The Puzzle Picture

The Word of God is intended to revive. In our age of exposure to the truth, we have books, and we have conferences, and we have sermons, and we have tapes, and we have TV, and we have radio, and we have studies, and all of that wonderful stuff. Yet tragically, subtly, the believer, as Lewis wrote, so traffics in the holy things that they lose their sense of awe of the holy things. The Christian community, as one professor of mine used to say, the Christian community is like a poor photograph.

It's overexposed to the light and underdeveloped. What we need more than anything is a steady diet of God's Word. Every Christian probably realizes this.

You know that you should be in the Bible on a regular basis. As we continue our study through the book of Ezra, we see that Zerubbabel built a temple for God. That was important, but Ezra had a different focus. Ezra built the people of God. He led them out of spiritual darkness into the light of spiritual truth. And today, you'll discover how God intended for Ezra to help us have the same commitment.

Here's Stephen Davey with a lesson called The Puzzle Picture. We've just completed our study of Ezra chapter six. Between chapter six and seven, while in your Bibles, it's only separated by about a half an inch, in real life, there's about a 58-year gap. The first phrase of Ezra chapter seven in verse one says, now after these things. But Ezra doesn't tell us what these things were, at least not in this book. We can piece the timeline together by studying other books and learn that a lot of things happen. One of the things that happened was the marriage of a king to a beauty contestant winner named Esther. We also know that during the period of time between Ezra six and seven, the excitement of the temple completion had worn off.

Zerubbabel had sort of faded into the background. Nehemiah has not yet come. The city of Jerusalem still lay in ruins at this point.

The people are all farming their land and they're enjoying their lives. And in terms of a relationship with God, they've sort of slipped into this mediocrity and in fact compromise as they are beginning at this point to intermarry with the pagan Gentiles around them. Frankly, the pioneering excitement is gone between chapter six and before you reach chapter seven. Zerubbabel had built the temple. Nehemiah will come along later and build the city, but they desperately need someone who at this critical juncture will come along and build the people. They needed a reformation. And a reformation, ladies and gentlemen, throughout the history of our world has always occurred when the Word of God intercepts a life and that life chooses to obey, as we've been talking and singing. That produces reformation. And what you needed here in this period of time was a reformation of the nation, Israel. They needed to have someone who would come along and interject into their lives the Word and to build the people. Think of Martin Luther who was quoted earlier, a reformer of the 1500s who wrote these interesting words, I have made a covenant with God that he send me neither visions nor dreams nor even angels.

I am satisfied with the gift of the Holy Scriptures, which give me abundant instruction and all that I need to know both for this life and for that which is to come. You read a statement like that and then you do not wonder any longer why this man was so pivotal in church history. He intercepted a wayward people with the Word of God. Now we're going to spend some time talking about the Bible. In fact, we're not going to get through half of what's in your laps, but let me give you some of the similes of Scripture which reveal the power of the Word and the life of the believer. Number one, the Scriptures are like a scalpel by which the Holy Spirit performs spiritual surgery. It is sharper than any two-edged sword, Hebrews 4.12 tells us. The Bible is like a mirror, James 1 informs us, and you look into the mirror of the Word and you discover yourself and usually do not like what you see.

You are overwhelmed with your depravity on the one hand, your weakness and failure on the other, and your deep need for God. And then you look into the Word as it were a window and you see the glory of this gracious God who met you in your depravity and rescued you and made you, John 1.12 says, a member of the family of God. The Bible is also like a time machine. It transports you back into time and you discover the nations and lives of people that are intended to instruct and deepen and encourage and challenge your lives. And then that time machine sort of whisks you into the future and you discover in Revelation 20 and 21 what the new heaven is going to look like and this new earth and all that God has intended for the believer in this little microcosm of this one passage.

Stunning truth. The Bible is also like a bodyguard, David wrote in Psalm 119.11, you treasure it in your heart and it will protect you from sin. The Bible is also like a general store, 2 Timothy 3.17. The Bible is profitable and it is capable, the text tells us, of equipping every man of God, every woman of God, every believer for every good work. The word equip in the original language literally referred to the stocking of a wagon that's about to embark on a journey. You want to have the supplies you need for life, you find it in the Word.

And that's kind of like going to the general store and stocking up. The Bible is like a suit of clothing. In Titus 2.10, Paul told Titus to adorn the doctrine of God, to put it on like I put on this jacket. We wear the truth of God out into society, we live the truth, it's part of our clothing as it were. We adorn ourselves, we robe ourselves with the truth of God revealed in the Scriptures. We wear the Word, we love the Word and when people see us they in effect read the Word the way we live.

