Learning to Worship Again

0:51I became the basic repairman, the landscape guy, the pool maintenance guy, the car maintenance guy. And by the time I was in my late teens, we had six cars. So it felt like I changed oil every weekend. It's like what I did, it was my job. And so when I got married to Kendra and moved out of my parents' house and everything, there was a lot of those things that I had just adopted. I said, hey, I'm not going to pay people to do when I can do it myself, except for one area. I wasn't going to change oil anymore.

1:23I was tired of that. So I would look for coupons for $19.99 and happily sit in the air conditioning while somebody else. That did it for me. But after years of doing this, I had a series of bad experiences at some of these places. And then one day, something inside me just snapped. And I was like, I'm not going to pay people to do this anymore, especially when they do a bad job. And so I, you know, went over to Walmart, I got all the supplies to do it myself. I come home, but I have to relearn how to do all of this because I hadn't done it in like 15 years.

1:55So I jack the car up, I can get down under there, and it takes me like 10 minutes to even locate the oil pan and the drain plug. I finally find that, and whoever worked on the car last doing an oil change, tightened the drain plug like we were going to send my car into orbit. I don't know why you need to tighten it that much. So it takes forever to get the thing off. I finally get it off. I forget to put on gloves, though.

2:18So I got oil coming out all over my hands, down my arm, and splattering all over the garage floor. Finally, I walk in the house, and Kendra's like, well, how'd that go? I'm dirty, sweaty. I look like I built the car, you know, from the ground up. I had to relearn all of that stuff. And today in Ezra III, the people are going to begin working on the house of the Lord. They're going to be working on rebuilding the temple.

2:45But before they do that, they've got to reestablish corporate worship. I want you to remember, they have not worshipped formally corporately together in a very long time. They've been in exile for about 70 years. And even before the exile, they struggled to. Prioritize obedient worship. And so they're going to have to learn or relearn what it means to worship God in a way that honors Him. They're going to have to relearn what it looks like to worship God according to His commands, no matter what their circumstances are.

3:19And so today, what we're going to learn together is that we must learn to prioritize obedient worship in all circumstances. So let's take a look at the text now together. We're going to look first at prioritizing worship. We know that when the Jews came back to Judah, they went back to the cities and towns of their ancestors, and they were trying to rebuild their lives there. And so Ezra notes right away in this first verse that in the seventh month, that's roughly September, the people gathered as one man to Jerusalem.

3:53Now, why did they come together to the city of Jerusalem? Well, it's because the top priority was re-establishing corporate worship. That was the most important thing. But I want you to notice they don't wait to re-establish worship until after the temple has been built. They don't even wait until after they've started construction on the temple to resume corporate worship. Right away, Jeshua the priest, along with Zerubbabel the governor, build the altar. That's the very first thing that they do. And that's remarkable.

4:30Because if you've ever studied these two books, Ezra and Nehemiah, you know that Ezra covers the period from about 538 BC to about 450 BC, and it focuses on rebuilding the temple. And then Nehemiah picks up in 450 B.C., and it focuses on rebuilding the wall around Jerusalem. Now, if you were returning to a city that had been destroyed and had been burned down and had enemies living all in it and all around it, would your first priority be rebuilding the altar?

5:07Would your first priority be worshiping God? I'd love to think that would be my first priority. I would love to think that would be the case. But I think in reality, what I would do is I would say, look, if we're going to reestablish worship, we have to have a safe place to do that. So we're going to have to start with the wall, not the altar. I'm just being honest. I think that's what I would do. But these faithful people don't do that. They begin with the altar, not the wall. And if you look at verse 3, Ezra says, they set the altar in its place, for fear was on them because of the peoples of the lands.

5:48Because, you know, maybe we read this and we think, well, these people are just especially brave. They don't care. No, no, no. Fear was on them because of the peoples of the lands. They are very afraid. And yet. They rebuild the altar first, not the wall. You see, courage is not doing the right thing when you're not afraid. Courage is doing the right thing when you are afraid. It doesn't take courage to do the right thing when you're not afraid.

6:16These people displayed great courage because they were afraid. They demonstrated great faith in the Lord by doing this first. A lot of you have read Genesis before. You know that in Genesis chapter 12, God appears to a man named Abram and he tells him, I want you to leave your land. I want you to leave your family. Think about how big of a deal that was in the ancient world. I want you to leave all that. I want you to go to the land that I will show you.

