Age of Exiles (Sermon)

PRAY

Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, we need you. Please help us as we look at the age of exiles. May we know what you desire for us who live like the Israelites waiting for what comes next. Focus our minds during this time. Inspire our hearts as we hear your Word. Speak to our ears; we are listening by the power of the Spirit, in Jesus’s name, amen.

Introduction

We are finishing our overview of the O.T. this Sunday, leading off our series on the post-exilic prophets. We began with a message on the Birth of a Nation (Israel). Last week, Pastor Mike shared the Age of Kings. Today, we will talk about the Age of Exile, the time God’s people were taken from their country and seventy years later free to return. This series and sermon will be more than a history lesson; we will talk about history. The New Testament says that Jesus’s followers are exiles in a sense. We are part of God’s kingdom, citizens of heaven, strangers, living in a spiritual Babylon called the world. But I am getting ahead of myself. Let’s walk back to the beginning of time, to the Garden of Eden.

PARADISE LOST

God created Adam and Eve, and there was no sin. They lived in a paradise. But God cast to earth an angel from heaven who rebelled. And we read in Genesis, Corinthians, and Revelation that he took the form of the serpent, a great dragon, and deceived Eve. She fell for his lies, and then Adam toppled and messed up the world. Consequently, death reigned. Yet, God promised that through Eve would come a descendant who would break this curse and defeat the devil. When?

NOAH AND A NEW BEGINNING

We read in Genesis chapter 6 that the world was getting worse over time:

“The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5, ESV).

God decided to start over with a man named Noah and his family. He flooded the earth. But Noah was not the Savior.

ABRAM

Time passed, and the population returned. Eventually, we get to a descendant named Abram. God invited him, at the ripe old age of seventy-five, to travel to an unknown country and be the father of many nations. He accepted this mission, packed up his things, and left town with his wife and uncle. Twenty-four years later, Abram became Abraham. God repeated his promise to Abraham’s ninety-year-old wife, Sarai. She got a laugh out of this because how many ninety-year-olds get pregnant? But she did. And she gave birth to her one and only son, Isaac. God named him that because it meant “he laughs.” The name was a reminder of God’s faithfulness.

ISAAC

God blessed Isaac, and he and his wife Rebecca had twins, Jacob and Esau. Jacob inherited Isaac’s blessing. The nation was growing slowly. They had to listen, obey, and wait on God and his timing.

JACOB

God renamed Jacob Israel, the “One who perseveres with God.” Israel had two wives and two enslaved women who gave him more than twelve children. Famine struck. They emigrated to Egypt to survive. At first, the Egyptians welcomed them as shepherds. However, within a generation, Egyptians felt threatened by these immigrants. The new ruler of Egypt, Pharaoh, enslaved them. Their slavery lasted 400 years.

MOSES

God’s people increased, and so did their persecution. They cried for help. God heard and sent a stuttering, murdering, octogenarian Moses. God can use the most unlikely people for his purposes. He rescued them from the enemies’ grasp. But they grumbled and complained. They wanted to go back to Egypt, back to slavery, and back to Pharaoh’s rule. They made two golden calves to worship. They could not listen, wait, and follow God’s lead.

AGE OF KINGS

So God restarted with the next generation as God’s people entered the Promised Land. The nation of Israel was born. Once there, God used judges to rule and lead his people. They cycled through seasons of obedience and disobedience, blessing and suffering. The last judge was Samuel. When it was time for the transition of leadership, the people looked around at the nations and said they wanted a king like everyone else. Samuel took this personally. God told him not to. He said they were rejecting God as their king, not him. The Lord instructed Samuel to obey God’s people and appoint a Benjamite named Saul. He was handsome but didn’t provide the rescue the people desired. He was not their Savior. God punished him for his disobedience and gave the kingship to David. David had humble beginnings and sought God’s heart. Yet, he, too, was not the Savior. God promised from him that one would come to reign forever over all nations. Sadly, by the time he was transitioning power, he had been neglectful in his responsibilities as a dad and king, a polygamist, and authorized a hit on a friend, Uriah, after committing adultery with his wife. Solomon, David’s son, took his place. Although he began well, he was not the Savior. He made some of the most foolish decisions with wealth and women. Lust ruled him. When Solomon’s time was up, his son Rehoboam took over. Rehoboam was not the Savior.

PUNISHMENT

God punished his kings because of their disobedience. He divided Israel between the north and the south. The age of the kings went from bad to worse. God sent prophets to try to bring God’s people back from their apostasy. In the 700s, Assyria, the major superpower at the time, invaded and conquered the north. In around 100 years, Babylon, the next superpower, captured the south. Their deportation brings us to the age of exile, which started around 605 BC, to the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem around 586 BC, and to the first group, which would return around 538 BC. During the time of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel wrote.

