A very warm thank you again for having me.
It's a real privilege to be here.
And if you want to have Ezra 5 open in front of you,
that'd be a help.
Just before I pray for us, let me...
I preach this as part of a sermon series in Ezra,
but I believe you've not been having a sermon series in Ezra.
So if you're slightly rusty on your Ezra,
let me just give you a little recap.
Ezra is one of the post-exilic books,
which means it's about sort of 600 years,
500 years before...
No, more like 500 years before Christ.
And it's just after the people have suffered this great exile.
They've been taken into Babylon for their sins.
They were there for 70 years.
The Lord has brought them back.
And Ezra's the story of the first returnees
and the way that they come back.
They're a little sort of suffering people,
but they're getting on, building the temple,
that sort of thing.
And largely after the sort of horrors
of the pre-exile people of God
and all their unfaithfulness,
Ezra's a very positive book.
Right at the end, chapters 9 and 10,
you see a sort of fairly big sin.
Some people have been sinning,
but even there, they do really well
in dealing with it.
And we're going to see some of that sort of positivity
in these two verses.
Let me pray for us now.
Blessed are you, O Lord.
Teach us your statutes.
You are good.
And you do good.
Teach us your statutes.
Open our eyes that we might see wonderful things
in your word.
In the name of Christ we pray.
Amen.
So having given an overall introduction to Ezra,
let's just zoom in on these two verses.
What's been going on here is that in chapter 4,
opposition has arisen to the rebuilding of the temple.
The whole first half of Ezra is about the rebuilding
of the temple.
Oppositions are arisen.
At the end of chapter 4,
people have come with messages from the emperor
saying you have to stop doing this work.
And so they have to down tool.
They're compelled by force to do that.
And in that context,
you get chapter 5,
verses 1 and 2.
Now the prophets Haggai and Zechariah,
the son of Iddo,
prophesied to the Jews who are in Judah and Jerusalem
in the name of the God of Israel who are over them.
Then Zerubbabel,
the son of Shealtiel and Jeshua,
the son of Jezodak,
the sort of descendant of David and the priest,
arose and began to rebuild the house of God
that is in Jerusalem.
And the prophets of God were with them,
supporting them.
So here we are again.
I've been saying they're doing pretty well.
Here they are doing pretty well.
They face serious opposition.
People have come to them and stopped them building.
But the prophets spur them on
and they respond well to that spurring on
and they rebuild.
And God is with them.
Their hands are strengthened.
But there is a very strange silence
going on in these verses.
There's something that God is not saying here
that he doesn't mention.
And I want to take you to the prophet Haggai.
The prophets Haggai and Zechariah,
the ones who are prophesying.
And this is one of those places
where we know what they said.
We know exactly what they said to people
because they wrote it down in their books.
You don't actually have to turn there in your Bibles
because all the passages I'm going to look at
are in your service sheets,
although you're very welcome to turn there in the Bibles
and check that I'm not making things up
on your service sheets.
It's very striking having read Ezra,
where they do so well,
and it's so positive,
to go and read what Haggai actually said to them.
Here's how Haggai starts.
In the second year of Darius the king,
in the sixth month,
on the first day of the month,
the word of the Lord came
by the hand of Haggai the prophet
to Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel,
governor of Judah,
and to Joshua, the son of Jehozadak,
the high priest.
Thus says the Lord of hosts,
these people say the time has not yet come
to rebuild the house of the Lord.
Then the word of the Lord came
by the hand of Haggai the prophet.
Is it a time for yourselves
to dwell in your panelled houses
while this house lies in ruins?
That's a rebuke, isn't it?
God says to them through Haggai,
you guys are busy with your own houses,
your own projects.
You've given up building my house.
You've got your excuses.
And if you read Ezra,
the excuses are pretty strong.
They were compelled by force
to stop building.
But God says to them through the prophet Haggai,
you've got your excuses.
It's not the right time,
but the basic fact is
that you've abandoned me.
You're turning away to your own comfort.
And it's so serious
that God says
he's started disciplining the people.
They've had bad harvests
because of their disobedience.
Here's verse 9.
