SPEAKER_00: Well, last week we looked at Ezra chapter 5, and we saw that the Israelites were trying to build a temple, and they wanted the temple for really one reason.
SPEAKER_00: They wanted the temple so they could worship God.
SPEAKER_00: They had gone through generations in the exile without the temple, which meant the priests had no job.
SPEAKER_00: There was no place to celebrate Passover.
SPEAKER_00: There was no place for the prayers to be made.
SPEAKER_00: There was no focal point of the Israelite religion.
SPEAKER_00: There was no, in their mind, sense of the capacity to have your sins forgiven without the sacrifices.
SPEAKER_00: And we've read a lot of scripture, even from the New Testament, Hebrews 9 and 10, about that already tonight.
SPEAKER_00: The Jews were living kind of in that earthly purgatory, knowing the Lord was sanctifying their people for their sins, but without access to the complete forgiveness that came through the obedience to the Torah.
SPEAKER_00: They couldn't obey the basic documents God had given them in the Torah because they didn't have the temple.
SPEAKER_00: And then after an exile, after generation in Babylon, the Persian king who conquered Babylon, Cyrus, directed the Israelites to go back and to rebuild the temple.
SPEAKER_00: We read at the beginning of Ezra how they started that work, and then opponents rose up.
SPEAKER_00: Most of those opponents were what we would consider Samaritans, to borrow a New Testament term.
SPEAKER_00: Some of them certainly were left over from the Israelite exile a couple hundred years earlier.
SPEAKER_00: They were not taken out of the land.
SPEAKER_00: Some of them remained and intermarried and had some kind of syncretistic approach to worshiping God.
SPEAKER_00: And they tried to partner with those from Jerusalem, those from Judah and Benjamin, who returned to rebuild the temple.
SPEAKER_00: And we saw earlier in the book of Ezra, they refused to partner with that syncretistic approach to religion.
SPEAKER_00: They rejected that cooperation.
SPEAKER_00: And that turned against them.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, those that were rebuffed wrote letters to the governor.
SPEAKER_00: Their state, their province, was called the beyond the river province.
SPEAKER_00: They wrote letters to the governor.
SPEAKER_00: The letters reached all the way to the emperor.
SPEAKER_00: This happened cyclically throughout the time of Israel in the land.
SPEAKER_00: We saw last week that God allowed them to start rebuilding again, but sixteen years had gone by, and it took Haggai and Zerubbabel coming and lighting a fire under them, or Haggai and Zechariah coming and lighting a fire under them and compelling them to get back to work.
SPEAKER_00: And so they started a second time, only to be met again with a second lawsuit.
SPEAKER_00: They were taken to court again.
SPEAKER_00: This time by the governor of the region, not by the Samaritans, but we saw in chapter 5, verse 6 that it was the governor of the province beyond the river and his associates that did not want the Jerusalem temple to be rebuilt.
SPEAKER_00: So they ordered the building stopped.
SPEAKER_00: The Israelites appealed to the Persian appellate process, and it goes all the way to the Emperor.
SPEAKER_00: And that's where we left last week at the end of chapter 5.
SPEAKER_00: Chapter 6 begins with the Emperor Darius giving his verdict on this.
SPEAKER_00: He made a decree, verse 1 says.
SPEAKER_00: And a search was made in Babylonia, in the house of the archives, where the documents were stored.
SPEAKER_00: And in Ekbantitav, which is the capital in the province of Media, a scroll was found on which it was written.
SPEAKER_00: And so it's worth noting here that the Babylonians had their own capital in Babylon.
SPEAKER_00: They were conquered by the Persians.
SPEAKER_00: The Persians had kind of split up.
SPEAKER_00: The kingdom had grown so big here.
SPEAKER_00: They had different areas where documents were stored.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't find the official court record in the first, you know, archives they searched in.
SPEAKER_00: It had to be found in the second place, which is often commentators point out the place where some of their emperors went to summer, I guess, have a vacation out there.
SPEAKER_00: It'd be like President Trump saying, I was looking for the executive order in the White House, but I couldn't find it.
SPEAKER_00: It was down in Mirilago, or however you say that place where he often is.
SPEAKER_00: That's where we found it.