6:43And when he gets to the land of Canaan, what we now know is the promised land, God appears to him and he says, Abram, I'm going to give this land to you and your descendants forever. And the first thing that Abram does is he builds an altar to worship God. When he built that altar, what he was doing is he was saying, God, there is no reason for me to believe that you would give this land to me and my descendants forever, but you said it, and so I believe it. It was an act of faith in God to build the altar. It was an act of faith in God's promises.

7:19And so when these people come back and they build the altar first, it's an act of faith in God. The exiles are saying, God, our situation doesn't look good. Not seem safe, but we will put our hope in you. We will not put our hope in a wall. We will not put a hope in anything that we can build around us. We believe that you can protect us better than any wall can. And I think there's a lot of application here for us, particularly in our community.

7:53See, Brian College Station is a very transient community. Many people come here just for a few years to get a degree so that you can get the job that you believe God is calling you to serve Him and to serve others in for the rest of your life. And one of the things that I've noticed through the years, because we did this too, is that people often accept the job and then they start looking for a church.

8:22Because the common assumption is, well, there's healthy churches everywhere, so this shouldn't be too hard. That's what we thought when we graduated and left. We took jobs in Charlotte, North Carolina. We said, hey, we'll find a church. Healthy churches are everywhere. Well, that assumption is flawed. Healthy churches aren't everywhere. And just assuming that you're going to find one is a little bit like, you know, an NFL fan moving to Birmingham. And only after he moves to Birmingham does he realize that the only paid athletes in the state play for Alabama.

8:56That's like information you needed before you move to Alabama. If you want to watch, Watch NFL teams, there are none in Alabama. There's only Auburn in Alabama. That's it. And so healthy churches aren't everywhere, but beyond that, friends, our top priority as Christians is worshiping God. So what that means is that we should say, I'll only take a job somewhere if I know that there's a healthy church nearby. That's one application of what it looks like to prioritize worship. You see, taking a job before you even know if there's a healthy church in the area is a little bit like building the wall before the altar. It's kind of like saying, hey, we'll do this thing that we think is going to protect us, and then we'll prioritize worship after that. Now, I don't want you to misunderstand me. Jobs are important. That's why you're here.

9:47The wall was important. The whole book of Nehemiah is dedicated to explaining how they built the wall for protection. It was important. But, friends, the Israelites understood that if God wasn't with them, it did not matter how thick or how high they built that wall. God had to be with them. And so the first thing they did was prioritize worship. They declared their faith in God by saying, We are going to build the altar first. These exiles prioritized worship. And with so much in our lives calling for our priorities, this is a great challenge to us today as well to put God first. In our lives to prioritize worship.

10:34But I want you to see here in the rest of the text, they don't just prioritize worship, they prioritize obedient worship. See, one of the key refrains that's going to keep coming up in this chapter, look at verse 2. And again, in verse 4, it says, as it is written, they did everything as it is written. Obedience to God was of paramount importance to these exiles. They had just returned from decades of living in exile in Babylon, and the whole reason that they were exiled, as we've said again and again, was because of their sin and disobedience and idolatry.

11:14So they're saying, we don't want to go through that again. We're going to go ahead and establish being an obedient people as God has called us to be. So when they start to rebuild the altar, look at verse 3. How did they rebuild it? As it is written in the law of Moses, the man of God. And this is really important because we can't simply worship God however it seems best to us. But that's what people have thought, not just thousands of years ago, but today as well. People everywhere think we can just worship God however we want.

11:56Now we mentioned last week that Aaron was a descendant of Levi. And God's command was that the only people who could serve as priests in the tabernacle and then in the temple were the descendants of Aaron. They're the only people that could do that. But even still then, they had to submit themselves to what God had revealed. They had to be obedient to God's commands for leading worship. And so you come to Numbers chapter 3, and there's this really sad situation where Aaron's first two sons, Nadab and Abihu, they decide that they're going to offer a different kind of offering.

12:35One that they came up with themselves. The Bible says they offered unauthorized fire before the Lord. And God put them to death for it. He put them to death. I don't know why they decided to do that, but for whatever reason, they thought that they could just worship in a different way, in a way that seemed good and right to them, and God put them to death for it. Friends, I think the mentality has changed very little over the thousands of years since then. Many people still believe today that all God cares about is sincerity. That as long as you are sincere, you can worship God however you want to.

13:18But the reality is, you can be sincere and be sincerely wrong. You can be sincere and be sincerely wrong. See, the truth is, all of us are. us are born worshipers. That's why you've never met anyone and you never will meet anyone who doesn't worship. Everyone worships. Some of us worship the God of the Bible. Some of us worship Allah. Some of us worship money and power and pleasure. Some of us worship man and his achievements through science. But make no mistake, you've never met a person who doesn't worship. Everyone worships because we are born worshipers.