You looked for much
and behold it came to little
and when you brought it home
I blew it away.
Why, declares the Lord of hosts,
because of my house
that lies in ruins
while each of you
busies himself with his own house.
You've been disobeying me.
You've been neglecting my glory.
And I have already been disciplining you.
That is the message
that Haggai brings to the people.
So when the people listen to Haggai
and seek the Lord
and do the work,
it's not simply
that they've been doing really well
and then here they continue to do well
or maybe shift up a gear.
No, this is repentance.
This is turning around.
They were sinning.
And they leave their sin
and they seek God
and they serve him.
Well, we have all the dates for this
because Haggai and Zechariah
date their prophecies very carefully.
Haggai preaches in the 6th month.
They start building in the 7th month.
How about Zechariah?
We've got two prophets
in Ezra, chapter 5.
Haggai and Zechariah both come.
Zechariah starts preaching
a little bit later
in the 8th month.
They've already restarted work.
They've been going for a month now.
So you might expect
just pretty solid encouragement
from Zechariah.
Well done.
You've repented.
Now keep going in that repentance.
But no, this is the way
Zechariah starts.
In the 8th month,
in the 2nd year of Darius,
the word of the Lord
came to the prophet Zechariah,
the son of Berechiah,
the son of Iddo,
saying,
The Lord was very angry
with your fathers.
Therefore say to them,
thus declares the Lord of hosts,
return to me,
says the Lord of hosts,
and I will return to you,
says the Lord of hosts.
In the 8th month,
they've been building for a month,
Zechariah comes to them
with another message
of repentance.
You are away from me,
as your fathers were.
You must still return to me.
They've already started again
on the temple,
but clearly there's
some repentance to go.
They've sort of done
some of that external work
to turn around,
but their hearts
aren't quite right yet.
Zechariah doesn't beat
around the bush.
Repent.
Return.
And he says it pretty strongly.
Very angry.
In the life of that,
doesn't Ezra 5
seem rather remarkable?
All Ezra says
is that Haggai and Zechariah
prophesied,
and the people rose up to build,
and the prophets are there
supporting them.
There's no mention of rebuke.
There's no mention of repentance.
It's just really positive.
You're reading right through
the book of Ezra.
You've been feeling
really positive so far.
Ezra wants you to carry on
feeling positive about
everything the people are doing.
What do we do with that?
Arguments from silence
can be dangerous,
can't they?
I'm about to give you
an argument from silence
that I sort of want to warn you
against most of them.
Anytime you say anything,
there's a sort of
billion and one things
you haven't said.
If I tell you that
God loves you,
and you go,
well, he didn't say anything
about the price of tea in China,
and so that proves that
theology doesn't say anything
about Chinese home economics.
So if you want to be
a theologian,
you have to leave
those things behind.
No tea for you.
Well, that's nonsense,
isn't it?
I just wasn't talking
about that thing.
But sometimes,
silence is significant.
And what I want to do,
really,
in the rest of our time,
I sort of want to use
this thing in Ezra 5
as a springboard.
Because the silence
that happens here
is the silence that happens
over and over again
in Scripture.
A kind of quietness
from the Lord
that I want to draw
your attention to.
I want to give,
in detail,
a couple more examples.
First of all,
King David.
King David,
probably one of the most
famous Old Testament figures.
He's famous for
all sorts of things.
He killed a giant
once with a stone.
You might have heard about that.
He wrote a whole bunch
of psalms.
Probably sung some of them.
He's also famous,
isn't he,
for the time he committed adultery
and lied about it
and committed murder
to cover it up.
Nine months,
that was,
of hard-hearted rebellion
against God.
The worst abuse
of kingly power.
It was the absolute pits.
Perhaps you know the story.
The prophet Nathan
comes to him
and confronts him
and David finally
recognises his sin
and goes,
I've sinned.
And wonderfully,
immediately,
the prophet Nathan says,
the Lord's taken away
the guilt of your sins.
You're forgiven.
Just like that.
What happens next
in David's life?
Well, two very important things.
On the one hand,
Nathan says,
you're forgiven,
but there's still
going to be consequences.