SPEAKER_00: Still counts.
SPEAKER_00: Still written by the president, still counts, just the wrong office building.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what happens here.
SPEAKER_00: Remember with the the Medes and the Persians, if their emperor made a decree, it could never be violated, it could never be taken back.
SPEAKER_00: There was no reversing of a process with the Medes and the Persians.
SPEAKER_00: Once the Emperor made a decree, it could never be undone.
SPEAKER_00: That was part of the fabric of their worldview.
SPEAKER_00: And the Jews were taking advantage of that.
SPEAKER_00: The Jews were saying, you can't tell us to stop building the temple, because after all, Emperor Cyrus told us to build the temple.
SPEAKER_00: So what do you want from us, huh?
SPEAKER_00: What do you want?
SPEAKER_00: You tell us to start, and then you tell us to stop, but that's contradicting the first emperor, which we know you would never ever do.
SPEAKER_00: So what about that?
SPEAKER_00: Well, they do a search, they find Emperor Cyrus' declaration in verse 3.
SPEAKER_00: In the first year of Cyrus the King.
SPEAKER_00: So we're back in the Wayback Machine here.
SPEAKER_00: This is, you know, 40, 50 years earlier.
SPEAKER_00: Cyrus the King had issued this decree, in fact, concerning the house of Jerusalem, to let it be rebuilt, the place where sacrifices were offered, and its foundations be retained, its heights would be 60 cubits, its breadth 60 cubits, there would be layers of great stones and one layer of timber, and the cost would be paid from the royal treasury.
SPEAKER_00: Our tax dollars at work would be the sign outside of this construction project.
SPEAKER_00: Now, of course, Cyrus actually said that, and um, had Adarius just read Ezra 1, he wouldn't have needed to look in the archives.
SPEAKER_00: But he did, and he finds it, and he begins uh laying it here.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 5 Let the gold and silver vessels of the house of God, which Nebuchadnezzar took out of the temple in Jerusalem and be brought to Babylon, let him be restored.
SPEAKER_00: And remember those gold and silver vessels, they were pillar pillaged from the temple.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Nebuchadnezzar uh had put in his own place, and that's what the Babylonian king was really partying with the night the handwriting went on the wall and told him he was going down, he was defiling them, and God punished him by taking his kingdom from him.
SPEAKER_00: That night it happened, the river was stopped up, the Persians came under the wall and conquered them, and those vessels got put back in storage again.
SPEAKER_00: And Cyrus, sixty years earlier from Ezra 6, says, Get him out, send him back.
SPEAKER_00: Now, therefore, verse 6 Tetanei, the governor of the province beyond the river, Sethar Bozani, and your associates, the governors who are in the province beyond the river, keep away.
SPEAKER_00: That's what the emperor says.
SPEAKER_00: And I wish our sometimes our courts talked with that kind of clarity.
SPEAKER_00: We hereby rule, stop bothering them.
SPEAKER_00: That's what the emperor rules here.
SPEAKER_00: Stop bothering them, stay out of Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: You governor, don't meddle in their work.
SPEAKER_00: Let the work on this house of God be left alone, verse 7 says.
SPEAKER_00: Now, Darius is going to keep going here.
SPEAKER_00: Moreover, he says, I make a decree regarding what you shall do for these elders of the Jews for rebuilding this house of God.
SPEAKER_00: So he's not just giving the verdict, he's also slapping damages on top of it.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna let them keep working, and to punish you for filing a frivolous lawsuit, you have to, in addition, pay this.
SPEAKER_00: The cost is to be paid to these men in full and without delay from the royal revenue, the tribute of the province from beyond the river.
SPEAKER_00: So he's this is the emperor saying, You're gonna spend your own state tax dollars on this.
SPEAKER_00: Again, our democracy doesn't work this way.
SPEAKER_00: President Trump can't say, you know, I'm mad at New York and say they're gonna build a President Trump library and it'll be paid by New York's tax dollars.
SPEAKER_00: But that's what's happening here.
SPEAKER_00: The Emperor says, I want this temple to be built in Jerusalem, and you, governor, because you wasted my time by making me hunt down this record in two different provinces, you're gonna pay for it from your own tax dollars.