14:05The problem, especially for those of us who are seeking to worship God, is that we aren't born knowing how to worship God. In fact, we're born bent the opposite direction. I want you to look on the screen at Romans chapter 1. Paul says, for although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him. But they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

14:45See, every one of us is born a worshipper, but we're not born knowing how to worship God. But thankfully, God has revealed how we are to worship him in his word. Look at what Jesus says in John chapter 4. God is worship. Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. In other words, we have to worship God both from a right heart, so sincerity is important, and with right actions. We have to worship in spirit and in truth. Friends, how we worship matters to God, and therefore it's critical that we begin with the right question.

15:29So many people begin with the question: what do I want to get out of worship? What do I want to get out of worship? What kind of singing and music appeals to me? What kind of preaching and sermons appeal to me? What is the way that I want to express myself in worship? What do I want to get out of worship? That's where most people start. That's the wrong question. The right question is, how does God command us to worship?

16:06How does God command us to worship? And we've seen from Jesus broadly, the answer is, He commands us to worship in spirit and in truth. But more specifically, we are commanded to worship God through our mediator, Jesus, in the ways that He has commanded us in Scripture. And that's why our services here at New Life are structured. The way that they are. What we do on Sunday morning can be broken down into four categories: we read the word, we pray the word, we sing the word, and we preach the word. That's all.

16:47Our worship services are structured in that way because we are seeking to worship God through our mediator Jesus as he has revealed himself to us in his word. So the word is central in everything that we do. And so, after the altar was rebuilt, according to the commands of the Lord, they began to reinstitute worship together. And again, they do this according to God's commands. Look again at verse 4. It says again, as it is written.

17:21So, what did that mean for them? What did reinstituting worship mean? Well, it meant that they had daily offerings, morning and evening. It meant that they had weekly offerings that they offered on the Sabbath day. It meant that they had monthly offerings at the new moon. It meant that they had regular appointed feasts of the Lord, like the feast of booths that we read about here, commemorating their exodus from Egypt. And so, for a week every year, in roughly September, they would build these little huts that they would remember: for 40 years, we wandered in the wilderness because of our sin, but God delivered us. Us out of Egypt, he brought us to the promised land. And on top of all of that, they offered free will offerings. And so, friends, what we see here is that God is prescribing regular rhythms of worship.

18:17He's not just telling us how to worship, he's telling us the rhythms that we should worship in as well. Now, of course, as Christians living on the other side of the resurrection of Jesus, it looks a little bit different for us, right? We don't offer burnt offerings at all, much less twice a day or weekly or monthly or anything like that, but we still have a rhythm. We gather together as a local church on the first day of the week, Sunday, because that is the day that Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to his disciples.

18:53So, every time we gather together, the whole reason we worship on Sunday and not Saturday or not any other day of the week is because we are remembering every week Jesus is alive. He died, he rose again, he is alive. We are celebrating that. The gospel is foremost every week, just by the very virtue of the fact that we meet on Sundays. That's what we're gathering to remember. The rhythms of worship are important. Look at what the author of Hebrews says in chapter 10.

19:24And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works. Not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near. See, friends, we need this weekly encouragement. We need the regular rhythm of gathering together to worship God, but unfortunately, the rhythm of gathering together regularly has been disrupted by our society in many different ways, hasn't it? It's been disrupted by the ease and affordability of travel.

20:04There was a time not that long ago where people didn't have the time or the money to just be able to travel. They didn't have all those resources available to them. It's been disrupted by the proliferation of jobs that expect 24-7 dedication. You're expected to check email, answer email, put in a few hours of work every day of the week. There's no more weekend, there's no more sacred space. And it's been disrupted by the rise of children and children's activities as the center of family life.

20:41And so, for all of those reasons and more, the regular rhythms of gathering together to worship, to encourage one another, to build one another up, those have been disrupted. But friends, we will start to prioritize those things in our lives when we recognize how important it is, how much we need it. See, we gather to worship every week because God is worthy. That's the bottom line. But we gather to worship every week because we need it. We need to be reminded through the word of who God is and what he has done in the person and work of Jesus Christ. We need to gather every week because we need the encouragement that comes from seeing one another, praying for each other, hugging one another, talking to one another, asking about each other and our lives. We need that. We need that fellowship in person.