Those are just a few. Several of the activities of the Bible that are clearly spelled out, the Bible convicts. There's no creature hidden from his sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of him with whom we have to do. Hebrews 4.12 and 13. Somebody wrote into the fly leaf of my Bible in college, either this book will keep you from sin or sin will keep you from this book. There's something terribly convicting about going to the Bible when you're in sin.

That's one of the purposes of the Word, it convicts, it challenges, it sort of hollers and screams stop. The truth secondly of these pages regenerates, that is it brings to life the person that's dead in sin and trespasses. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the what? The Word of God. So it has a life giving sense. Peter wrote in 1 Peter 1.22-25, for you have not been born again of seed which is perishable, but seed which is imperishable.

That is through the living and abiding Word of God which you had preached to you. Third, the Bible nurtures a believer and we're told to like newborn babies desire the sincere milk of the Word so that you may grow thereby. Paul wrote, like babies desire the Word. Does that describe us? How does a baby desire to be fed?

Have you ever noticed our diplomatic methods of getting your attention? No, the whole household is up. Feed the baby, please. Those dreaded words, it's your turn. Do you desire the Word like that?

You must have it. The Bible produces hope. Paul wrote in Romans 15.4, for whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction that through perseverance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.

Did you catch that Romans 15.4? You might have hope. You without hope, you despairing, discouraged. The Word of God is intended to give you and still in you hope. And yet in our despair and discouragement, what do we avoid?

That which gives us hope. Like a person who came to you if they did and said, oh, I'm so thirsty. My throat is so parched. I'm so thirsty.

You'd say, well, there's a water fountain in the hallway. I'm too busy for that. The believer says, I'm so despairing. I'm so discouraged. I'm so under it. Go to the Word.

Oh, I'm too busy for that. David wrote, remember the words to thy servant in which thou hast made me hope. Psalm 119.49. I have remembered thine ordinances from of old, O Lord, and comfort myself. Psalm 119.52.

The Word produces hope. The one thing that you can see as it relates to our Christian faith, the one thing you can hold, the one thing you can read and study is the one thing that he said would be a primary vehicle in the under the influence of the Holy Spirit to give us encouragement. And it is the Bible. Fifth, the Bible counsels and guides the believer.

Everybody looks everywhere else. But to the word, all scripture Paul wrote is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching. This tells you what to believe for reproof. This tells you what is right for correction. This tells you what is wrong for training and righteousness. This tells you how to do what is right. The problem is, as one man said, the average Christian will drive across town to get under the sound of the word, but will not walk across the living room floor to get into the word for themselves.

It is intended to be our guide and our counselor, and we tend to go everywhere else. Another activity in the Bible is that of reviving. Sixth, reviving a believer. This is my comfort and my affliction. Thy word revived me.

Are you complacent and lethargic and mediocre? The word of God is intended to revive. In our age of exposure to the truth, we have books and we have conferences and we have sermons and we have tapes and we have TV and we have radio and we have studies and all of that wonderful stuff. Yet tragically, subtly the believer, as Lewis wrote, so traffics in the holy things that they lose their sense of awe of the holy things. The Christian community, as one professor of mine used to say, finally, the Christian community, he was fond of saying, he would say, the Christian community is like a poor photograph.

It's overexposed to the light and underdeveloped. What's the solution? Well, there's one last thing.

This introduction that the Bible is for the believer and I want to inject it here. The Bible is the picture on a puzzle box. Now, I don't like doing puzzles personally. My wife loves doing puzzles and you give her a large cup of coffee and a little sugar and a thousand-piece challenge and for her the world kind of stops. In fact, if I come home from work and the dining room table is covered with pieces, I know it's leftovers and I might as well just earn some points by being sensitive and saying, you know, you got a puzzle going on there.

Boy, I love leftovers tonight. Certain lies, I guess, are, you know, okay. You didn't hear that from me. And I've noticed as I've gone over there, I'll go over there once in a while and say, honey, you want a little help? No, no, no. I'm fine.

Go to Hawaii. No, no, she doesn't say that. I'll just look, but she does the same thing. She always has the top of that puzzle propped up nearby and she studies it and she looks at it. She looks for the hues, the different colors.

