. It's about the restoration of God's people after a long exile. It's also about the rebuilding of God's altar. Back in the year 587 before Christ, the Babylonians completely destroyed Jerusalem after a 30 month siege. They literally brought the place down to the ground. They destroyed the temple and they took God's people to exile hundreds of miles away.

Besides the fall, one could say that this is the low point in all of the Old Testament. As if God had turned His back on His people. Have you ever had that feeling you're going through a trial yourself or you're witnessing something that's terrible in a culture or in a people group and you're like, God, it just feels like you're absent.

I've had a trial, a personal trial of mine that lasted 10 years. I really felt like God was in Cancun drinking a margarita absent from my prayers. And I'm like, God, where are you? But then we get to the book of Ezra and we read that a new king took power because you see God is always in control.

He's the one who puts people in authority for His glory. And this king allowed God's people to return home. Can you imagine the excitement of the people of God who have been in exile for years? Now they can go back home. So God's people walked for four months and they finally stood in the rubble of Jerusalem. Now they were desperate to be back home and they're standing in front of a lot of work that needs to be done to rebuild. And what do you think is the first thing they did? You would think that they would pick up a shovel. You would think that somebody else would pick up a broom and they would start cleaning up, that they would start moving debris and start building right away, right?

Wrong. For three months they did nothing. They just got their bearings back. There's sometimes in life where the most spiritual thing you could do is take a nap. It's just be still and know that He's God and meditate on God's goodness and just do nothing. And after three months, on the holiest month of the year, they came together and stood in the rubble of Jerusalem where the temple once stood and they worshiped.

Read with me what happened. It's found in Ezra chapter 3 verse 1. When the seventh month came and the children of Ezra were in the towns, the people gathered as one man to Jerusalem. Then arose Jeshua the son of Josadak with his fellow priests and Zerubbabel the son of Chittel with his kinsmen and they built the altar of the God of Israel to offer burnt offerings on it as it is written in the law of Moses the man of God. They set the altar in its place. The rest of the chapter describes what happened later as they re-instituted corporate worship and prayer to God as first and foremost.

But first let me ask you a question. If you return home in those circumstances with everything in ruins around you, why would you make the first thing that you did to worship God? It suggests that there were primitive and superstitious people that didn't know any better? Or is there something deeper here that we need to know?

Why would they do this right? With everything around them lying in rubble, why would they devote so much energy to restoring corporate worship to God as the people of God? You see this is where Charismatics get it right. And by the way the rest of the chapter is as charismatic a service as you ever see.

Don't read it yet, check with me. But there is a reason worship to God was first. And the reason is this, that you and I are going to worship something and it's either going to be what we have deemed in our minds as ideal for us, what we have convinced ourselves or concluded we most need, or God. That's why they move so quickly to worship God because they understood that if they didn't worship God they would end up worshiping idols instead. How old school we think sometimes to see this picture of them lying in these rubble just worshiping God and we think that that's just old school. But the reality is that in years in exile Judah was surrounded by hundreds of idols everywhere they turned. They were confronted with every kind of idol but at least they acknowledged it and they saw the only two choices as either worship idols or worship God.

It's binary, it's simple. And I wonder sometimes if what's really happening in our country is that you and I the church thinks that we have our eyes on Jesus but in reality we have our eyes on personal goals and personal agendas. Because it's so easy for a believer, for Christchurch to have our eyes on being influential rather than on Christ. It's easy to have our eyes on this world and not the one to come.

It's easy to have our eyes on the ideal government, the ideal economy, the ideal family, the ideal kids, the ideal family beach house, the ideal retirement, the ideal ministry and what's next and have your eyes completely off of Jesus. Because you and I are so preoccupied with self and upward mobility even as the people of God, the church. And I am not against progress and success.

It's one of the reasons I love this country. I am not against progress and success but there is a profound difference between the self-centered false ambition for success and influence and the true ambition to love and serve starting with God. It's the difference between trying to raise ourselves up and trying to lift up Jesus and our fellow human beings. It's so easy to have our eyes on ourselves as if we could provide more satisfaction on us than God. And listen, it's easy. It's easy to pray daily to Jesus for something you love more than Jesus. What we daydream about gives it away. We love to be exalted rather than God and we will do so using Jesus if we have to so many times.