21:34I feel that very much myself. It's like by the end of the week, I can't even remember what I'm doing or why anymore. But every time we gather on Sunday morning, I'm reminded, yes, Jesus is alive. God's word is true. We together are God's people seeking to live in a way that honors God every day of our lives. And when we gather together, I'm reminded of that. I'm encouraged by that. And so we see here that we must not only prioritize worship, but we need to prioritize obedient worship, gathering together regularly to worship God according to his commands.

22:15And then finally, in these closing verses, 7 through 13, we see that we need to prioritize obedient worship in all circumstances. If you look at verse 7. You see that the leaders collect funds to pay the masons and the carpenters and also to acquire all the supplies that they were going to need to rebuild the temple. And the author notes that in verse 8, in the second month of the second year, so this is around March in the second year that they're back, the leaders appoint Levites to supervise all the work of the temple construction. And it seems like this goes really well because in verses 8 and 9, we've got the list of supervisors, and then in verse 10, the foundation is laid. They really limited their trips to Lowe's. This went great. No project I have ever done was completed within one verse.

23:11And when the foundation is laid, here's what's amazing. They have a full worship service. They complete the foundation and they have a full worship service. The priests break out their vestments and trumpets. The Levites come out with their symbols. I think we should do that next week. Just have a trumpet and a symbol. Caleb and Katie, just trumpet and symbol. We're going to do that next week. See how it goes. Y'all in favor of that? Sounds awesome. And what do they do? Look at what it says. They sing responsively, praising and giving thanks to the Lord. And what are they singing? For he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever toward Israel.

23:59That refers. Appears often throughout scripture, and what a rich praise that it is that God's steadfast love endures forever. Now, I want you to think about this for a minute. They've got the foundation laid, and whether that was a big deal or no big deal in their eyes, it is instructive for us that the first thing that they do is worship. See, in one sense, the laying of the foundation was a really big deal. I mean, these people had been permitted by Cyrus the king, seemingly out of nowhere, according to the prophecies, but seemingly out of nowhere from a human standpoint, to return home. They trekked for five, six hundred plus miles across the desert to arrive back. They built homes. They got their life started again from the ground up.

24:54They've collected the money to get these supplies, and they built the foundation. This is a huge deal. But I want you to see that they don't pat each other on the back and congratulate each other for their bravery, for their commitment, for their hard work. No, if this was a big deal in their eyes, they gave all credit to God. And they said, God, you are the reason that we're back here. You are the reason that we were able to do all of this. You get all of the glory and the praise.

25:26But maybe for some of them, it wasn't a big deal. It was a small deal. Because after all, I mean, it's just the foundation. Who's ever looked at a foundation and be like, how glorious is that? It's a slab, right? There's nothing to see. It's not a big deal. And then it's significant, if that's their perspective, that they stopped and worshiped as well. See, they celebrate this small victory, this small evidence of God's grace. They're afraid of the people around them. And yet they pause and they worship God and say, Thank you, Lord, for this day of small things.

26:04I think this is so instructive for us, whether they thought it was a big deal or a small deal, because, guys, we've got to learn to be thankful in all circumstances, no matter what is going on in our lives. Because I think for some of us, when God does something really big and awesome in our lives, we are good in those moments about saying, Lord, thank you. You are great. You are amazing. You have done this. I worship you. I don't take credit.

26:35But some of us forget in those moments to give thanks to God. We just think to ourselves, how fortunate, how lucky I was that this happened to me. And then when those small things happen, I mean, if you're anything like me, you struggle to even remember to praise God for those small things. You just kind of move on. You take them for granted. But these people, whether it's a big deal or a small, Deal, they stop. They have a worship service. They say, God, you get all the glory for this thing.

27:08And what's incredible is that no matter how they perceived this laying of the foundation, there was a discrepancy in whether the people thought that it was a day for rejoicing or a day for sorrow. I want you to look again at verses 12 and 13. Ezra writes, 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.

28:04Isn't that remarkable that the people had such widely different perceptions about whether this was a day for rejoicing or a day for sorrow? And even more noteworthy is that whether you thought it was a day for rejoicing or a day for sorrow, it depended largely on your age. It depended largely on your age. You see, for a lot of younger people, the whole thing felt like progress. I mean, they had been born in exile, they had lived in Babylon their whole life as aliens and strangers. They didn't have, you know, a whole lot of rights or a great experience there. And so they get to move back to the land of the ancestors. They get to re-establish worship. They get to be a part of building this temple, the most magnificent thing for hundreds and hundreds of miles, maybe in the world.

