The books of the Bible which tell of the restoration after the exile in Babylon are precious for us, because they so closely parallel today’s time when God’s people are being restored after leaving Babylon.
As we have observed the keeping of the Feast of Passover in recent years, the Lord has given us wonderful revelation teaching from the books of Nehemiah and Ezra. There has been a progressive revelation flowing in each feast of the many truths that apply to us. When a person is fresh from Babylon’s bondage he appreciates what the feast means in terms of restoration.
The book of Ezra opens with the account of the first migration coming back to Jerusalem from Babylon. Chapters 3 through 6 of Ezra cover a period of about twenty years, the period between the time that the foundation for the temple was laid and the time that the restoration of the temple was completed.
They started to work during the first year and had only completed the foundation when diabolical charges were brought against them by their enemies. The king ordered them to stop, and the work ceased for fifteen years. The foundation had been laid, but for fifteen years no more work was done on the temple. It bothers me that this has also happened to God’s restoration move in this day. Throughout the years, Satan has been too successful in hindering us for long periods of time.
The delay in completing the temple would have continued even longer than fifteen years, because of the unawareness of the people, had it not been for the ministry of Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi.
These three prophets came forth and questioned why the house of God should lie waste. They encouraged the people to get busy and continue building. The king had ordered that the work stop, but such a situation is sometimes an illusion.
If the people have a burden, the Lord will break down the barriers that come from a secular government. Did Haggai and Zechariah tell the people to pray that the king would change his edict? No, they simply told them to get the burden and start rebuilding the temple. The people could have argued, “We cannot do it. It is against the law.” But when God puts the burden on His people, He changes the laws too. God changed the mind of the king who opposed the work.
The condition that had hindered the people was changed when the prophets impressed upon them that they were to do what God had told them to do. When they were determined to do what God had told them to do, they went ahead with the rebuilding, and the temple was finished within the next four years.
From the time that they first started until the temple was completed, a period of approximately twenty years was covered. Then for some reason they began to drag their feet, and it took them another seventy years before they finally completed the rebuilding of the city and the walls.
After the temple was restored, the people did not know what to do with it. This is sometimes the case with people in a New Testament church. They find that the worship is restored, but they do not know what to do with it or how they can break through to what God wants them to do.
The laying on of hands and personal ministry is still not being used as fully as it should be. I believe that the School of Prophets in this day will be like the ministry of Ezra in that sense—it will restore the true worship and teach the people the laws of God and the ways of the Lord, so that the churches will be functioning according to His will. What is the purpose of having New Testament churches if they do not know what to do, if the people do not know their ministry and their function and place?
There will be apostolic convocations in which the brothers come together and prophesy over churches, as well as over individuals. At such a convocation the Lord could give an exact word over individual local churches, laying down the guidelines and specific functions they are to fulfill.
Any tendency toward their becoming independent must be avoided, so that all will flow together as the Kingdom of God. The Word does not say that only each local Body shall function as a body with hands, feet, and other members. That passage in 1 Corinthians 12 is speaking about the Body of Christ as a whole. We cannot say that we have no need of a certain local church. God has raised up each church for some unique and distinct ministry which He can reveal in a word of direction.
The focus in this hour is upon a flow of revelation that will tell us what today’s New Testament churches are to do. This is exactly the picture that we see in the book of Ezra.
Sixty years after the temple was completed, and eighty years after the first group returned from Babylon, they finally set the priests to ministering again and restored the Word and the order in the church.
It is not enough for us to say that we believe in divine order, that we have apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, elders and deacons. It is not enough just to build according to divine order.
The main thing is to be sure the building is functioning. I am not minimizing the importance of having the foundation laid by apostolic revelation, but I am saying that it takes more than a good foundation to make a building functional. The foundation must be good and solid because of all the activity that takes place in the building.
It will not be too long before it will be difficult for an outside observer to come in and find an undue emphasis upon the apostolic ministry. The foundation will be covered over because the sons are busy on the first floor, on the second floor, and on the third floor, where they are all actively doing their jobs.
Although it is important to have a good solid foundation, it is what we build on it that really counts. Therefore it is time to have the ministry of Ezra functioning within each church.
Let us lay the foundation right, according to the New Testament blueprint, but not stop there. Let us go on and bring back the King. In the Kingdom evangelism and the work we set about to do, we can become so concerned about measuring everything, to see if it is just right, that we could actually stumble over that. Instead, we must do the best we can to lay the foundation, and then get busy and build on it as fast as we can. We are being built up by the Spirit to be a habitation of God.
