Chapter 21 :: Rebuilding the Walls (@1Glance)

There is no lull in the story as we move from the story of Esther to the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem. This week, we take a look at the ministries of Ezra, Nehemiah and Malachi. This week concludes our time in the Old Testament…things are about to change…dramatically.

Chapter 21 :: Rebuilding the Walls

As I read through the chapter this morning here are some of the things that ran through my brain:

• If Artaxerxes is the new King of Persia, who is his mother? He has a very favorable view of the God of the Israelites, so it feels like Esther may have made an impression on him, but I don’t know if she is his mother or not.
• I noticed that Ezra is a descendant of Aaron. You remember Aaron, right? Moses’s brother, the Levite. He set everything up for worshiping God in the first tabernacle – the one they carried from camp to camp in the desert.
• I like that Phinehas is mentioned too. I like Phinehas. See Numbers 25 for his story.
• I really liked the interaction between King Artexerxes and Ezra. There appears to be respect from both sides and I think that is cool.
• Ezra completes the temple, but the city of Jerusalem is unprotected. The walls are still in ruins and leaves everything susceptible to pillage. God charges Nehemiah with the rebuilding of the walls.
• I remembered all of the “Rebuilding the Walls” messages throughout my life – encouragement during building campaigns, ways when pastors wanted to get more money from people to build.
• I also remembered the leadership lessons learned from Nehemiah – the man got things done.
• I noticed that Nehemiah seems to be the first since Joshua to open up the Law and read/explain it to the people. I wonder how much it was like what I get to do on Sundays. Seems like they had a “revival” going on with the daily gathering.
• I like seeing Malachi’s name because I know that is the last book in the Old Testament. I believe the whole bible is the word of God and has the right to command my belief and my action, but I love the New Testament. It’s what we’ve been waiting for. Feeling the lull and longing for a better story than what we’ve been reading for me, allows me to peek into the lives of the Israelites who spent centuries waiting…without knowing the ending like I do. That must have sucked.
• Malachi pulls no punches, but doesn’t leave anyone hopeless. I am caught by the way the Israelites were called out by him.
• The showed contempt for the name of God by offering second-rate offerings – not giving their best. God wants my best, not my leftovers, but I still cut corners and try to offer leftovers.
• They robbed God by holding back their tithes. They were required to give 1/10th of their income to the temple storehouse so those with need could get fed. This reminded me of pastors who want us to give to the storehouse, only to discover that the “storehouse” is really their 10,000 sq. ft. mansion with a private jet parked at a local airport. Not sure this is really what Malachi was hoping for here.
• They spoke arrogantly against the Lord by saying things like, “What good does it do me to serve God faithfully when I can’t make ends meet, when those who don’t even try seem to have it made?” Ouch…been there, done that.
• He leaves them with a bit of hope that a day is coming when God will change everything…then silence…for 400 years…nothing…nada…zippo…ssshhhh.

I liked this reading today. How about you? What stuck out in your mind? I will continue to unpack some of this throughout the week, but for today, I’m just going to let it sit and percolate in my soul. That’s good sometimes.

Chapter 20 :: Rolling the Dice (Recap)

CLICK HERE for the audio of the teaching from our gathering yesterday.

Here are a few thoughts that will stick with me from Esther (Chapter 20 of The Story):

• People roll the dice, but it’s God who determines how the dice fall.
• No matter how distant God may seem, he is still in control and writing his Upper Story of faithful promises and redemption.
• NO MATTER WHAT THE SITUATION, FOLLOWERS OF JESUS CAN KNOW THAT GOD IS WORKING BEHIND THE SCENES SO THE DICE ULTIMATELY FALL IN OUR FAVOR.
• There is now no condemnation for those in Christ.
• In all things, we are more than conquerers through Jesus. Neither death nor life…neither the present nor the future…neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.
• I can do ALL things through Christ who strengthens me.

What sticks with you from Chapter 20?

Chapter 20 :: The Queen of Beauty and Courage

As noted in the last post, the chapter this week is filled with stuff that fills movies we go see. In fact, in 2006, Gener8Xion Entertainment released a feature film called “One Night With the King,” which merged the biblical account with Jewish tradition and extra-biblical writings, with a little Hollywood sprinkled in. The story was of a woman named Hadassah, but you may know her better as Esther (her Babylonian name). This was no B-movie. It had a budget of $20 million. There are times when it’s a little cheap on the settings, and some of the actors are a bit much, but Esther is the crown jewel of the movie. It’s a decent movie to watch, but the story is even better.

A famous line in the bible comes when Mordecai, Esther’s “father”(actually a cousin), says to the queen, “And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?” At this point Esther had not revealed her Jewish identity and doing so would put her at risk of death with all of the other Jews. She was seeking counsel on her next move.

Living this journey knowing that at whatever position we find ourselves, we may be in that position “for such a time as this,” gives us a great perspective. If things are going well, God may have a larger story “for such a time as this.” If things are going poorly, hang in there because God just might be doing something through you during “such a time as this.” We know the now, He knows tomorrow. None of us wants to go through dry, difficult times and all of us want the windfalls to last forever, but we just don’t know what tomorrow holds and things could change. There is great hope in that alone, but there is an even greater hope.