29:02It all felt like progress to them. They felt like they were a part of something big and new. They had a fresh start. But that's not how the older people felt at all. They just felt sad. Sad as they reflected on family members and friends who had died decades ago in the siege of Jerusalem. Sad as they reflected on the magnificence of Solomon's temple and how glorious it was and how wonderfully wealthy and powerful and influential their nation was at one time.

29:41And most of all, they felt sad as they reflected on their sin, which had led them into exile to begin with. You see, it really depended on whether you were older or younger, how you perceived this day, whether it was a day of rejoicing. Or a day of sorrow, but you know what's beautiful is that they all worship God together. Some are worshiping in their joy, and some are worshiping through their sorrow, but they are all worshiping God together.

30:18And the Bible is filled with moments like this. Look on the screen at Habakkuk 3. The prophet writes: Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail, and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold, and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will take joy in the God of my salvation. The scripture and our lives are filled with both rejoicing and sorrow. And a lot of times, those things are going on simultaneously.

31:05And so, a big part of the Christian life is learning to worship God in all circumstances, whether we are rejoicing, or whether we are sorrowful, or whether we are rejoicing and sorrowful at the same time. And one of the blessings of being a part of a healthy, diverse local church is that you get people from every generation. Worshiping together. See, younger people are such a blessing to the local church because they're full of hope and joy and energy. And without younger people in the church, older people might be tempted to become cynical or jaded or complacent.

31:52And older people are such a great blessing to the local church because they're filled with wisdom and experience and time-tested faith. And without older men and women in the church, younger people, we can just get excited about every single new flashy thing. We don't soberly assess situations because we haven't walked through as much life as older men and women have walked through. We're tempted to lose faith in God when anything small doesn't go our way. Older men and women have been there and they say to us, God will be faithful.

32:34That's the great blessing of being in a diverse local church with all ages because we get the benefit of having older and younger. We learn to worship God together in every season of our lives, whether those seasons are joyful or sorrowful. And so that's what we're trying to do, church. We are trying, like these people, to learn or relearn to prioritize obedience. Obedient worship in all circumstances, in all seasons of our lives. And Ezra 3 is such an encouraging time for the people of Israel. I mean, think about all that we have seen today. They re-established corporate worship, making it the top priority. They laid the foundation for the temple after it was destroyed and laid in ruins for decades. This is all wonderful. It's a great start.

33:31But as we're going to see in the rest of Ezra and then in the rest of the Old Testament, obedient worship is not going to remain a priority for the people of God. Once again, they're going to fall into the same cycle that they always fall into of disobedience and sin and idolatry, followed by God's discipline. And what that does is it reminds us that no matter how pure our desire to worship God obediently, no matter how pure that desire is, no matter how many resolutions we make, we are going to continually fall short of offering God the perfect worship that he deserves. It reminds us of that truth. But thankfully, God is merciful and gracious, and he sent a Savior for us to die for our failure to offer God perfect worship. In all circumstances of our lives, I want you to look on the screen at Hebrews 10. This is such a great passage for us.

34:41And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemy should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering, he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. You see, friends, all of the sacrifices that the priests offered twice a day, every week, every month, all of the sacrifices that we offer to God, our time, our money, our energy, they can never make up for our sins. There is no sacrifice that we can offer to a holy God that will make up for our sin and rebellion against him.

35:44But all of these sacrifices in the Old Testament, every time a priest would take a spotless animal and shed its blood, it pointed forward to the perfect sacrifice, the spotless lamb of Jesus. Who would come and live the perfectly obedient life that we were supposed to live, and then die in our place for our sins, and to rise again from the dead on the third day, so that anyone who trusted in him and who trusts in him will be forgiven and counted righteous. We will be looked upon as perfect as God looks upon his son, Jesus, because through faith, his righteousness is credited to us. Friends, some of you this morning need to take your hope out of your religious performance, your attempts to be a good Christian, your attempts to do more good things than bad things. You need to take all of your hope out of your performance. You need to turn from your sin and you need to place all of your faith, all of your confidence, all of your trust and your hope in the person of Jesus. Because it is through his single sacrifice for sin that we can be made acceptable to God.

37:08He is the way, the truth, and the life. And he is our hope today, friends. The once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus is our hope. We do need to prioritize obedient worship in all circumstances. But thanks be to God. That when we fail to prioritize obedient worship in all circumstances, we have a Savior who died and who rose again for us so that we could be accepted by God. Let's pray. Thank you for listening to the sermon audio from New Life Baptist Church in College Station, Texas. For more information or to support our ministry, visit us online at newlifecs.net.