According to Ezra 6:15, the temple was completed on the third day of the month Adar; it was the sixth year of the reign of King Darius. What a long time it bad taken!
Verses 19–22 tell about the exiles’ observance of the Passover. And the exiles observed the Passover on the fourteenth of the first month. For the priests and the Levites had purified themselves together; all of them were pure. Then they slaughtered the Passover lamb for all the exiles, both for their brothers the priests and for themselves.
The eating of kosher food is one of the practices still followed in the traditions of the Jewish people, yet its significance has never been emphasized.
Meat that is kosher has been inspected by a rabbi to make sure it is pure. He supervises the slaughter of the animal and examines it much more strictly than government inspectors.
The word “kosher” comes from a Hebrew word which means “fit” or “proper.” The Passover lambs had to be kosher. The priest himself killed them, skinned them, and examined them to be sure that they were lambs without spot and without blemish. The priests had to first purify themselves, and then they had to see that the sacrifice was pure. Do you see the symbolism in this?
As the restoration comes, I question the effectiveness, or even the possibility, of any individual going through the process of appropriation from start to finish by himself.
Perhaps you think that you do not need anyone to help you, that all you have to do is to see the provision in the Word and partake by faith of the Passover Lamb. Do you realize how much you grow by the Word that is presented to you in truths which you would never find in the Scriptures by yourself? The spiritual priests must consecrate themselves so that they can present the merits of the Lamb to you. Then you will partake of Him because consecrated hands ministered Him to you.
The Roman Catholic position of forbidding the people to read the Bible for themselves has seen the pendulum swing to the other extreme among Protestants.
History records vicious persecutions when people were killed even for owning a Bible. We do not talk about that much because we try to forget the hostilities of the Roman Catholic church against the publishing of the Word of God.
They hated what the Bible could give when it was in the hands of the people. Wycliffe was not only a martyr, but years after his death, his bones were dug up and scattered in the sea in an effort to obliterate his memory. Now the people are given a prayer book and the priests’ interpretation of the Scriptures.
The Protestants follow the opposite extreme: Every man for himself! It seems now that everyone opens the Bible and they all examine it for themselves. Consequently, we find hundreds of different denominations among the Protestants, with none of them speaking the same thing. They have generalized interpretations, and even within that they are not in much agreement. Within some of the denominations they do not even agree among themselves; they have all kinds of extremes.
How did God intend that it should be? He intended that there should be holy men of God who would first purify themselves and then prepare the precious Lamb of God so that you might receive Him in His fullness.
They are to minister Him to you, and you in turn are to enter in to receive the ministry. Thus the Passover lamb has real meaning. The instruction was, “Eat all of it. Do not leave any of it until the morning” (Exodus 12:10). When the Lord Jesus ministered the Communion to the disciples, He handed them the cup with the wine, and He said, “Drink all of it.” The Lamb was to be fully partaken of.
The brothers have a responsibility not to hold back anything that the Lamb of God is to mean to the people, none of the fullness that Christ gave us of Himself when He died.
In their hunger and determination, the people’s responsibility is to demand a priesthood that is holy and purified and consecrated. Then the people themselves should be ready and determined to appropriate in fullness anything that is revealed to them of the Lord, anything that He is to mean to them. They must determine to receive it as the precious Lamb of God to feed them and to sustain them. This is the way, of course, that the Lord would guide us.
Whether you know it or not, the guidelines God is giving us today would have prevented the errors of history where the Roman Catholic traditions and the Protestant traditions gave the people something short of what God really intended for them to have. These guidelines present a way that the fullness of Christ can be ministered to us.
I think the day has passed when one group says, “You should get out and win souls. You are to be the legs of Christ: so we will give you a leg of the Lamb. That ought to motivate you to move.” There is more to the Lamb than one leg. If a whole congregation of people is fed the same part of a leg of the Lamb every day for forty years, they will be rather lean.
Other groups have a different emphasis in their preaching: “We will teach you to receive the Holy Spirit and speak in tongues.” That is fine if it is what the Lord wants. For forty years their people hear the same message: “Receive the Holy Spirit and speak in tongues.” But that is rather a monotonous diet and it does not go anywhere. There is much more to the Lamb than that.
Let us teach His Lordship. Let us teach His fullness. Let us teach the progressive walk in the perfection of the Lord. Let us see the truths of the Kingdom. Rather than teach a pretribulation-rapture way of escape, let us teach people instead how to walk with God, how to be the Word of God for this generation, and how to glorify the Lord God with all of their heart and soul.
