MONDAY, 4 January, 2021 “Rebuild or Pretend?”

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Good Monday morning to you my friends, as we begin the first week of this new year 2021.

I have a question to begin this new year. . . as you have taken your first steps in 2021 have you found you are still tethered to 2020 or have you been able to make your choices and live life these first days of ’21 totally severed from all that 2020 was?

All around us are people who have made “New Year’s Resolutions” which are all about a fresh start, doing things differently. But the truth is we can’t totally sever ourselves from 2020, for the present and future are built on our past, right?

Prior to Christmas, on our “Walking with Jesus” journey, we were following the remarkable Biblical story found in Ezra, of 50,000 exiled Jews returning to Jerusalem after living in Babylon as captives of king Nebuchadnezzar. Let’s rejoin them, in Ezra 3, because what they are experiencing is very much like what we are facing this January 2020, wherever you live in our world.

You’ll recall Ezra 1 is the account of Persian emperor Cyrus issuing a decree that any Jew, anywhere in the Persian kingdom was free to return to Jerusalem to rebuild their demolished city and temple. Ezra 1&2 detail who accepted the offer, what they took with them and how they journeyed. Ezra 3 begins with their arrival and finding that many squatters had moved in during the almost 50 years since the destruction of Jerusalem in 586bc. For several months these exiles worked to find places to live, plant fields, and re-launch their lives in that broken place. Finally “Despite their fear of the peoples around them, they built the altar on its foundation and sacrificed burnt offerings on it to the LORD…” (Ezra 3:3) While building shelters for the families, and finding food and relaunching businesses was important, for these people the re-establishment of their spiritual lives as God’s people was essential to living.

So… I invite you to consider some similarities with January 2021…

* The rubble of broken down Jerusalem and Temple was all over the place.

Squatters had moved in and built homes in the midst of the rubble, but because they were foreigners, they had no love or respect for that place and its glorious history. As the exiled Jews returned, the joy of being back was overwhelmed by the harsh memories of how Nebuchadnezzar’s army had destroyed that place with such violence. Also, the harsh reality that any rebuild here must take place in the mess left from the past and among the unwelcome squatters who have moved in!

As we begin 2021, everywhere we look we see the ‘mess’ of 2020, do you agree? Covid is still ravaging lives and communities even with the new vaccines. Businesses closed due to political pressure are still closed. Millions of people are still unemployed. Churches are still functioning in very limited capacity. Some schools may not reopen from the Christmas break. And the political shambles of dishonest and partisan politics continues.

As we begin a new year, we do so in the rubble of what 2020 did to our world!

* Some of the exiles prioritized rebuilding the altar and resuming worship on the temple mount in Jerusalem, despite all the mess around them.

It wasn’t nearly what it once was in the glorious Temple of the past, but at least it was God honoring worship, and for these returning Jews that was essential to life!

How about you and me my friends? How many of us have not been in a church building for months? How many of your churches are closed or significantly restrained in their normal functions? Do you share the worship passion of these Jewish exiles? Is worship so important to your life that you will not allow COVID or political shambles to restrict you from worshiping Almighty God, even if you must worship alone? How will you worship this week, today?

Ezra 3:7-13 is a significant report. While life was certainly NOT back to normal for these Jewish exiles who had made the 500 mile trek back to broken down Jerusalem, once they had the basics of life resumed, they put their hands to the monumental task of starting to rebuild their great temple.

Now consider something important here my friends. When king Solomon led the construction of the first great Temple on this sight, he had more than 150,000 workers engaged in the massive project! (1 Kings 5:13-18) In Ezra 3, these people were trying to start life over, rebuilding their own homes, restarting their businesses or farms. Every day was hard work just to survive! Yet worship of God was so important to them, they somehow found a way to start clearing the demolition site and rebuild the altar and begin reconstructing the foundation of the Temple.

Ponder that my friends. Put yourself there. Can you envision the huge challenges they are taking on to try and rebuild from the disaster of their past?

This week America will walk a week that will chart the future of this nation, and impact the world The Georgia runoff election is tomorrow. The US Senate balance is at stake. Later this week Congress is scheduled to ratify the US presidential election, and then two weeks later the inauguration of a President. And what will follow that my friends, as America and the world adjust to a new era?

Please note what these 50,000 returned Jewish exiles did in broken down Jerusalem. They went to work rebuilding their lives in the shambles of THEIR mistakes of the past. They knew it was because they and their ancestors had turned their backs on God that God had allowed king Nebuchadnezzar to invade and destroy Jerusalem and their Temple. The rubble all around them reminded them of their past failures. Oh they might try to ignore it or blame it on others, but they knew the best way to rebuild was to face their reality! Rebuilding would require cleaning up their mess and facing their moral and spiritual past failures.

Will America and the part of the world where you live do the same or will too many people disregard the past, dismiss their moral failures, and try to simply go on with artificial hope?

You see my friends, hope is built on honesty. Ezra chapter 3 reflects the hard, honest re-start that enabled Jerusalem and the Temple to eventually be rebuilt and experience the great outpouring of God’s blessing in future years. So in closing I urge you to look carefully, in Ezra 3, at how important restarting with a God focus is when you are rebuilding on a crumbled past. Let’s learn this lesson well my friends as we begin 2021.

Oh Lord Jesus I lift up these, my listening friends, to you. . .

Today’s Scripture is Ezra 3.

Choose below to read or listen.

Bible images provided with attribution to www.LumoProject.com.

Have a comment or question about today’s chapter? I’m ready to hear from you, contact me here.

Pastor Doug Anderson 262.441.8785
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)

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