I know I've done it. The gospel has never been about pulling for ourselves. It's surrendering yourself, giving up your life that you may find it in the one who is life, Jesus Christ.

So we read this, we see this picture, we see the rubbles and we think, wow, they were so old school. We are way more sophisticated than that but not really because to worship God last is not much of an advancement. To pray and fast and seek God's face only after you've tried everything else is actually backwards, not forward progress.

There's a lot of things that will occupy us as believers that are nothing more than the fruit of our doing and are doing without praying first and now we have to spend our time and energy on damage control and dealing with things we acquire that God never intended to give us. There was a book review a few years ago by the New York Times. It was called, a book called Easter Everywhere. It's about the spiritual journey of a woman named Dorsey who lives in Brooklyn and the book describes some of the deep longings of her life and the New York Times writer captures in his review the heart of the book, the aha moment for this woman.

He says, she nails the central question of her memoir and perhaps of her life with an extraordinary quote from Simon Well. One has only the choice between God and idolatry, he wrote. If one denies God, one is worshiping some things of this world in the belief that one sees them only as such but not really. In fact, the unknown to oneself, we are imagining the attributes of divinity in those things. In other words, we have a longing for transcendence. We tend to look at something and we sometimes without even realizing it, we imagine those things to have the all, the beauty and the worth that in reality only God can deliver. And the reason why video games and breathtaking earth views on Instagram are so popular is because we find in them the transcendence that our hearts is longing for. It momentarily takes us out of the reality of our broken sinful self and of our broken world. Because we are wired to find eternal significance in something and we will give every fiber of our beings to someone or something or a cause whatever that thing is we will worship and you may not call it worship but something is at the center of your life. It's that one thing that makes everything else okay. The one thing that you can't imagine living without, the one thing that if threatened, it would crush your entire world. And the only question is whether we're worshiping those creative things or God. And Ezra 3 promises that true restoration, that the true quenching of the all that we are always seeking to find, that the true quenching of our longing starts when we first worship God above all things. And it's not like I don't want this world to get any better. I do wish this world would be a little better when I leave it than when I came into it but church, it is very possible, very possible to love this world so much that you live fixed to this world and you live in order to fix this world to see a perfect and missed-effect believer that this is not our home.

How we easily forget that. And as with everything on this side of heaven, that little mini exodus of the people of God and Ezra to return home, they quickly realized that what they had treasured as home here wasn't really home. In the words of Pastor Keller, all the mini exodus and mini home comings of the Bible failed in the end to deliver the final and full homecoming the prophets promised and everyone longed for. A kind of spiritual homesickness resides in every heart. Though we experience redemption and forgiveness in this life through Christ, amen, we still long and wait for our full restoration.

Romans 8 23. So the return to Jerusalem was really bittersweet for God's people because yes, they were rejoicing and there was celebration in the city but there was also a sense that things still weren't as they should be. There was a sense that it wasn't home and that remained. And beloved church, we are supposed to experience this.

We are supposed to feel this way regardless of what those cute, they're cute, those little NC map shirts say, home. This world is not our home. If you're so in love with this world that you really think everything you need is here, you have believed the delusion. Though redeemed and ransom, we long for our full redemption and full restoration. And Ezra gets us a picture of that, especially in this third chapter. And it offers a picture of what our weight should look like as we long and wait for God to set all things right.

So let me share about that weight a little bit according to Ezra 3. Number one, we must seek unity, verse 1. If you've been reading the Bible with us, you're probably frustrated by now because it is a few. The people of God have been at odds with each other.

And if you've been reading the Bible with us, then when we read verse 1 here on Ezra 3, it should be an immense refreshment to you. It should be refreshing because verse 1 says that the people gather as one man to Jerusalem. These are the people that were divided. This is the people that had gone at war with each other, the northern and southern kingdom, Israel and Judah. And now they are united as one man.

This is awesome. As we await for full redemption, we must be unified as a church. Jesus promised that He will build His church, amen, but He prayed that His church would be united, John 17. He will build and grow His church, but we must strive to remain as one. And this is why the Apostle Paul constantly stressed out our obligation to one another, love one another, serve one another, forgive one another. We must remain unified as we long for our full restoration. There's a beautiful picture of you and I of the church of Jesus Christ in 1 Corinthians 12 where Paul uses the word body, using the analogy of our physical bodies, 18 times in only 9 verses to talk about the church, the body of Christ.

