Go Get Your Harp

The word return was stricken from their vocabularies, so much so that Jeremiah in that classic passage in chapter 21 had to come and encourage the exiles that God would keep his word. As Jeremiah said, For thus says the Lord, When seventy years have been completed in Babylon, I will visit you and I will fulfill my good word to you. I have a plan for you, and my plan for you is not calamity but hope.

And so when you read that these people are now returning, it's more than a list of names. It is a declaration of the faithfulness of God. There was a time when God allowed his people to be taken captive. Israel had been unfaithful to him, and captivity was the consequence of that unfaithfulness. But in bringing that discipline, God also promised that he would restore them. As we continue our study through the book of Ezra today, we see that restoration happening. As you look at the account of God's faithfulness back then, allow it to remind you of his faithfulness to you.

God promises to restore you and bring you safely home to the land he's preparing. Here's Stephen Davey. I received from someone in my mailbox an article entitled Young Wisdom. There are three comments by kids.

The last one sort of got me thinking about Ezra, too. Little children and the things they say. Somebody told the story of a three-year-old who went with his dad to see a litter of kittens. On returning home, he breathlessly informed his mother that there were two boy kittens and two girl kittens. How did you know, his mother asked. Well, Daddy picked them up and looked underneath, he replied.

I think it's printed on the bottom. Some of you parents of little kids, you remember that one. That's a good one. Another three-year-old put his shoes on all by himself. His mother noticed that he had put his shoes on the wrong feet. So she said, Son, your shoes are on the wrong feet. He looked down for a moment and then up at her with a strange look and said, Mommy, I know these are my feet.

Good? On the first day of school, a kindergarten teacher informed her new class of several rules. She said, class, now if anybody has to go to the bathroom, just hold up two fingers. A little voice from the back of the room called out, how will that help?

That kid's going to make it, I can tell you that. Well, in First Corinthians chapter 10 verse 6, I don't want you to turn there, but we're told that the history of Israel would serve as a way to help us live for Christ. And you get to a chapter like Ezra 2 and you've got to wonder, how will this help? You couple that with 2 Timothy 3 16 and 17 that says that all scripture is given by inspiration and it is profitable, ultimately capable, Paul wrote, to equip the believer unto every good work. All scripture has a prophet to the New Testament believer.

And I had to tell you, when you come to Ezra 2, that's put to the test. And so for a week, I've been trying to find the prophet here in Chapter 2. And I'm so thrilled to be able to come to you with a message that there is so much more in this chapter than we could ever begin to study in a month of Sundays. I want to give you three lessons to begin with, that come, that emanate from a list of names like this. Lesson number one is the Lord knows his people by name. Isaiah 45 3 declares, I am the Lord, the God of Israel. I will summon you by your name. God hasn't lost sight of a single person over the years, the walls of Babylon and the power of Persia have not erased one name from his sovereign memory.

That's what this list tells you. A year ago, I shared with you my encounter with a Hindu astrologer in India. He claimed he could tell me everything about my future. He told me he that he could tell me everything about my past even. And I challenged him by telling him to begin by telling me my name, which he couldn't do. Then I had the privilege of introducing him to the name of my God, which I knew, and telling him that that God, Jesus Christ, the only true living God, knew my name. How do we know that? Well, there are many scriptures that tell us that God knows us individually and personally. One of the best is in the latter part of Revelation, where it tells us that those who have their faith in Christ alone have their name written in the Lamb's book of life. I am the Lord, dear God, and I will summon you by your name.

Lesson number two. The Lord uses ordinary people for his glory. All you have here is a list of common people. They're the rank and file of this returning party. Ordinary people are going to rebuild the temple and ultimately the city of Jerusalem.

People without any showstopping ability. But they did have this. They had a life altering availability and give the church even today availability over ability any day and watch us advance for the churches moved forward by the tiny pushes of ordinary people like you and me. Lesson number three. The Lord keeps his promises to his people. The key word in Chapter two is found in verse one.

It's your pencil and be ready to underline it. It's a word that hadn't been mentioned for a long time. Let's read this entire verse. Now, these are the people of the province who came up out of the captivity of the exiles whom Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, had carried away to Babylon and returned.

There it is. Return to Jerusalem and Judah, each to his city. The distinctive word is the word returned. These are they who returned. The last verse of this chapter summarizes the return.

By the way, verse 70. Now, the priests and the Levites, some of the people, the singers, the gatekeepers and the temple servants lived in their cities and all Israel in their cities. God promised they would return. I guarantee you that many a night went by and the Jewish people wondered how in the world would God ever bring about a return?