You've brought sexual sin
and murder into your house.
Those things are not
going to leave your house.
Those things don't go away
quickly.
And the rest of the book
of Samuel covers
the horrible fruit of that.
David's baby son dies.
His other son
does something awful
that I won't mention
in a sort of
all-age group like this.
And that leads to murder
and eventually to civil war.
The consequences
of David's sin
spiral on and on.
I think it's fair to say
if you put the books
of Samuel and Kings together,
that's the sort of
400, 500 years
of Israel's history.
That end in the division
of north and south
and then exile
of both of them.
And you can say
all of that disaster
right down to the exile
has its roots
in David's sin.
It's big stuff.
The consequences
are really painful.
That's one thing.
And the other thing
is that even as
all those consequences
to David's sin
are playing out,
we stop
talking about
David's sin.
It stops being mentioned.
You can read about it
in the Psalms
where he confesses to God,
but the narratives
don't talk about it anymore.
They don't say
and this bad thing
happened because
of David's sin.
That one too,
that's also David's fault.
See this bad thing?
Remember David?
Listen,
don't commit adultery.
If you've read
One Kings recently,
you might have noticed
that over and over again
they do pick up
Jeroboam's sin.
Jeroboam,
the unrepentant
king of Israel
committed a great sin,
led people into idolatry
and they bang
on and on about that.
There's hardly a king
goes by
who's a bad king
where they don't go
and he's sinned
the sin of Jeroboam
and they're constantly
bringing you back to it.
They really could go,
oh,
he followed in the footsteps
of David.
But instead of that,
there's silence
and actually there's
more than silence.
I've put in
your sheets
another verse
from One Kings.
God says to Solomon,
David your father
walked
with integrity
of heart
and uprightness
doing according
to all that I've
commanded you
keeping my statutes
and my rules.
And I think we read that.
I think I've been in groups
where we've read
that passage
and people have gone,
hang on a second.
I can think of two
quite big statutes
that David didn't keep.
What's this talking about?
But there it is.
God says,
David did all I commanded.
Or a couple of chapters later
when Solomon,
David's son,
screws up
and turns away
instead of saying,
oh, just like his dad.
We get 1 Kings 11
verse 4.
For when Solomon was old,
his wives turned away
his heart after other gods
and his heart was not
wholly true
to the Lord his God
as was the heart
of David his father.
And again,
we want to go,
well, David's heart
was wholly true
to the Lord his God.
Where does nine months
of rebellion
and adultery murder
fit into that?
When you read
the book of 1 Chronicles,
by the way,
it's even worse.
1 Chronicles goes back
over David's life again,
sort of retells the story
and just leaves out
the sin
and its consequences
entirely.
It just presents David
as this righteous
glowing figure.
Go and read 1 Chronicles.
You're not going to find
anything bad said about him.
Well, actually,
you'll find a different story
about a census.
You're like,
why does it care about that?
Anyway,
that's not the topic
of this evening.
So you get these
two things.
On the one hand,
real,
ongoing consequences
for sin.
On the other hand,
this strange silence.
almost as if
God couldn't see
David's sin anymore.
As if it had been covered.
Another example,
before I kind of
try and draw
these threads together.
Lot,
Abraham's nephew,
Lot.
If you read
the book of Genesis,
you come across
Lot several times
and
I'm not sure
if I should really say this
about a righteous man
in Scripture,
but most times
you meet him
in the book of Genesis,
you kind of want to
shake him
a little bit
and go,
you are such a chump.
Stop being
such a chump.
He's the guy
who picks where he lives
by what looks good,
not by God's promise.
Genesis 13,
he goes and lives near Sodom,
famous for his wickedness.
Then he ends up living
in Sodom.
And in Genesis 14,
he's captured
by another king.
His uncle Abraham
saves him.
He has this golden opportunity
to go out.
That was kind of a stupid
thing to do.
But instead,
he goes back
and lives in Sodom
again.
He becomes,
in fact,
a significant figure there.
He's sort of sitting
in the town gate
as one of their elders,
I guess.
