THE GOOD HAND OF GOD WORKING THROUGH OPEN HEARTS

DEVOTIONAL 6

EZRA 1:5-2:70

5 Then the heads of fathers' households of Judah and Benjamin and the priests and the Levites arose, even everyone whose spirit God had stirred to go up and rebuild the house of the LORD which is in Jerusalem. 6 All those about them encouraged them with articles of silver, with gold, with goods, with cattle and with valuables, aside from all that was given as a freewill offering. 7 Also King Cyrus brought out the articles of the house of the LORD, which Nebuchadnezzar had carried away from Jerusalem and put in the house of his gods; 8 and Cyrus, king of Persia, had them brought out by the hand of Mithredath the treasurer, and he counted them out to Sheshbazzar, the prince of Judah. 9 Now this was their number: 30 gold dishes, 1,000 silver dishes, 29 duplicates; 10 30 gold bowls, 410 silver bowls of a second kind and 1,000 other articles. 11 All the articles of gold and silver numbered 5,400. Sheshbazzar brought them all up with the exiles who went up from Babylon to Jerusalem.

When I was younger I would crawl under the hood of the car with my dad in order to help him. Sometimes my help was a hindrance, other times it wasn’t really helping at all (I just pretended I was helping) and at other times it was genuine. As I grew older the help became more and more genuine. At one point I cut myself pretty bad. I began to bleed verily profusely even though my life was not in danger. I want to stop the bleeding immediately, but my dad understood the situation better than I did. I was covered from head to toe in grease and oil. The one thing that didn’t need to happen was for me to attempt to stop the bleeding and not allow my bodies natural defenses to fight off any infection. I learned something that day some wounds need to bleed before we tend to them.

God works much of the same way. He may allow something to come along which makes no since at all, something which may hurt severely at first, but if it is allowed to bleed great things may be on the way. In verse 5 of this passage it mentions that “…God had stirred…” the Jewish leaders “…to go up and rebuild the house of the LORD which is in Jerusalem.” Here again as before God has stirred something up regarding His people and His work. As mentioned in one of the earlier devotionals the term “stirred” has little to do with what we in the twenty-first century think. It has something to do with cutting and laying open. In other words He cut their hearts and opened them up before His will. Verse 1 notes that he did this with Cyrus the king of Persia and now He does it with His people. The interesting thing to see here is that God can and does use pagans to perform His will but He uses His people to perform a specific task. In this case we see it is for the rebuilding of the Temple.

We also see in verse 6 that He opened up the hearts of the communities surrounding the Jews who were preparing to leave. In this we see God’s provision for His people. While they were ordered to give according to verse 4, the text reads with the idea that they did this out of their own volition. First, it states that they did this to encourage, build up, or help out in the effort. Second, the way they gave is seen in the fact that they gave in abundance. The giving was in terms of food, animals (for food and sacrifices), equipment and money. This giving was not just for the sake of the rebuilding itself but for the journey as well. Third, it states that it was a “freewill offering.” While the orders may have gone out to give and support, how, what resources and how much was never mentioned. In other words the decree was sent out that stated, “You will give and support. However, what you give, how you give and how you support it, is up to you.” The community as a whole came out to do and give what they could.

Today we see similar actions occurring. God is in the process of cutting the hearts of his people and opening them up to do His will. While He may use pagans to perform His will generally and on a global scale, He uses His people specifically to carry out the Gospel message. We cannot get past the point of what this book is all about, the re-establishment of a community which calls on God for salvation, hope and help. We need to be that kind of community. We do not need to be like the old story where a man was asked about his prayer life. His response was that he had a very good prayer life because he prayed for himself, his wife, and his two children. He calmly stated, “I pray for us four and no more.” Folks we need to seek God not only to cut and open our hearts to do His will, but we need to be praying for the lost. We need to pray that God will cut and open their hearts to His only way of salvation through the blood soaked cross of our Lord Jesus Christ and His resurrection. If we want to see things turn around it will not happen through laws and legislation. It will only happen with us being faithful to Him in preaching His gospel and us praying for those around us.

Next time Ezra 1:5-11, SEEING THE GOOD HAND OF GOD AT WORK THROUGH PAGAN STORYLINES-A SECOND EXODUS

Unless otherwise noted all verses quoted are from the New American Standard Version.