Month: July 2018

Did you notice the overlap of prophets in this chapter?  Ezra speaks about the prophets Haggai and Zechariah who came a long before him.  Now Ezra would have been around 458 and Haggai and Zechariah would have been about 70 years before that.  It is important to see Ezra within the time frame of history, while at the same time understand that the 5th chapter also demands a witness from history.

What we have happening in this part of the story is that there are those who do not want the temple built and so are asking those who are building it if they have a permit to build it.  Their response is that we have the permit of almighty God.  I’m not sure that would work for the Borough council, and it really didn’t work for the associates of the ruler of that day either.  They demanded that the ruler look back in the annals to make sure that they had a permit from King Cyrus for the rebuilding of the temple.  Otherwise, they should stop  the building.  There was a lot of church politics back then as well.

But the difference is that this was not internal church politics, but rather external.  There were outside forces wanting the temple to be stopped from being built.  We will see what happens as these pressures intensify.  

So as quickly as the building of the temple took place, so that quickly it stops.  It seems like the locals became upset because they wanted to participate in the building of the temple.  We read, and this is surprising, that those who came and asked to join in the building of the temple were also worshipers of the God of Israel.  They give a history that is shocking for the Scripture.  To find other people who have worshiped the God of Israel and who want to join in on the worship by the building of the temple, is simply surprising.

But the people of Israel say no, you cannot join us in the building of the temple.  This is not unusual because we have seen in previous chapters that there was a family that was thought to be a priestly family but since they could not trace their lineage they were stripped of their priestly duties and responsibilities.  Here, this is a similar situation.  There is a group of people which asks to be included, but the people of Israel say no.

As a result they turn on the new immigrants who have just come from Babylonian captivity and tell rumors about them and say that they are trouble makers.  The rulers of the land do a little research and find out that in the past the Israelites were a powerful nation.  As a result the king puts a pause on the construction and says that no one is to go forward with the building.  We continue to distrust those who are strangers and not of us and as a result we may find ourselves in difficulties for no reason at all.

There was a great emotional uprising because of the laying of the foundation stone for the temple.  Once again we are reminded that the house of the Lord had been destroyed, but now it is going to be rebuilt.  You know about the wailing wall.  You can find it below in a picture that John Faltin took four years ago.  

This Scripture describes the dichotomous feelings of those who were weeping with grief because they remembered the temple that used to be and those who were weeping with joy because finally the foundation of the new temple was being set.  There are mixed feelings in the crowd not because people didn’t want the temple built, but because they were inevitably drawn to the reality of their past which was so painful.  It was a past of multiple experiences of slavery: Egypt, Babylon…

As people of God when we approach the throne of grace we are fortunate because we know that wherever we may be, God is present and we can approach Him with humility and confidence.  What we are missing is a sense of what it means to be able to do that in the complete freedom that we have.  We are able to approach the throne because Jesus has died on the cross for us, and as a result we are able to have eternal life.  We don’t always remember the price that was paid for that eternal life.  If we did remember then we just might live our lives as ones of eternal gratitude and our actions would reflect that thanksgiving which permeates every action and every move.