And when God
sends angels
to destroy the town
of Sodom
for its wickedness,
Lot hosts those angels
in his house.
That's a good thing to do.
And when townsfolk
come and attack the angels,
Lot offers his own
daughters to them.
It's horrible,
horrible stuff.
When the angels
tell him to flee,
he can't even make up
his mind to do that.
He hesitates.
The angels have to
drag him out of the city.
His wife dies
under God's judgment.
His daughters,
again,
awful wickedness.
I'm not going to go
into it in an all-age service.
And that is the end
of Lot's story
in the Old Testament.
He loses everything he has.
His wife and his whole family
end up under God's judgment.
All he saves
is his own skin.
The consequences,
again,
we have consequences
to Lot's foolishness.
They are very severe.
And yet,
when we get to
the New Testament,
we find a very strange
passage.
2 Peter,
chapter 2,
verses 7 and 8,
which says that he,
which is God,
rescued righteous Lot,
greatly distressed
by the sensual conduct
of the wicked.
For as that righteous man
lived among them
day after day,
he was tormenting
his righteous soul
over the lawless deeds
that he saw
and heard.
And that is all
that the New Testament
says about Lot.
Doesn't mention
his folly
and his sin.
It's one point
where Jesus mentions
his wife,
but doesn't ascribe
that to him.
Peter here
zeroes in on pretty much
the one good thing
you could say
about Lot,
which is that when
he saw the evil
around him,
he didn't like it.
That's honestly
not a very high bar,
you'd think.
The evil around him
distressed him.
But Peter
takes that one thing
and holds it up
to us
that we might honour it,
ignoring all the
sin and folly
around it,
and calls him
righteous Lot.
Righteous Lot.
Something remarkable
there,
isn't there?
That is not a one-off.
You will search
very high and wide
to find the New Testament
criticising any
faithful Old Testament
figure.
Wicked people,
like Cain and Esau,
they get criticised,
they're held up as
negative examples,
don't be like them.
Unfaithful Israel
as a nation is criticised,
that's held up as an
example,
don't be like the
unfaithful generation
that came out of Egypt,
for example.
But the faithful
individuals,
not so much.
I think there's
maybe one time
where it mentions
that Aaron
did the golden calf thing.
That's about it.
It would be so easy,
wouldn't it,
for the New Testament
to hold up David
and go,
don't commit adultery
like David did,
the consequences
were really bad.
That seems like a
really obvious example
to hold up,
but it never happens.
Lot is not criticised,
Moses is not criticised,
but the closest we get
is in Jesus'
genealogy.
where it just mentions
who Solomon's mum was,
the wife of Uriah.
You can kind of
put that one together.
You can marvel from that
that Jesus came from
a family full of sin,
but it's not held up,
is it?
As a David did this bad thing,
look at that bad thing,
don't do it.
You read the Old Testament,
you've got all these
messy characters,
and you get to the New Testament
and it looks back at them
over and over and over again
as heroes.
What's going on?
And the answer,
brothers and sisters,
is very simple.
The answer is atonement.
In the Bible,
the word for atonement
comes from the word
for covering.
When God forgives a sin,
he covers it.
He covers it
with the blood of Christ.
And the point of covering it
is that you can't see it anymore.
We say so often,
don't we,
words along the lines of
he remembers our sins no more.
He removes them from us
as far as east is
from the west.
They're covered.
We often say those words,
we often read them
in our Bibles,
and yet,
I found it so striking
to see the application
of that covering
is that God stops
talking about our sins.
He really does
remember them no more.
It's not just poetry.
Sin has consequences, yes,
but constant reminders,
no, it's gone.
David's heart was wholly true
to the Lord his God,
says God,
without winking.
Righteous lot,
says Peter,
without blushing.
In Ezra,
Ezra says,
the people rose and worked
and the prophets
supported them,
and that is all I need
to say about that.
Well done them.
Have you seen
those three examples?
There's so many more
that we could see.
The Lord recorded
those sins in Scripture
for us to learn from.
You can go and read
about David's sin,
you can go and read
about Lot's sin,
but he also recorded
his silence in Scripture
for us to learn from.