What's with the repetition? What's God's point? That in the same way you wouldn't want to separate any member of your physical body out of your body, that the church needs to be one, one body. And yes, an ear looks very different than a toe, but one is not more important than the other.

You want them both. And this body is unified as one connected by one head, Christ, because the body works for each other. It's automatic. So what I want to do, I want to give you an example, hopefully I can do this, kind of play a slow motion video for you according to what is the body according to scriptures. Let's say you hammer a finger because you thought you were Mr. D.Y.I. You don't humble yourself, you need somebody. You need a Latina to come help you out, but you don't want to call me, all right?

You can build a pergola by yourself, buddy. And so let's say you hammer a finger. The finger talks to the brain and says, hey brain, I got a problem down here, I'm hurting.

And I need you to tell the mouth to let everybody know that I'm hurting down here because this fool just pecked me with a hammer. Now the brain doesn't object. It's like, I'll help you out, bro. The brain, we don't need any meetings. The brain says, yeah, absolutely, I'll help you out. So the brain tells the mouth, hey mouth, listen man, I have the finger down there and he's hurting.

I'm praying somebody hit him with a hammer. The eyes come in and say, yeah, that's true, I saw it. I'm talking to the mouth here, give me a break. So it keeps talking to the mouth and says, look, I need you to let everybody know in the world that the finger is hurting.

I know it was the middle finger, it needed to be pecked, but listen, we're one body, we're one body, so help him out. The mouth says, sure, I'll do it. The mouth is always so obedient, isn't it? And so the mouth screams, ah. The ear hears it and says, hey, he said to scream, not to curse. The mouth says, listen, he hammered the finger.

Anybody curses a little bit when you hammer a finger, don't judge me. But here's the thing, here what happens now, it screams and now this hand, who is way out here, it's not the hand that got hammered, it's actually the hand that hammered the finger. It comes immediately and drops everything and it comes to soothe and it comes to help and it comes to help the body, to aid the body with consolation and unity.

It doesn't matter which member of the body it is, if it's an ugly looking toe or if it's beautiful eyes, to the body, all the body and everybody is beautiful because they're all made in the image of God. This all happens immediately. There's a reason why Paul chooses to use this analogy of the human body over and over, over and over to describe the church. This happens immediately with no partiality and no questions asked because the church is supposed to be one, connected in Christ. The church is for God and for each other. And the only reason that happens church is because the body is connected. If the body wasn't connected, if the finger had ran away from the church, from the body, he wouldn't have had any help. And I know we have some hot topics in culture today, but listen, you don't need to leave the church, you need to be the church and you need to abide in Jesus.

And Ezra says, we do it better by first worshiping together, seeking God's face together, worship even in the rebels because the God of the rebels is also the God of restoration. Listen, the church is not a company. I know we're in Roloderm, it's a great business sector, but the church is not a company. The church is not a robot. It's not a highly organized organization, but a living organism through the power of the Holy Spirit. It's true that a robot is highly organized. It's true that it's got a thousand parts and it's highly organized. I'll give you that, but it's dead.

It doesn't have any power of its own. However, an organism is living and it gives witness. We overcome by the blood of the lamb, yes, and by the power of our testimony. Oneness in Christ leads people to Christ. So if you're going to rebuild an altar in this land of hurt and rubble, we must become as one man, verse one, worship God and seek the face of God together before we do anything else. I want to remind you, church, that our battle is not against flesh and blood. Our battle is not against a people group. Our battle is not against our brother or a sister, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. You cannot fight a spiritual battle with human weapons. You can't.

You can't. We need divine intervention. We need the Lord to be the church of Jesus Christ. And that's why we worship and we pray. That's why we need to walk in the Spirit, praying without ceasing to God throughout the day, worshiping, worshiping. Worship confuses the enemy. Worship to God makes what you have, as little as it may be, enough. That's why Paul says you need to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. You know what captive means? It doesn't mean, oh, tell your thoughts of this unity and lust to please leave your mind.

No. You see, we need to take our thoughts captive to the obedience of Christ. The Spirit of God that raised Christ from the dead lives and dwells in you. It's true that the desires of the flesh are many and are against the will of God.