It would be impossible. The word return was stricken from their vocabularies, so much so that Jeremiah in that classic passage in Chapter 21 had to come and encourage the exiles that God would keep his word. As Jeremiah said, For thus says the Lord, when 70 years have been completed in Babylon, I will visit you and I will fulfill my good word to you.

I have a plan for you, and my plan for you is not calamity but hope. That is the classic passage given to the exiles in Babylon that God would keep his promise. And so when you read that these people are now returning, it's more than a list of names.

It is a declaration of the faithfulness of God to his people. Well, let's take a closer look. We could reference them by categories, and I've given you them in that way in your study notes. This is how Ezra chose to list them under the prodding of the Spirit of God.

The first category is the names of the leaders. Heading the list in verse 2 is this man named Zerubbabel. In Chapter 1, verse 8, he is called Seshbazar. And in Chapter 2, he's called Tershathah.

You're left wondering if his mother just couldn't get it right. A book with 500 Chaldean names. None of them had a ring.

Well, not really. Seshbazar was a Babylonian or an Akkadian name. Tershathah was a Persian title that simply meant governor. His personal name was Zerubbabel.

That's the one his parents chose for him. And it meant descended from Babylon, which informs us that he was born while the Jews were in captivity. He was a child of the exile, born in the Babylonian kingdom. What's more important to know is that he is the grandson of Jeconiah, one of the last kings of Judah before Babylon swept them away. In fact, if we had time, we could turn to Matthew Chapter 1 and find tucked inside of Jesus Christ's own genealogy, the name Zerubbabel. He was the royal descendant of King David. He is the forefather of our own Lord's humanity. Had there been a throne in Jerusalem, my friends, Zerubbabel would have been the rightful heir. He would have been seated on David's throne. Yet there is no throne in Jerusalem. Jerusalem is nothing more than a 50 year old pile of rubbish. But Zerubbabel, the rightful king, is going to be this faithful leader whose greatest passion and I want you to follow this, his greatest passion and leading the people back is not the establishment of his throne. It is the rebuilding of the temple of God says a lot about this man.

But think of it this way. What better man to lead the people out of Babylon and back to Jerusalem than a descendant of King David and a forefather of our own Lord, who was promised by his heavenly father, God, the father and everlasting kingdom. And that throne, which will be in the New Jerusalem, the throne of David established forever.

We better move on in the next 17 verses or so. You have a list of lay people and they're listed according to their clan or their ancestry. And then there's a grouping of lay people listed in verses 21 to 35 that are listed according to their hometown or their home place.

I'm obviously dodging reading their names. We're not told any details about them, but they were the carpenters and the sheep herders and the farmers and the stone cutters. These were the ordinary people who were inspired by faith to accomplish the extra ordinary feet of faith. Then there's the list of priests in verses 36 through verse 39, and they're listed according to their ancestry as well. And it's critically important by the way that these men trace their lineage back and they have to be able to prove it. You remember the priesthood was hereditary. They must be descendants of Aaron and anybody who couldn't prove their ancestry is leading back to Aaron. They could be imposters and they could jeopardize the worship system of the people of God. And they could jeopardize the relationship as they stood before God on behalf of the people.

So they had to be right. Apart from the qualifications of character, by the way, that still exists today in some way. It may sound harsh for men to be disqualified in chapter two as they will be. And while all are priests in this economy and in this dispensation, consider the fact that those who serve as ministers of the gospel have to be somewhat qualified. And I'll choose one illustration, the act of presiding over a marriage or a wedding. It is required by the state of North Carolina for that to be legal. The minister must be licensed.

Now, think about it. Could you imagine going to a preacher and saying, look, I'd like you to marry my bride-to-be and myself. And that preacher is saying, sure, I'm so glad you've asked me to do that. I'd love to, but you know, I misplaced my ordination papers a number of years ago and I can't seem to find them. But I want you to believe me that I am licensed and I'd be glad to preside over your wedding. Would you do it? You'd probably say, well, you know, there was another person I'd thought of asking. You don't have the energy nor the money to do this twice.

It's got to stick and be legal the first time. Well, in the ceremony that God had designed for the temple, it had to be right. And so not only the priests, but the Levites in verse 40 had to have the right family connection.

Then in verse 41, you have the singers. You had 128 voice choir here that had descended from the great musician Asaph, a musician, by the way, that had a rather humble beginning. His first job was to sound a bronze symbol as the ark was being brought back to the to the tabernacle in First Chronicles, Chapter six. Then David later appointed this young man to serve by, quote, giving constant praise and thanks to the Lord God of Israel.