That picture tells her what the puzzle is supposed to be looking like, right? The Bible, ladies and gentlemen, is God's picture for you. He never asks the believer to become something without giving you a picture of what that looks like. And in here you discover what it looks like, how it acts, how it responds, how it prays, how it confesses, how it lives. This is God's picture. He didn't bring you into the family of God and then say, now that you're a believer, the rest is up to you. Give it your best shot. One author wrote to leave a new believer on his own or any believer shortly after deciding to follow Christ would be like putting a young person in the cockpit of an airplane and saying, congratulations on your decision to become a pilot. Here's the stick.

Enjoy your flight. No. We're told how. We're given this book and tucked away inside our living pictures with real names like Moses and Paul, Joseph and David.

Pictures of life that you prop up in front of you to study and to look at and to refer to as you try to put the pieces of your life puzzle together. Did I mention Ezra as one of those pictures? A man named Ezra happens to be one of those puzzle pictures God intended to give you hope. Now, if you have your Bibles and I'm sure they're open already, he is finally introduced to us in chapter seven.

The book bears his name, but we haven't heard or seen of him until now. And let's start and we'll go as far as we can. And let's start at verse one. Now, after these things in the reign of Artaxerxes, King of Persia, there went up from Ezra, son of Sariah, son of Azariah, son of Hilkiah, son of Shalom, son of Zadok, son of Ahitub, son of Amoriah, son of Azariah, son of Mariah, son of Zerahiah, son of Uzi, son of Buki, could be Uzi, son of Buki, I don't know, but obviously a mom like short names that rhyme.

So there you have it. Son of Abishua, son of Phinehas, son of Eleazar. Now note, son of who? Aaron, the chief priest.

This is important news. Aaron is the, or Ezra is the descendant of the first high priest, Aaron, the brother of Moses. Now of all the men mentioned here between Ezra and Aaron, you need to know that not all of Ezra's descendants are mentioned, but enough of them are listed to track back to that which would give him tremendous credibility. So that when he surfaces on the scene, it's no surprise that the Jews would be willing to follow, this man is in direct relation to Aaron.

He does give us some names that give us Ezra's significant heritage beyond Aaron. Verse one mentions a man named Sariah. This is actually Ezra's grandfather, a man who was faithful to God and who lived when Nebuchadnezzar came swooping in like a giant vulture, destroying the nation. It was this man, Sariah, who was taken outside the city limits and because of his commitment to the God of Israel, Nebuchadnezzar put him to death.

Imagine having a grandfather in your family who was a martyr. Further in verse one, Ezra's forefather, Hilkiah, was mentioned. In 1 Kings 22, you discover the story of Hilkiah. Josiah was the young godly king who ascended the throne and he wanted to reform the nation and it was Hilkiah who discovered the forgotten book of the law. They had gone without the truth of God's word and it would be Hilkiah who would intersect the nation with the truth of the word which would bring reform.

And I find it very interesting that Ezra, generations later, would do virtually the same thing. Even further back, you notice in verse two is the mention of Zadok. Zadok was the loyal high priest who followed David. During the last years of David's life, David was old and crippled and one of David's sons named Adonijah decided to usurp the throne and wrested away from his father.

Adonijah decided to follow in the footsteps of his older brother Absalom and so he attempted this coup. It was Zadok who remained loyal to old crippled King David who followed the orders of David and risked his own life by going and anointing the younger son of David named Solomon to the throne. What a heritage. Men who were faithful and courageous who were in this bloodline that would produce another courageous picture for us named Ezra. By the way, you may be here today. You're the son or daughter of a long line of godly men and women.

You can look at mothers and grandmothers and great grandmothers and grandfathers and great grandfathers and talk of their faithfulness to God. Don't take it for granted. Build on it. Stand on their shoulders. Don't ever take it for granted.

Thank God for it. Timothy, who was pastoring, was encouraged by Paul to remember that he learned the sacred scriptures at the knee of his mother and his grandmother, scriptures that were able to make him wise unto salvation. Paul pointed and said, Timothy, you've got a heritage there. Be faithful to it.

One of the things you can give your children, moms, that is more important than anything else you can give them and you give so much, well-clothed, well-fed, a heart to protect and educate and all of those things. But don't forget to give them the word, the sacred scriptures related to them in terms of commitment to Christ. Talk about the Lord.