I have the same flesh that you do. I wrestle the same flesh and it's fighting against the will of God and against unity and against everything pure. But God's Spirit is in you and God's Spirit also fights the flesh so that, Galatians 3 says, we don't do what we want to.

God wants to restore his altar in you and the flesh is not greater than God's Spirit. And for there to be corporate worship, church, there needs to be corporate repentance. If my people, says the Lord, which are called by my name, if they would humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I, says the Lord, hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and will heal their lands.

Boy, do we need some healing in this land. It starts by rebuilding the altar as for a three-style church through worship and prayer and repentance first and above all. So what divisions do you see in your heart towards others? It doesn't matter if you're white, African American, Latino, Asian, Native American, we are called to a higher calling, one in Christ. Number two, we must walk in obedience, verses through the six. We often confuse grace with a free path to disobey God. The Holy Bible says, be faithful unto death and I will give you the crown of life.

It's time to seek the face of God. And one of the things we see the returning exiles do is offer sacrifices to the Lord. The all and the worth of the Lord was on them all. And if you notice closely verses three to five, they were very careful to offer the sacrifices exactly according to how the word commanded.

We have a guiding order. The fruit of your lips as pretty as it may sound is vain if the heart is not worshiping. What good is it to you if you have a tremendous amount of giftiveness but a lack of character absent from this fruit of the Spirit of God? I'm not impressed with people that are used by God. We see in Matthew 7 people that were used by God mindily and they spent an eternity without Christ.

I'm impressed with people that display the fruit of the Spirit, love and patience and kindness and joy and faith and meekness and long suffering. Worship starts with the right posture of our hearts towards God and of love towards your fellow brother and sister who you're worshiping with. Their time in exile was a constant reminder of the idolatry and rebellion that brought God's judgment. They were not going to make the same mistake again. So as we wait for God to renew all things and bring about a full restoration, the temptation to disobey remains. And Jesus warned his followers not to grow weary as they waited for his return, Luke 21. Many will grow tired of seeking and obeying the Lord. Some will even depart from the faith by giving into the world of yours, 1 Timothy 4, 2 Timothy 4 as well. So what areas of your life need repentance today? Are you becoming weary as a stranger and alien in this world? 1 Peter 1, resolve to remain steadfast to God and his word because you have help. You have the Holy Spirit. And listen, I know that the wait for our Lord to return is not easy.

How many times, if we're honest, have you and I said, God, this is so hard. Would you return already? I know that the wait is not easy. I'm not trying to be a pessimist.

Sometimes we live in denial until the brokenness of this world hits home and you realize, whoa, this is real. And I know it's hard at times to wait for a full restoration, but let me encourage you this way. We have a promise.

Now I know what you're thinking. Yeah, but the problem with a promise is that you have to wait. And you're right. The problem with a promise is that you have to wait. Now the only way that you can actually wait is to really believe the promise. Like when dad tells his little child, hey, when I come home from work, I'm going to bring you a lollipop. And that child believes the promise.

He goes on plane all day. He's not worried about it because he's secure in the promise. He has embraced it. He has believed it. And as soon as daddy comes up the driveway and he hears his car, he knows what's coming.

His lollipop is coming. He believed the promise. So I know that the problem with a promise is that you have to wait. But if you believe the promise and you embrace it, you can wait.

And if the promise is amazing, if it's true and sure, then there is no problem at all. This life is a waiting room for the believer. And despite the trials and brokenness of this world, we can totally live in a joyful waiting when our hope is in the Lord because of the sure promise we have in Jesus Christ.

Full restoration. Yes, we'll have to wait, but that doesn't mean it's not coming. We who are in Christ, we will see a new heaven and a new earth. There will be no more tears. There will be no more violence. And there will be no more false judgment. And I know we have to wait, but it's coming.

It's coming. The wait is not a problem when you know there is good news on the other side. My family has had to deal with a lot of health issues in the recent years. And one of the things that I've learned as we go to several doctor's appointments is that you can always tell in a waiting room who's going to get the good news and who's going to get the bad news. The people that are going to get the bad news, they wait differently. They bring a loved one with them.

They're holding hands in the waiting room. They're sobering. They're sad. Now the people that are going to get a good health report, they're on their phone. They're making a phone call.

They're playing something. They're totally happy. The difference is the news. Church of Jesus Christ, we have good news on the other side. We have great news and we can wait joyfully.