First Chronicles 15. Imagine that as being your job. I want to appoint you.

Here's your job. Give constant praise and thanksgiving to the Lord God of Heaven. Finally, in First Chronicles 15, you've discovered him leading Israel in a special song of praise. And then if you read the Book of Psalms, you find his name at the introduction of a number of those biblical hymns we call Psalms.

He was the author, composer of a number of them like 50 and number 73 and our record in number 74 and number 83. But Asaph isn't finished. He will go on to establish a guild. He will establish the necessary training for musicians who will follow him in giving praise and thanksgiving to the God of Israel.

And he will make sure they know how to do it right. They will be known as the sons of Asaph, the singer. By the way, all of us who know Christ by virtue of our faith in him are, in effect, the sons of Asaph because we have been given the same job. Peter tells us to call forth the praises of him who's called us out of darkness into his marvelous light.

Guess what your job is? Continually praise and give thanks to your Lord. Notice in verse 42, we have the gatekeepers. These are the original bouncers. They rejected or admitted visitors into the temple precincts. They were also responsible for supervising the offerings. They were responsible for guarding the storehouses. These men were an elite core of trained men whose alertness and preparation protected, as it were, the sacred ground of God. In David Zenith, there were 4000 of these men qualified and capable.

They could not be bought or bribed. They were men of deep character and love for the temple. Then in verses 43 to 58, there are the servants listed according to their clan.

This is striking to me. We're not told all of the skills and traditions. We do know, however, that those skills and traditions were handed down for more than 50 years because they are now ready and they will go and they will serve. And that's striking to me because think of how things change over a generation of time. What skills would be needed and how those skills would be lost and those traditions lost.

Imagine trying to find a record player repairman 30 years from now. I was sent this a couple of weeks ago and I thought of it as I was studying these servants and their skill and tradition that have been handed down and how we change so much just in one generation. This is a little thing that the staff at Beloit College puts together to give faculty so that the faculty can have a mindset of that year's incoming freshmen.

This was the one handed out this past September. Here's the list. There's a lot of them.

I can't read all of them, but here are some of them. The people who are in your class this fall, starting out as freshmen, were born in around 1980. They have no meaningful recollection of the Reagan era and did not know he had ever been shot. Black Monday, 1987, is as significant to them as the Great Depression.

There has only been one pope and they can only really remember one president. They were 11 when the Soviet Union broke apart and do not remember the Cold War. Tiananmen Square means nothing to them. They are too young to remember the space shuttle blowing up. Their lifetime has always included AIDS. The expression, you sound like a broken record, means nothing to them.

I guess we ought to quit using it, huh? They have never heard of an 8-track and probably never even seen one. Most have never seen a TV set with only 13 channels. They never took a swim and worried about Jaws.

They neither have no idea who J.R. is nor do they care who shot him. Chicago, Boston, and Alabama are places, not groups. Well, over the course of time, you would imagine things had dramatically changed.

We're talking about at least 50 years and yet they're ready. And I want to tell you this, hidden in this list, ladies and gentlemen, is a principle that God not only preserved his people, he preserved his purposes for his people. That's so encouraging for us.

He knows his purpose for you and his plan, and he has a way of not only preserving you, but a way of preserving his purpose. Finally, in verses 59 to 63, we're given the names of foreigners who were unable to identify their Jewish ancestry as well as priests who couldn't trace their lineage back to Aaron and thus are disqualified from serving as priests. But they weren't disqualified from joining the company of those who returned, and that's significant. In fact, there's a precious verse in chapter 6 verse 21 that tells us that when it was all finished and they're beginning their celebration again, they celebrate the Passover when the death angel came into Egypt and passed over the homes that had obeyed God and put blood on the doorposts. They were rescued and saved, and they celebrated that all the way up till this point, of course.

And here are these people, these foreigners, these people who are unable to track their paternity back. They are celebrating the Passover. My friend today, no matter what your lineage, what your race, what your class in society, and those unwritten rules, if you've placed your faith in the slain Lamb of God, you can also sing the song of the redeemed and celebrate the fact that the death angel will never have your soul.

Two quick closing thoughts here of application. I want to go back to this mention of the sons of Asaph. For those of you who are interested in joining the guild of Asaph, those of you who are as believers really committed to singing praise and giving thanks to God, there are a couple of things that emerge from this chapter that help us all tune up our harps. Number one, it takes the commitment of faith to create music in the soul. One of the marks of the redeemed, by the way, in the church today is singing. Did you know that the church is commanded to sing? We love to sing, but we are also commanded to do so to sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. Ephesians five and Colossians three talks about the melody, not only in our hearts, but on our lips. I especially love the mention here of the singers and the gatekeepers because of their obvious faith.