Remind them that they are uniquely created to glorify God in whatever they do. Timothy learned that. But some of you are here today and you don't come from a long line of believers. Truth is you're the first. There is no line. You're standing at the front of it and you're it. Don't regret it. Revel in it. God in his grace chose you, caused you to hear, caused you to see, caused you to believe, and you are beginning the heritage. You're starting it. This long line, you're at the head.

Become as Abraham Lincoln who once said, I don't know who my grandfather was, but frankly, I am more concerned with what his grandson will become. Now notice verse six. This Ezra went up from Babylon and he was a scribe, skilled in the law of Moses, which the Lord God of Israel had given the Hebrew language, literally states that Ezra was a quick scribe, literally a fast copier.

And that doesn't mean that he did better than all the other fellows on a time test. It referred to the fact, however, that he did indeed copy the law. Genesis, say with me, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. And by the time of Ezra, probably the book of Joshua was available to him as well.

But what this man did with his life was he copied. The Hebrew text was consonant after consonant. The vowels were later given to us in our own texts. And then at the end of the line, he would count the consonants, okay, 27, and he'd make a little notation, 27, so that the copier after him would know that if he came up with 26 or 28, that he had either taken one away or added one too.

They were so incredibly careful about transmitting the text. And so he, day in and day out, bending over a table, he wrote the word. Now, who do you think learned the law?

These men. In fact, the scribes were considered the scholars of the Torah. You can imagine if you've ever tried to memorize a verse of scripture, and I hope you do, but if you write it out, then you see it, you're working with it, and you learn it better. Well, here he is throughout life writing out the word. He was a man immersed in the word. So I want you to know, ladies and gentlemen, that the thing that made Ezra stand out among his peers was not who his great grandfather was. That was important, and that he could trace his lineage back. It wasn't his heritage.

It was his heart. In fact, you can sneak down to where we'll spend the rest of our time, next Lord's day, and read verse 10. For Ezra had set his heart to study the law of the Lord and to practice it and to teach his statutes and ordinances in Israel. Is it any wonder that generations after Ezra would refer to him as the second Moses? They called him that because he led his people into the green pastures of God's provision through his word. Zerubbabel built the temple.

Nehemiah will build the city, but Ezra will build the people. He will intersect their lives with the word of God. And by the way, that is the mission for every believer here today because you are a priest.

These banners, by the way, that's the ministry. That's the mission of the church, not building brick and glass, building people. Are you involved in building into the life of somebody else through the word of God? It could be a child, could be a neighbor, could be a friend, could be a spouse, could be a Bible study class, a Sunday school class, can be any number of things, but are you a man or a woman that just creates reformation? Ezra did.

That's the picture we see here. Today you've been reminded of the importance of God's word in the life of the Christian. This is wisdom for the heart. Stephen Davey is your Bible teacher for this daily program, and Stephen's been teaching the Bible for over 37 years. The complete collection of all of his lessons is available at wisdomonline.org. You can listen to all of Stephen's teaching free and on demand. That website is a treasure of biblical resources that will help you know what the Bible says, understand what it means, and apply it to your life. Once again, that website is wisdomonline.org. All of Stephen's audio and video lessons are available free and on demand. There's also a collection of books and other resources as well.

I encourage you to visit there often. Stephen is the president of Shepherd's Theological Seminary. The school offers courses both in person and online, and that makes it possible for you to study God's word at the seminary level without relocating to our area. Shepherd's Seminary is a fully accredited graduate school with a world-class faculty.

The school offers a unique program that might interest some of you. How would your life be impacted if you were to set aside one year to study God's word, experience authentic community, grow in discipleship, take a trip to do some study in Israel, and earn your master's degree in theological studies, all in one year? Shepherd's Seminary offers a program called the Shepherd's Institute, and you can experience all that I just described. We've had men and women join us right out of college and before entering the workforce. We've had men join us who believed they were called to be a pastor. They did this program to start their education, and then jumped into the Master of Divinity program. Whatever God has called you to, investing one year like this will help you.

The school has campuses in North Carolina, Florida, Wyoming, and Texas. We also have an opportunity for you to save a little bit of money because we have a discount code you can use to get a free application to Shepherd's Seminary. When you apply, simply use the word WISDOM. Again, that discount code is WISDOM, and that will give you a free application to Shepherd's Seminary. Visit wisdomonline.org, scroll all the way to the bottom of the page, and you'll see a link to Shepherd's Seminary. Learn more about that today then join us back here next time for more wisdom for the heart. you