JEREMIAH

If you have your Bible, open to Jeremiah chapter 29, verse 7. Jeremiah is in the middle of our Bibles. We will be going to Jeremiah, Ezra, and Nehemiah this morning. Let’s look there, Jeremiah 29, verse 7.

“But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” (Jeremiah 29:7, ESV).

In exile, they were to seek the country’s welfare and pray for the community. As strangers following Jesus and living for another kingdom, we can learn from this. God has us here in Berrien and Laporte County for a purpose. Let us pray and seek our communities’ good. That relates to the MyCircle workshop we had this weekend. If you missed it, God has a heart for the lost. He wants us to love our neighbors.

Lying Prophets

Jeremiah went on to talk to the people in exile. Keep reading.

“Do not let your prophets and your diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream, for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name; I did not send them, declares the LORD” (Jeremiah 29:8–9, ESV).

Jeremiah told the people not to listen to the lying prophets. Jeremiah was a prophet. What was going on? The prophet was to speak for God. A group of prophets in Jeremiah’s day were faking it. They would make stuff up. And they were leading God’s people astray.

FALSE TEACHERS

In the same way, God wants us to be discerning people. There are voices in the world and church that will misdirect us. These voices can take us into a death spiral of introspection, arrogant heady pursuit of novel religious facts, fearful sidebars of secondary nonessential theological finer points, or obsessive pursuit of physical and financial well-being. There are countless ways that false prophets have tried to lead people astray. How do we know what is right? We must go back to the Bible.

Jeremiah 29:10

Jeremiah continued in his instruction. Look at verse 10:

For thus says the LORD: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place [Israel]. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the LORD, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the LORD, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile. (Jeremiah 29:10–14, ESV)

Part of that verse may be familiar. But what I love about it is that it speaks of the post-exilic period. Jeremiah predicted it before it happened.

JEREMIAH 25

He also mentions it in chapter 25. (God tells us that we can identify a true prophet from a false one by their ability to speak accurately about what will happen in the future.) Look at verse 8 with me.

Therefore thus says the LORD of hosts: Because you have not obeyed my words, behold, I will send for all the tribes of the north, declares the LORD, and for Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, my servant, and I will bring them against this land and its inhabitants, and against all these surrounding nations. I will devote them to destruction, and make them a horror, a hissing, and an everlasting desolation.

Moreover, I will banish from them the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the grinding of the millstones and the light of the lamp. This whole land shall become a ruin and a waste, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years. Then after seventy years are completed, I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation, the land of the Chaldeans, for their iniquity, declares the LORD, making the land an everlasting waste. (Jeremiah 25:8–12, ESV)

Scholars debate how the seventy start and end. But the neat thing is that they do. After seventy years, Babylon was conquered, and Persia took over. Seventy years after the destruction of the temple, the people began rebuilding the new temple. If you pair this prediction with Isaiah, God predicts the return before it happens and the name of a king to issue the decree: Cyrus.

Ezra 1

Then we get to the Age of Post-Exile. The prophets Joel, Malachi, Obidiah, and Joel wrote during this time. Let’s read about the return in Ezra, chapter 1. Turn there if you have a Bible. So Ezra comes after Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles in our Bibles. We will be reading the first verses in the first chapter.

In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and also put it in writing: Thus says Cyrus king of Persia: The LORD, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever is among you of all his people, may his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and rebuild the house of the LORD, the God of Israel—he is the God who is in Jerusalem. (Ezra 1:1–3, ESV)

Ezra was a priest and scribe who wrote from the early 500s to the 400s BC. Jeremiah’s and Isaiah’s predictions came true in chapter 1 of Ezra.

Rebuilding of the Temple

In Ezra chapter 3, verse 10, the people start the construction project. Look at verse 10.

And when the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the LORD, the priests in their vestments came forward with trumpets, and the Levites, the sons of Asaph, with cymbals, to praise the LORD, according to the directions of David king of Israel. And they sang responsively, praising and giving thanks to the LORD,

“For he is good,

for his steadfast love endures forever toward Israel.”

And all the people shouted with a great shout when they praised the LORD, because the foundation of the house of the LORD was laid. (Ezra 3:10–11, ESV)

Can you picture this event? Trumpets, cymbals, singing, shouting, and thanking God. This was a party. [Get out my trumpet and play a cymbal]. Think of it. God’s people, in God’s land, with God’s temple being rebuilt. The prophecies were coming true. They were going to Make Israel Great Again.

