No. 10 in Returning Home
Do you long for close communion with God? At the same time, are you allowing your heart to be breached by the influences of this age? Do you let your heavenly treasures from God be taken and used for worship to false gods? Consider God’s people in Ezra as they enter Jerusalem to rebuild the temple and reestablish their worship to God. They are a lesson to us of the regret and heartache of a lost nation attempting to return to the commanded form of worship. Through their mistakes you can find the strength to seek God and worship Him with your whole heart the way He has directed us to do.
“From the first day of the seventh month they began to offer burnt offerings to the Lord. But the foundation of the temple of the Lord was not yet laid.” – Ezra 3:6ESV
The people of Israel began their continual worship to God, which included the daily sacrifices given morning and evening, but they had no house for the heavenly King of their nation, the most high God. This passage shows us what the priorities of God’s people should be. First, they assemble together with gratitude to worship Him in the manner He commands (Ezra 3:1-5ESV).
There is a false influence that leads Christian hearts away from God’s pattern of worship. The reasoning works like this: “I love God and worship Him, but I believe my worship is better when I worship on my own at home. I think church assemblies engender envy and comparison. I think church assemblies can be about showing off. I know sometimes people don’t even realize they are doing it, but we just come from different perspectives and ways of life. It doesn’t always help to meet with a group of people who don’t really see eye-to-eye about traditions, like how we should dress on Sunday or what someone spends money on.”
These are all valid concerns about God’s assembly. They were concerns when the people of the first expedition met in Jerusalem on the first day of Tishri. They had all been living in cities across the Persian empire that influenced their ways of living and their perspectives. Some were wealthier than others. They were in many ways strangers with a common tie: they bore the name ‘Israel.’ Their leaders were subject to the laws of a polytheistic emperor. Their neighbors were non-Israelite peoples who had moved into the area in their absence. It would have been quite logical to believe they could worship more devoutly by staying home and offering their sacrifices to God on their own. But they would have used man’s wisdom to come to that conclusion, not God’s; and it would have been wrong. The Israelite nation was to come together to God’s house at Jerusalem to worship, not only to commune with God but to commune with each other.
One of the hallmark characteristics of God’s assembly is the communion between God and His people and communion of His people with each other. This fellowship continues under the covenant of Christ (Hebrews 12:22-23ESV). We are commanded not to neglect it because it is the way we build each other up in the Lord (Hebrews 10:24-25ESV).
A second characteristic of God’s assembly is found in the next verse in Ezra:
So they gave money to the masons and the carpenters, and food, drink, and oil to the Sidonians and the Tyrians to bring cedar trees from Lebanon to the sea, to Joppa, according to the grant that they had from Cyrus king of Persia. – Ezra 3:7(ESV)
God’s people give to God’s causes. The Israelites traded goods with the Sidonians and Tyrians to bring in the supplies for building the temple. These goods came from what was collected according to Cyrus’ decree. They had been earmarked for this purpose.
Christians today collect money and goods for the purpose of the Lord’s work. While the church is a spiritual kingdom, we are physical beings with physical needs. We need places to worship and fellowship together. Christians laboring to teach the word of God need the support of fellow Christians, and they can need that support in the form of money, lodging, and goods. Christians need this aid when burdened with sickness, grief, and other times of trial and discouragement. We are to assist in the spread of the gospel by helping our brothers and sisters around the world. Paul, Jesus’s apostle, discusses in his letters this means of collecting to help the kingdom of God, and he notes that we are to give according to what we are able to give (I Corinthians 16:1-2ESV).
We, as God’s assembly, come together to give to each other the spiritual and physical encouragement to build up the Church, which is the house of God (I Timothy 3:15ESV). And just as Jehovah God met the physical needs of Israel through Cyrus’ decree, He will meet our needs. We can be sure of His providential care (Luke 12:28-31ESV).