Is it easy? No, but we can wait joyfully. And I know that when there's a hot issue that confronts our sin that we don't like it.

None of us likes it. But church, there lies the opportunity to grow together, to repent together, to grow in unity one body as many members, but one to worship our God. Number three, we must work to advance God's kingdom, verses six through 11.

Though the altar for sacrifices had been erected, God's temple remained in ruins. The people committed themselves to rebuilding the house of the Lord. They labored with joy and they celebrated, but they labored. And this was one more step towards reclaiming their identity as God's people. The church has to work for unity.

It's not a given. It doesn't happen overnight. It's labor intensive. It's work. People need to hear the gospel. Yes, the word needs to be preached and taught. We must not give up doing good. Yes, our labor is not in vain, but it's labor. And we must continue in the Lord's labor. Charles Spurgeon used to say, it is her duty and her privilege to exhaust our lives for Jesus. And of course we must exercise wisdom and balance, but God has given us much to do and much to build here.

They're not problems. They're opportunities. So listen, if you're not busy with the Lord's work, you will be busy in selfish gains. I have to remind myself of this all the time. If I'm not busy in the Lord's work, I will get busy in selfish gains. So beloved church, it's quite possible because we see it in scriptures that God's people can labor for their own house and neglect God's house. Are you busy with your own kingdom to the neglect of God's? I need to finish, so let me give you my last point. As the church, we must endure discontent.

I know this is weird, anti-cultural, counterintuitive. Down in chapter three says, verse 12, but many of the priests and Levites and heads of father's houses, old men who had seen the first house wept with a loud voice when they saw the foundation of this house being laid. Though many shouted aloud for joy so that the people could not distinguish between the sound of joyful shout from the sound of the people's weeping, for the people shouted with a great shout and the sound was heard far away.

What does this mean? Though God's people were unified in their homeland, bringing sacrifices and restoring the temple, they were still homesick. Some of the elders who had remembered, who remember the first temple in all of its glory, they were disappointed at this new temple.

Therefore, they wept. Though restored to their home, a longing remained for full and final restoration. Between you and I, a longing must remain. C. S. Lewis says, our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door, which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere neurotic fancy, but the truest index of our real situation. Though securing God, we long for our true home, we must endure it with a holy discontentment.

To feel satisfied with the temporary joys of this world is to not know pleasures of the eternal kingdom of God. I rented a house, been renting for many, many years, and in the last 12 months, we finally bought a house. Well, that's an American phrase. The bank owns the house. I just paid for it. And we went to this house in a beautiful home, best house I've ever lived in in my life, and we did the closing, and then we brought the kids to the house. And when my three boys got into the house, they started running all around the house, and they thought it was incredible, and they went upstairs and downstairs. And as they were shouting for joy, as they were impressed with what they saw, a little holy discontent and holy jealousy got in my heart. And I called them and I said, hey boys, do you like this house?

Yeah, we love it, it's awesome. I said, well, I have news for you. We're gonna move again. We're gonna move again to a house that's even better than this one. And they're like, oh my God, better than this one.

I'm like, yes, better. And I opened the word, and I said, Jesus said, hallelujah, in my Father's house, there are many rooms. I'm going home to prepare one for you. We have got to feel homesick. We're supposed to feel homesick. This is not our home.

I'm highly concerned when we don't feel homesick. Do not let the joys of this earth fool you. It's like conforming yourself to a dirty puddle of water when Jesus has an ocean, an ocean view for you in His presence forever. Can we bow our heads? Can we pray? How do you handle the discontentment of this life?

Do you allow the inner pain drive you to God or drive you to despair? As we long for redemption, we must look to Jesus Christ. He left His home in heaven to come and ransom us. Therefore, one day we will be reunited with Him and the home He has prepared for us. Let us not grow weary as we wait.

Let us be one. This ain't over for the people of God. This ain't over until God says it's over. And God says that for those who are found in Him, pain will never have the last word.

We can be one, but it starts not picking up a shovel. It starts with seeking God's face together, worshiping even in the rubble. Father, we come to you once again. We thank you for your Holy Word. Father, make us one for the witness of your gospel of saving grace, for your glory. Make us one. Make us realize that that starts always humbling ourselves, seeking your face and worshiping your holy and matchless name together as one. In the name of Jesus, we pray. Amen.