And the sons of Israel who returned from exile and all those who had separated themselves from the impurity of the nations of the land to join them, to seek the Lord God of Israel, ate the Passover. And they observed the Feast of Unleavened Bread seven days with joy, for the Lord had caused them to rejoice. Ezra 6:21–22a. (Note that the Lord caused them to rejoice.)
Before anything good can come, the human counterpart has to drop away. We go through so much chastening that it often looks as if our walk with God is working backwards. But sometimes God has to do that.
For example, suppose God gives a Word over a man that he is going to speak God’s Word. Immediately he starts getting sermons ready, but before long he finds that he cannot speak at all. Everything has dried up. God takes away the natural ability. Then very definitely, very positively, a living Word begins to come.
If you started to walk with God as a fairly well-organized person, you knew what you could do with your life and you were rather efficient in doing it. Then, suddenly, you got the blahs. Nothing seemed to work anymore. If the Lord had given a Word over you to go down to the corner and buy a newspaper, probably you would never have made it. You had no ability and no capacity. Then He began to teach you that you are going to minister by the grace that He gives.
God takes away the natural joy and the natural motivation of a human being. Instead of delighting in the fact that you are going to be important and have a place, you find that He brings another motivation—just a deep desire to do God’s will. He brings another kind of joy—not the human zest for living, but the joy of the Lord.
It is the Lord who causes us to rejoice. When you first come into a walk in the Spirit, you are very happy with it. But soon you find that there is nothing left of you except a shell. You look like the same person, but you are not the same person anymore. You are a different person.
After you have a little of the living Word, you will never again be the same. You can count on it. When the Lord starts to overhaul you and remodel you, His operation is somewhat like jacking up a radiator cap and running in a new car. As the days are come upon us of the end of all flesh, we learn to live, to move, to exist, to appropriate all of His fullness. The Passover experience delivers us from the traditions of men.
The Lord turned the heart of the king of Assyria toward them to encourage them in the work of the house of God, the God of Israel. Ezra 6:22b.
After they had it built, they had to find out why they had it built. When young men join the military service, dress in the uniform, and are taught how to march, they also are taught to shoot, but not just so that they can march in parades. There is something more serious in store for them.
Likewise, God is not raising up the army of the Lord for a parade in the end time. As soon as you join the army of the Lord, it becomes very evident that He has something special in mind.
Upon this generation and upon the remnant of God will the culmination of the battle of the ages be resolved. Upon this remnant will rest that unique blessing of winning and ministering for the Lamb all the rewards of His suffering.
After the temple was ready, they called for Ezra. What would he do for them? We are told that Ezra set his heart to study the law of the Lord and to practice it, to teach His statutes and the ordinances of Israel.
When we speak of the law, people often tend to associate it with the Mosaic law, thinking that we are putting them back under law. If we use the word “principle,” they will understand better what we are talking about. A principle is a law. For example, there is a principle by which anyone can walk on water, if the temperature is reduced to below thirty-two degrees. But there are other principles just as definite that will teach you how to walk on water when it is above thirty-two degrees.
Moses said, “Thou shalt not kill.” But the Lord taught something even more blessed: “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.” This is a law—one of the spiritual laws that govern us. The Old Testament commanded, “Humble yourself and repent or God will destroy you.” God teaches us now in the Kingdom: “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth. O blessed little meek children, it is all yours.”
This is a day of grace and a day of miracles. Believers in Christ may insist that they do not believe in law, but in the grace of God.
The fact remains that they still believe in law, because grace itself is a principle—it is a law. Today, as Christians, we do not believe in the old rituals of the Mosaic law, but we are coming to believe and to move in the principles that they embraced and foreshadowed. If we were to keep the Sabbath day according to the old Mosaic law, we would be making a mistake. Let us keep the spirit of it. The Lord is our Sabbath rest. As we worship on the Sabbath day, it is not the same as when they kept the Sabbath under the law. It is still a law, but it is not the law of Moses. It is the principle of the Sabbath that we keep.
We are still keeping the Lord’s day. We are keeping the Passover, but not the way they kept it in the Old Testament. We are observing the principles or laws of the Passover that are being revealed to our hearts.
What we need today are the spiritual Ezras who will rise and say, “Come, we will teach you the principles. We will teach you the laws of the Lord so that you may be able to walk in them.”
Building a church according to the exact pattern of divine order is meaningless unless all of us go up to Zion together. There He will teach us His beautiful laws. He will teach us His ways and we will walk with Him. That is why it is a Kingdom—a Kingdom governed by beautiful laws.
Teach us, Lord, what salvation really means. Teach us the principles of healing and of divine health. Teach us the laws to release it. Show us what to do. We know that it must come forth from our spirits. Lord, put it in our hearts to walk with You.