SPEAKER_00: That's what'll happen there.
SPEAKER_00: And he says, verse 9, whatever is needed, that is a blank check.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever is needed.
SPEAKER_00: Bulls, rams, or sheep for burnt offerings to the God of heaven, wheat, salt, wine, oil, as the priests of Jerusalem require, let that be given to them day by day without fail, so they make pleasing sacrifices to the God of heaven and pray for the life of the king and his sons.
SPEAKER_00: That is fascinating, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: He tells this pagan governor, You better pray for the Jewish king and his sons.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, he's to you better pay for them to make their temple for their God, and so they can pray for me and for my sons.
SPEAKER_00: So he's funding their own prayer from their own tax dollars.
SPEAKER_00: Also I make a decree, verse eleven, says, If anyone alters this edict, a beam shall be pulled out of his house, and he shall be impaled on it, and his house shall be made into a dunghill.
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
SPEAKER_00: So go ahead and fork up the cost of cows and sheep and whatever they want, because if you don't, you're gonna have a beam coming out of your head.
SPEAKER_00: May the God who has caused his name to dwell there overthrow any king or people who shall put out a hand to alter this, or to destroy this house of God that is in Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: I, Darius, make a decree, let it be done with all diligence.
SPEAKER_00: So again he says, Don't mess with this, or your house will be torn down.
SPEAKER_00: But notice he can't throws in this interesting phrase at the end.
SPEAKER_00: Not only will I put a beam in your head and turn your house into a dung hill, I'm gonna let their God also deal with you however he wants to.
SPEAKER_00: So I'll destroy you, but in addition to me destroying you, I'm letting Yahweh do whatever Yahweh wants to you.
SPEAKER_00: Yahweh can do as he sees fit to you.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 13.
SPEAKER_00: Then according to word sent by Darius the king, Tetzani, the governor of the province beyond the river, Shethaz Benanzai and his associates, did with all diligence what Darius the king had ordered.
SPEAKER_00: And the elders of the Jews built and prospered through the prophesying of Haggai and the prophet of Zechariah, the son of Edo.
SPEAKER_00: They finished their building by the decree of God of Israel, and by the decree of Cyrus and Darius and Artaxerces, the king of Persia.
SPEAKER_00: And so now we're jumping ahead.
SPEAKER_00: All of the temple gets finished building, and it happens because of, and it just brings you through a history here of all the faithfulness that went into this.
SPEAKER_00: Even the governor's own objections the Lord used to bring it, bring fruition.
SPEAKER_00: But notice who gets the really the credit here.
SPEAKER_00: It's the prophesying of Haggai and Zechariah, allowed by Cyrus and Darius, and even Artaxerces.
SPEAKER_00: Arta Xerces is going to be the emperor of Esther times.
SPEAKER_00: And so God uses these three different emperors, all to bring to pass his own decree.
SPEAKER_00: It's really an incredible look at how God is protecting his people who are certainly in the minority.
SPEAKER_00: You know, Israel at this time we mentioned last week maybe a hundred thousand people.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe a hundred thousand people this time in the world's largest empire.
SPEAKER_00: And God uses these just this all these emperors, so different, Cyrus, Darius, Artisurces, very, very different individuals.
SPEAKER_00: But God uses them to protect this very minority religion, these Israelites, just a speck on the map.
SPEAKER_00: It's so kind of the Lord to do this.
SPEAKER_00: And thus the house was finished on the third day of the month of Adar, which is the end of April, the sixth year of the reign of Darius the king.
SPEAKER_00: And the people of Israel, the priests and the Levites, and the rest of the returned exiles, celebrated the dedication of his house with God with joy.
SPEAKER_00: They offered at the dedication of this house of God a hundred bulls, two hundred rams, four hundred lambs, and as a sin offering for all Israel, twelve male goats according to the number of the tribes of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: And they set the priests in their divisions and the Levites in their divisions for the service of God at Jerusalem, as it is written in the book of Moses.
SPEAKER_00: God silently and mysteriously worked through these Persian kings through his even more powerful divine word to bring this to pass.
SPEAKER_00: If you jog back up to verse sixteen, that word, the dedication of his house with God with joy, uh, the word dedication there, you may not know this off the top of your head, but it is the Aramaic word for Hanukkah.