The hope that sustains are the promises of God. These promises set the horizon line of our hope. They give us direction. God promised to keep the Hebrews alive, and at the risk of annihilation, he writes an Upper Story, where a young Jewish girl becomes Queen of Persia, and only she can turn the events already set in motion. God had a plan for Hadassah…he has a plan for you…he has a plan for me. No matter the circumstances today, good or bad, he has a place for you in his Upper Story, if you’ll just join him.

This Sunday, we will wrap up the story of Esther and really connect it to our daily lives. It’s a great day to invite neighbors, coworkers or friends to the gathering. To hear the story is to be invited into the story.

Here is the trailer for the movie…it opens with Samuel confronting Saul for sparing the life of Agag when the Jews conquered the Amalekites…

Chapter 20 @1GLANCE

Kings. Queens. Defiance. Beauty. Sex. Deceit. Conspiracy. Violence. Jealousy. Lust. Power. Vindication. Revenge.

It must be sweeps month!

Chapter 19 :: Review/Recap

“Don’t run in the church, it’s God’s house!” I can remember that like it was yesterday. Growing up we had a sense of reverence for the church building – no running, no yelling, no playing, no food or drinks and basically no fun. There was an honor associated to the church that my kids won’t grow up with. In fact, one day we had our second set of kids with us and we drove by the YMCA and the young girl said, “Look, our church.” We run, we yell, we play, we eat, we drink and we have a lot of fun.

Several years ago, I remember reading a story about Paul in the book of Acts. In this story, Paul is describing our God to the Greeks who referred to Him as the “unknown god.” Check out what he says in Acts 17:24…

“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands.”

So, God does not need a building. The temple, though built for his presence, was not built for him. The temple was built for the people. Max Lucado refers to the temple as “a picture of God’s powerful, passion of proximity.” God’s ultimate desire was to be with his people, but the people needed a reminder of this passion. The people needed a picture to see until Jesus would come and show us this powerful, passion of proximity in human form. After Jesus, the Holy Spirit took up residence within the hearts of God’s people.

To equate our church buildings with the temple of Jerusalem cheapens the work Jesus did on the cross. Jesus moved the presence of God from a building to a people for the first time since the glory days of the Garden of Eden. The reverence of the tent was replaced by the reverence of the temple which is now reverenced in the hearts of God’s adopted children. I’ll take that exchange any day.

This is part of the reason why we talk often of being like Jesus where we live, work and play. Because our hearts house the very presence of Jesus, he is with us wherever we go. Our responsibility of reverence is to reflect an accurate image Jesus to the people around us. This does not mean we have to be perfect, but that we respond to our (and others’) imperfection the way Jesus responded to imperfection. There is a difference between looking like Jesus at church and looking like Jesus everywhere else.

Chapter 19 :: Thoughts on the Temple

When the Israelites made their way back to Jerusalem, they were moved with a mission. There mission was to go and rebuild the temple, right where Solomon had built it. It had been ransacked and destroyed and they were empowered by God to head back and get after it.

Think about the location of the temple. It was not placed in the middle of office buildings designed to blend in with the surrounding settings. It wasn’t placed out in the middle of the wilderness as some sort of retreat center for spiritual pilgrims. Right in the middle of the largest and most influential city in all of ancient Israel. An in Jerusalem, it was placed up high right in the middle of the city. Everyone could see it and it served as a constant reminder to everyone that God wanted to dwell in their midst. Unfortunately, it also carried a more sober reminder…

The temple proved to remind the people of their sin and the chasm that still existed between the average person and God himself. Not everyone had access into the most holy place within the temple. The sin of the people kept them at a distance. We know from the rest of the Upper Story, that this arrangement hints at the change that will be brought when Jesus comes. He would be the ultimate sacrifice and remove the need for a priest to moderate our relationship with God. With the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, we are given access to God in the most holy of all places – our hearts. The rebuilding of the physical temple in Jerusalem is a step toward that end.

How is your life different today because you have access to God yourself and you don’t have to rely on a priest to mediate your conversations? Are you comfortable with this truth or does it make you nervous? Did your religious heritage teach you something different?

Chapter 19 :: Thoughts on King Cyrus

In the beginning of our chapter, we read that God turned King Cyrus’s heart toward the Jews and he turned the heart of the Jews toward Jerusalem. King Cyrus was a good king, but not one who followed the One True God. Cyrus was about building his kingdom in Babylon and he used whatever means to accomplish his end goals. Why did God use a pagan king to rebuild his temple? My friend Randy says that it would be like a mob boss cutting us a check to build a new worship center. God uses people we often deem unusable. One hundred years earlier, Isaiah prophesied that God would raise up someone who did not know him to rescue his people…to be their messiah. Isaiah refers to Cyrus as God’s “anointed.”

In the Lower Story, this doesn’t make a lot of sense, but the Upper Story reasoning is clear:  God will uses whatever means “so that from the rising of the sun to the place of its setting men may know there is none besides me. I am the LORD, and there is no other” (Isaiah 45:6).

His name and his renown is the desire of the souls of those who follow him. We are “building” a church in western League City so that every man, every woman and every child would know that there is none besides the Lord. Our mission is to be a people on mission with the Great Commission – to see people come to trust their lives into the hands and leadership of the one we follow – Jesus. We must be clear about this or else all kinds of things will distract us, just as they did the Israelites.