You go past Genesis,
you never hear another
bad word about Lot.
The book of Haggai
mentions the sin,
in order to write down
his prophecy,
but the book of Ezra
covers it over.
He remembers those sins
no more.
And I want in the time
we have left
just to reflect on this
in two ways.
First,
for our encouragement,
I'd just like to
sort of press in
for you this evening
that that is the way
the Lord treats you.
And then second,
for our instruction,
I'd like to spend
just a little bit of time
pressing in that this is
the way we're called
to treat one another.
First then,
the way the Lord
treats you.
We often find it hard
to believe
that the Lord
really forgives us.
We sin.
Maybe it's a smaller sin,
it's a bit of laziness,
it's a crossword.
Maybe it's a bigger sin.
An abortion,
maybe many years ago.
Perhaps years where
you walked away
from the Lord
and big or small,
we come to the Lord,
don't we,
and we confess that sin,
we repent,
we seek his forgiveness.
If there's restitution
to make,
we try and make it.
And yet,
I wonder if you know
this experience
that in that sort of
process of repenting,
there's a weight
in your stomach,
there's an ache
in your heart,
and they're lifted
wonderfully.
And then sometimes
they reappear.
You feel that.
Ache once again.
You pray,
and yet you still feel
like you might be
unclean.
Perhaps you're still
living day by day
with the consequences
of your sin,
daily reminders of it.
So many sins leave us
with consequences
for the rest of our lives,
don't they?
Perhaps every time
you're reminded of
that sin,
whatever it was,
that pit comes back again.
And I want to say
to you this evening,
brothers and sisters,
take heart.
There may well be
consequences,
but when the Lord
covers a sin,
he really covers it.
If I can put it this way,
when God speaks of you
to his angels,
he doesn't refer to you
by your sin.
He's not thinking about it.
He's not talking about it.
He's not planning to bring it up.
When Paul describes love
in 1 Corinthians 13,
he says
that love does not
count up wrongdoing.
It keeps no record
of wrongs.
And your God
who is love
keeps no record
of your wrongs.
If you are his,
seeking his mercy,
seeking his grace,
he's not written down
your sins.
When his books are opened,
they won't be found there.
More than that,
can I say,
from Ezra,
from Lot,
from David,
it's not just
that various moments,
days, years of your life
get kind of blotted out.
And so we just don't think
about 2014
or whatever it was.
It's more that they get
looked at
through the lens of love
and the lens of grace.
Put it this way,
if you were to remember
one episode
in Lot's life,
probably the one
he wouldn't want you
to remember
of all,
rank them all.
Probably the one
he wouldn't want you
to remember
is that one awful night
when he offers
his daughters to the mob
and he nearly misses out
on God's grace
by dithering.
And yet that is where
the apostle Peter goes,
not to blame him,
but in the middle
of all that foolishness
and sin,
to pull out
the one little seed
of righteousness,
that Lot at least
hated the evil around him,
and he pulls that out
and focuses your attention
on it.
It doesn't matter
that that diamond
was found in a dunghill.
Look how good
that diamond is.
Why on earth
would we talk about
the muck,
the sin?
That's covered.
But that little righteousness,
so small,
so easily overlooked,
God prizes that
and he calls us around
to look at it
and to marvel.
And the Lord
treats you that way too.
On judgment day,
the Lord Jesus
tells us it will be
exactly the same.
As he tells the parable
of the sheep
and the goats,
remarkable in many ways.
He speaks to the goats,
I never knew you,
they're amazed.
Terrifying words.
But he speaks
to his sheep
and he praises them.
He welcomes them
into his glory
and their response
is to go,
hang on a second,
when did we do all that?
When were we half
as righteous
as you're making out?
And he draws
their attention
to their little
righteousnesses,
their little kindnesses
to the poor,
that they had forgotten
all about.
But the Lord Jesus
had not forgotten.
He had treasured
those things up.
He wanted to reward them
eternally for them.
If you are in Christ
seeking the Lord
in humility,
not only does he keep
no record of your wrongs,
he treasures up
your righteous deeds
that you rightly look at
and go,
how insignificant,
how mixed up with sin.
he treasures them up
and rejoices over them.