SPEAKER_00: That's the word that's used here.
SPEAKER_00: This is where the word Hanukkah comes from, is this verse right here.
SPEAKER_00: It's the dedication of the temple that God made for his people.
SPEAKER_00: Well, they're gonna celebrate Passover.
SPEAKER_00: Now, Passover is described in Exodus chapter 12, Leviticus 23, Numbers 9.
SPEAKER_00: It's supposed to be an annual feast.
SPEAKER_00: There have been a few times in Israelite history where they didn't celebrate it on the right day.
SPEAKER_00: There's been a few times where they celebrated away from the time that Passover was supposed to be celebrated to commemorate a national, a day of national significance.
SPEAKER_00: This is after the Red Sea crossing, after the walls of Jericho fell, they celebrated Passover.
SPEAKER_00: After Josiah's revival, when Josiah recovered, you know, discovered the Torah.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, he commanded they celebrate Passover.
SPEAKER_00: Hezekiah led a revival, they celebrated Passover.
SPEAKER_00: I remember when I was in South Africa, we had a short-term mission team come over and they brought us uh pumpkin and they brought us um some canned turkey meat, which is very weird and disgusting, but they brought it because it was not things that the family I was with could get there, and because they showed up and they had like cranberry sauce and stuff, and pumpkin, like canned pumpkin, and the the lady I was with can make all kinds of things out of canned pumpkin.
SPEAKER_00: And so we did, we celebrated Thanksgiving.
SPEAKER_00: I think it was the middle of August.
SPEAKER_00: But we celebrated Thanksgiving because the short-term mission team brought us the stuff we needed for our own Thanksgiving.
SPEAKER_00: That's sort of what's happening in these times in Israel's history, where they're gonna celebrate Passover because the time is right.
SPEAKER_00: They have what they need to do it.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 20, over at the end, verse 19, and the returned exiles kept the Passover.
SPEAKER_00: The priests, the Levites, had purified themselves together, all of them were clean.
SPEAKER_00: So they slaughtered the Passover lamb for all the returned exiles, for their fellow priests and for themselves.
SPEAKER_00: It was eaten by the people of Israel who'd returned from exile, and by everyone who had joined them and separated himself from the uncleanliness of the people of the land to worship Yahweh, the God of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: So here is again another verse that describes they are separating themselves from the people around them.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, there were people that were living there, namely Samaritans and other people that were living in the land, and the Jews separated themselves from them to celebrate this Passover.
SPEAKER_00: They kept the feast of the unleavened bread.
SPEAKER_00: Feast of unleavened bread is seven days long, really eight days long, because it encompasses two Sabbaths.
SPEAKER_00: It goes after Passover.
SPEAKER_00: If you celebrated Passover on Friday, and remember the Jewish calendar, the Friday would start the evening before, you know, what we would call Thursday night, but that's Friday in the Jewish calendar.
SPEAKER_00: The Sabbath starts Saturday.
SPEAKER_00: That first Sabbath begins the feast of the unleavened bread, and it goes all the way through the following Sabbath.
SPEAKER_00: They celebrated that after they celebrated the Passover here.
SPEAKER_00: This is the celebration where they refrained from eating unleavened bread.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, they had this, this goes back to the flight.
SPEAKER_00: Remember the first Passover, they they killed the lamb, put the blood on the doorpost.
SPEAKER_00: That was so that the angel of death would pass over their family.
SPEAKER_00: That's why it's called Passover.
SPEAKER_00: They would eat the lamb, and then God tells them, any lamb you can't eat.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, they had to eat that night with their running shoes on.
SPEAKER_00: They had to have their bags packed, their belt on, their shoes on and laced and tied.
SPEAKER_00: And then I mean the they didn't have running shoes, but that's the idea.
SPEAKER_00: Like get your shoes laced up.
SPEAKER_00: You gotta be ready to bolt while you sit down for a Thanksgiving dinner.
SPEAKER_00: For Americans, that would be so rude.
SPEAKER_00: You know, you come over for Thanksgiving dinner.
SPEAKER_00: Can I take your jacket?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: Got my car keys in my hand, but thanks for the turkey.