I know all the groups that are going back evidence this element of faith. But when I read these two particular groups and only one verse each or so, it just kind of jumped off the page. These are the gatekeepers and my friends, they have no gates to keep. These are the singers. They have nothing to sing about unless God fulfills his word and the temple is rebuilt and the celebration once again begins. One author put faith this way, and I love these words. Faith is resting in the fact that God has a purpose in leaving me on planet Earth, even when I feel useless to him and a burden to others.

It would seem useless to be a singer in these days and a gatekeeper. You've got to be kidding. You've had that skill. You've been trained.

And why? Because we have placed our faith even now as we launch out on this four month journey over treacherous terrain, terrain filled with robbers and bandits and enemies of God. We believe there will be gates to keep and songs to sing. Number two, it takes the quality of obedience to compose music in the heart. You can almost feel the excitement here as they're just gathering there.

There's the roll call and there's the listing. And you feel the excitement of these who are who are now being obedient enough to return. They have listened to Jeremiah and Haggai and Zachariah who have encouraged them to go back to the land of promise to fulfill the word of God.

And these are the ones that are doing it. Make no mistake, my friends, their captivity in Babylon had not been a time of singing. There were no fresh creations of music or melody in Babylon. You don't sing in Babylon. By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and what? And wept when we remembered Jerusalem or Zion upon the willow trees in the midst of it, we hung up our harps. For there our captors demanded of us songs and our tormentors mirth saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How can we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land? If I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget how to play.

May my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth. If I do not remember you, if I do not exalt Jerusalem above my chief joy. Ladies and gentlemen in Babylon, you don't sing. It is a place that throughout Scripture has represented disobedience to God. And they were there because they had disobeyed his word and ignored his warning. So they say, In Babylon, we hung up our harps.

We put them away. No singing, no music. But now the Jews are heading home and they had a song again. It was time to gather the sons of Asaph. It's time to go get their harps and tune them up to the songs of Zion. By the way, in the Book of Revelation, you discover that we will be part of this grand music of singing songs to this lamb who now sits in throne. You read of the four Hallelujahs that are chanted and sung.

You read about the final collapse of Babylon, the name which came to represent all that oppose the covenant and people of God. And you find in this victorious creation of a new heaven and a new earth, this incredible singing, this unbelievable music. My friends, when we sing here in this auditorium, we're merely tuning up for the concert of our lives. So if you're a member of the redeemed, you better start learning how to sing now.

How? Well, by the same two things that allowed them to begin their song again. And in Ezra chapter two, a decision of faith and an act of obedience, faith and obedience, even when God asks you today to go through something, to experience something, to attempt something that requires the greatest resolves of trust. You better do like the Israelites here who are now leaving Babylon. And I imagine one of their new songs would have been something about how they went back down to the riverside of Babylon and they went and they got their harps and they tuned them up. You know, it also struck me as I read this psalm and think about Ezra chapter two, that in Babylon now, after this grand company of believers had left that now the potential of music was severely dampened in Babylon.

Why? Because the singers have left. The music makers have obeyed God's call and returned home. Let me tell you something that happened about 200 years ago. A woman was writing in a stagecoach and she was a believer seated across that little narrow space was a gentleman of about 60 years of age and she began to hum one of her favorite hymn tunes. And she noticed that as she was humming this tune that this man began to weep.

She stopped and apologized and she said, I'm sorry, sir, if there's something that I have done. And he said, no, no, it's not you said you were singing something that I was involved in writing years ago. He said, my name is Robert Robinson and I wrote that hymn, Come Thou Fount of every blessing. But I have walked away from obedience to my Lord and your singing has brought upon me great conviction.

And from what I read through the course of their conversation, it brought about Robert Robinson's rededication and fellowship with the father and ability to sing his own hymn again. We're all prone to wander. We struggle with things like faith and obedience because we do sin, wander away and lose our way at times.

We need to remember that one day disobedience will no longer be possible. God will bring us safely into the heavenly home he's preparing for us. We'll continue through this series from the book of Ezra on our next broadcast. So be sure and join us for that.

In the meantime, we'd love to hear from you and learn how God's using these lessons to encourage you. You can write to us at Wisdom International, P.O. Box 37297, Raleigh, North Carolina, 27627. When you write, please remember that we're supported by our listeners. If you can send a gift, we'd be grateful. Our address once again is Wisdom International, P.O. Box 37297, Raleigh, North Carolina, 27627. Please join us back here next time to discover more wisdom for the heart.