Tears of Loss

Yet, in verse 12, we see something that might be surprising. Look at verse 12.

But many of the priests and Levites and heads of fathers’ 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 the sound of the 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. (Ezra 3:12–13, ESV)

Why? Why did they weep? Their hope wasn’t fully realized yet.

Rochester/Wheaton

I spent four years in Wheaton. I had a good time when I was in college. A week ago, I went to Parents’ Weekend at Wheaton. We drove by streets like Roosevelt, Blanchard, and Crescent, bringing back memories. Looking at a picture of the old Stupe brought late nights, bagels, lots of fun, and friends to mind. The chapel singing and gospel message moved me to tears. I was happy and sad at the same time. I miss those days and those friends.

TEARS OF ISRAEL

The tears of the old timers were more painful than my wet eyes. I graduated twenty-four years ago, and they had been gone for seventy. My school looks better than it did when I left, and my life has many blessings. But for them, they suffered:

The loss of loved ones,
Discrimination, persecution, and enslavement.
Babylon had ravaged their homes and land.

They got what God said they would get. They experienced the severe hand of God’s judgment for their rebellion against him. And although they were back in the land of promise, they didn’t have a king, they were still under the thumb of Persia, and the Messiah had not returned.

NOT EVERYONE WAITED

But that was not all that was wrong. Turn to Ezra chapter 9. Ezra heard something disturbing. Look at verse 1.

“The officials approached me and said, ‘The people of Israel and the priests and the Levites have not separated themselves from the peoples of the lands with their abominations’” (Ezra 9:1b, ESV).

Instead of patiently waiting and living the way God wanted them to, God’s leaders disobeyed. How? Look at verse 2 of chapter 9.

For they have taken some of their daughters to be wives for themselves and for their sons, so that the holy race has mixed itself with the peoples of the lands. And in this faithlessness the hand of the officials and chief men has been foremost. (Ezra 9:2, ESV)

The leaders dated and married non-Jewish people. God was against this. Why? What was so wrong about that? The next book in the Bible, Nehemiah, was written around the same time and explained why. Look at Nehemiah chapter 13, verse 26. He asked the people,

Did not Solomon king of Israel sin on account of such women? Among the many nations there was no king like him, and he was beloved by his God, and God made him king over all Israel. Nevertheless, foreign women made even him to sin. (Nehemiah 13:26, ESV)

During and after the exile, God’s people neglected this rule of separation. It is great to have friends with people who think differently than we do and who are non-Christians.

We want to be lights in the world, but we don’t want to be worldly.
We want to be salt in the world, but we don’t want to be ungodly.
God has put us in the world, but we are not to be of the world (John 17:14–15).

Jeremiah encouraged people to pray for and seek the good of those around them. But the New Testament challenges us not to become like them. God wants us to be holy and pure, not compromise where it matters most. In the New Testament it teaches us:

“Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?” (2 Corinthians 6:14, ESV).

God wants our hearts, and bad company corrupts good character. God’s people made compromises and blended their religion with the world’s. Let us learn from Esau, Balaam, Solomon, and Israel, and be careful not to compromise our faith.

WHAT DID HE DO?

What did Ezra do upon hearing of the sin of his people? Look at chapter 9 in Ezra, verse 3.

As soon as I heard this, I tore my garment and my cloak and pulled hair from my head and beard and sat appalled. Then all who trembled at the words of the God of Israel, because of the faithlessness of the returned exiles, gathered around me while I sat appalled until the evening sacrifice. And at the evening sacrifice I rose from my fasting, with my garment and my cloak torn, and fell upon my knees and spread out my hands to the LORD my God. (Ezra 9:3–5, ESV)

He tore his clothes. [Rip the cloth I have]
He pulled his hair. [I am not going to demonstrate this because I am dealing with a limited supply]
He fasted,
And fell to the ground until evening.

Hearing about his people’s sins broke his heart. Another word for this is humbled. He identified with the guilt and shame.

PARALLEL

God says that the followers of Jesus are all priests in a sense, but we aren’t priests like Ezra. Nor is America or the church the same as Israel. However, we still can learn from Ezra’s prayer. There is value in lamenting as we talked about in Sunday school. But Ezra didn’t stop there.

EZRA CONFESSION

He went from lament to confession of sin. Look at verse 6.