How rich his grace
to us is,
don't you think?
How remarkable he is.
And then I want to say,
if this is the way
the Lord treats us,
then this is also
how we should treat
each other.
You know this,
I hope,
from your Bibles.
Forgive as the Lord
forgave you.
And the very simple
point I want to make here
is that forgiving someone
means covering over
their sin.
Now just like with God,
that does not mean
no consequences.
If someone's been
stealing money
from the church,
you forgive them
if they're repentant.
You don't make them
treasure it, right?
There are consequences.
But there's also covering.
When we forgive one another,
except for the very rare
occasions when it might
be necessary or helpful,
that means we just
don't even talk about
that anymore.
We don't have to
bring it up.
It's gone.
I want to say that
should be true of big
things, but also of
little things.
And let's just discuss
the little things for a
moment.
Might let it slip under
our radar with little
things.
I wonder whether,
perhaps this is just
a couple of things I've
seen and I'm extrapolating
out too widely,
but I wonder whether
in our culture,
it's fairly common in
families,
in friendship groups,
to keep talking about
someone's sin or folly
as a kind of joke,
as banter.
Particularly when we
think it's such a small
sin that, you know,
who cares?
Do you remember that
stupid thing you did?
What a chump you were.
Ho, ho.
Do you remember how
you were like that for
five years?
Oh, man, what an idiot.
And the poor,
unforgiven sinner
laughs along
unconvincingly.
As I was saying,
if you were given to
that kind of humour,
it's just time to cut
that out.
It's an old English
proverb, many are
truths spoken in jest.
A good rule of thumb
is, was there anything
to forgive in the thing
I'm making a joke
about?
Was there sin in it?
If so, that's not
really a fit subject
for a joke.
Far better just to
leave it.
The Lord has covered
over your much
bigger sins.
Find something better
to laugh about.
It's true for big
things as well.
If you're holding a
grudge, if there's
someone that you feel
bitter towards,
perhaps they well
deserved it.
We sin against each
other in such huge
ways, don't we,
sometimes?
And yet the Lord
calls you to
cover it.
Highly recommend
here a little article
called How to be
free from bitterness.
American evangelist
called Jim Wilson
who died a few years
ago.
It's only eight pages.
I would say personally
some of the most
fruitful eight pages
that I've read.
Well worth reading
the whole thing.
Here's a little quote.
He says,
How can we tell
if we're bitter?
One good rule of
thumb is this,
bitterness
remembers
details.
You've had
thousands of
conversations in
your life,
most of which
you've forgotten,
but this one took
place five years
ago and you
remember every
single word
and his intonation
and the inflection
of every part of
his voice.
You know exactly
what happened
and that means
you're bitter.
He's right,
isn't he?
Unforgiveness,
bitterness
remembers,
forgiveness
forgets.
So let me say
that there may
well be in a room
this size,
I imagine there
is,
I don't know
this congregation,
but I imagine
there is bitterness
in some hearts
here,
unforgiveness.
The Lord is
calling you right
now to deal
with him,
to forgive,
to cover that
sin over,
to leave it.
Don't let it
roll around in
your mind.
When you're
tempted to chew
over it,
go to God
in prayer instead.
Don't keep
prodding that
sore spot.
Cover it.
The Lord
covered your
sin.
The Lord
will judge
that sin
in his
wisdom.
You cover
it.
And I
want to say
to you,
there is
on offer,
it tastes
bitter to
swallow your
bitterness.
Obviously it
does.
It's hard.
But there
is such
sweetness in
the aftertaste
once it's
gone down
and it's
not there
anymore.
You know
that because
you know
that it is
a sweet
thing,
that the
Lord has
forgiven you
and it
is a
wonderful
thing to
take his
grace and
use it to
forgive others.
God
loves
mercy.
He loves
to show
it to
you.
He shows
it to you
more richly
than you
believe he
does.
And he
loves
when you
show mercy
to others.
It
pleases
him.
So seek
him while
he may
be found
and rejoice
in his
grace and
forgive your
brother.
Let me
pray for us
now.