O my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift my face to you, my God, for our iniquities have risen higher than our heads, and our guilt has mounted up to the heavens. From the days of our fathers to this day we have been in great guilt. And for our iniquities we, our kings, and our priests have been given into the hand of the kings of the lands, to the sword, to captivity, to plundering, and to utter shame, as it is today. (Ezra 9:6–7, ESV)

Notice how Ezra owned his people’s sins. He was not guilty of this sin in doing it, but as the spiritual leader of his people, he confessed on the people’s behalf. The New Testament says that we have a great High Priest, Jesus, who rose from the dead and lives to intercede for us. He identified with our sin so much that the Bible says that although he was perfect, he became sin for us to take our penalty.

AS WE THINK OF THIS PRAYER

As we think of this prayer, not only can we make connections between Jesus and Ezra we can make connections to us and our prayer life. It is good to confess. Reflecting, mourning, and naming sin is valuable. Our next TM4L will be on the discipline of confession. Confession is an agreement with reality. God doesn’t learn anything from such a prayer. It is more about us being honest with God. The New Testament says we should confess our sins. David says in the Psalms that when he ignored his sins, it was like his bones wasted away. Ezra acknowledged sin, but that is not all that he prayed that evening.

VERSE 8

Let’s keep reading Ezra 9, verse 8.

But now for a brief moment favor has been shown by the LORD our God, to leave us a remnant and to give us a secure hold within his holy place, that our God may brighten our eyes and grant us a little reviving in our slavery. For we are slaves. Yet our God has not forsaken us in our slavery, but has extended to us his steadfast love before the kings of Persia, to grant us some reviving to set up the house of our God, to repair its ruins, and to give us protection in Judea and Jerusalem. (Ezra 9:8–9, ESV)

Ezra’s confession turned to meditation on God’s provision. God is faithful, even if the blessings of Jeremiah, the promises of Nathan the Prophet, and the covenant blessings in Genesis have not been realized yet. God brought his people back to the Promised Land. He revived them. He did not forsake them. He was steadfast, loving, and good, even when they were not faithful.

LAMENT

As we work through the post-exilic prophets, there will be times when the tone of the text and the topics can be difficult to read and understand. There is value in stretching ourselves to understand what is going on in the people at the time and then trying to understand what is going on in us as we wrestle with understanding. We can learn from the examples of what to do and not do. Let us be open to being confronted by the Holy Spirit from his Word.

GRACE

The good news is that we don’t have to stop on the judgment of God. When evening came, Ezra got up and prayed. He confessed the sin and remembered God’s goodness. We too can think of how we have seen God’s goodness. How have you seen him work? Sunshine is a gift. Children are gifts. What has God given you? It is good for us to recall the mercy and grace of God as well as recognize the sinfulness of sin.

PLEAD FOR GUIDANCE

What did Ezra pray next? Look at verse 10.

And now, O our God, what shall we say after this? For we have forsaken your commandments, which you commanded by your servants the prophets, saying, “The land that you are entering, to take possession of it, is a land impure with the impurity of the peoples of the lands, with their abominations that have filled it from end to end with their uncleanness. Therefore do not give your daughters to their sons, neither take their daughters for your sons.” (Ezra 9:10–12, ESV)

Ezra asked for directions. We can ask God that as well. We can acknowledge sin, turn from them, praise God, and seek his guidance. God speaks through his Word.

PRAISE

Let’s see the last thing he prayed. Go to verse 15.

“O LORD, the God of Israel, you are just, for we are left a remnant that has escaped, as it is today. Behold, we are before you in our guilt, for none can stand before you because of this” (Ezra 9:15, ESV).

Ezra concluded his prayer, acknowledging God’s character and humanity’s standing. God is just and holy. He doesn’t change. None can stand before him. Yet, there is a way to stand before him; it is by the Messiah whom the prophets looked. The follower of Jesus, Paul, wrote:

Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel [good news] I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. (1 Corinthians 15:1–2, ESV)

The good news is that if we have compromised our faith through worldliness and rebellion of any wicked sort, we can turn from it today and trust in Jesus. He died to make us right with God and give us eternal hope and standing with our heavenly Father.

APPLICATION

As we conclude, here are a few points of application.

Let us be in the world but not of it. Praying for and caring for those in our circles as Jeremiah 29 encourages.
Let us live holy lives of faith.
Let us seek the Lord’s mercy and direction, like Ezra.
Let us be a people of prayer.

PRAYER

Let’s pray. Dear God, thank you for your mercy and grace. As we learn about ancient history, we will confront our past. Help us turn from patterns, habits, and ungodly attachments for your Glory. We need you, Lord. Thank you that there is grace and mercy in the blood of Jesus. We need it. As we turn to the time of worship and offering, use our little worship to turn our hearts to a life of prayer and praise. We pray all this in Jesus’s name, AMEN.