SPEAKER_00: It's like going anywhere.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, feed me.
SPEAKER_00: Let's go.
SPEAKER_00: That's how they ate the Passover meal.
SPEAKER_00: It was to demonstrate that they were having to get out of there in a hurry.
SPEAKER_00: And then any leftovers, we take them home in our car and put them in the refrigerator and all that leftover turkey for like a month.
SPEAKER_00: Not then.
SPEAKER_00: If you had leftover lamb after the Passover meal, you burned it that night.
SPEAKER_00: You could leave none of it behind.
SPEAKER_00: And then you left with no leaven, no way to make leavened bread.
SPEAKER_00: And so to celebrate that, commemorate that, for a week, they couldn't eat any leavened bread.
SPEAKER_00: It was the feast of what they call the feast of unleavened bread.
SPEAKER_00: And it's a it's a strange phrase, the feast of unleavened bread.
SPEAKER_00: You know, that's like the I don't know, it's like the whole 30 feast.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you're not eating anything and calling it a feast to make it sound better.
SPEAKER_00: I don't buy it.
SPEAKER_00: But that's what it is, the feast of unleavened bread.
SPEAKER_00: And notice they did this for seven days with keyword joy.
SPEAKER_00: With joy.
SPEAKER_00: They ate gravel and they were happy about it.
SPEAKER_00: They were excited for it because the Lord had turned the heart of the king of Assyria to them.
SPEAKER_00: Now, you might think some liberals say a king of Assyria, you know, Ezra forgot who the what nation he was part of here at this time.
SPEAKER_00: Ha ha ha ha, silly Ezra.
SPEAKER_00: No, Ezra is being intentional here.
SPEAKER_00: He has now identified the Persian emperor as the king of Persia, the king of the media, which merged with Persia.
SPEAKER_00: That's where they found the other document, the king of Babylon and now the king of Assyria.
SPEAKER_00: Do you notice that Ezra has identified this emperor as the king of every nation that has conquered the Jews?
SPEAKER_00: Their nations come and go, but the Israelites are right there celebrating Passover where they have really been in God's sight all along.
SPEAKER_00: How kind it is of the Lord at the end of verse 22 that he aided them in the work of the house of God, the God of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: That's the picture of the first Passover they had celebrated in 120 years, probably.
SPEAKER_00: Was that one right there?
SPEAKER_00: Nobody who was there had probably celebrated a Passover ever before in their life.
SPEAKER_00: This was their first one.
SPEAKER_00: They had, you know, in Exodus it describes the head of every family sacrificing the lamb, but not here.
SPEAKER_00: Here it's not the head of every family.
SPEAKER_00: Here it is the head.
SPEAKER_00: It is the priest.
SPEAKER_00: They're doing it for all of the people, likely because the people weren't sanctified.
SPEAKER_00: So I want to give you a quick outline to end with tonight as we go and look back at these last few verses.
SPEAKER_00: Six reasons that we have a bloody religion.
SPEAKER_00: Because what stood out to me the first time I read through this was just the sheer number of animals killed in this.
SPEAKER_00: If you jog your eyes back up to verse 17, they offered the dedication of this house a hundred bulls, two hundred rams, four hundred lambs.
SPEAKER_00: As a sin offering for all of Israel, twelve male goats.
SPEAKER_00: And it's just interesting that the twelve tribes are not back in Israel.
SPEAKER_00: Only two of the tribes are, three if you count the Levites, but they're going to sacrifice goats for all of the nation.
SPEAKER_00: All of the tribes.
SPEAKER_00: The people didn't make it back, but their their goats did.
SPEAKER_00: Their goats are there.
SPEAKER_00: What a powerful image.
SPEAKER_00: Even the Emperor in his letter says, fund all of their animals.
SPEAKER_00: The Emperor understands that they need lots of animals to sacrifice.
SPEAKER_00: And it'll be paid for, even.
SPEAKER_00: It's such a critical part of this.
SPEAKER_00: This goes back to the very first Passover.
SPEAKER_00: Numbers 9, verse 13 says, in describing the Passover, that the man who is clean and is not on a journey, he shall never cease to keep to observe the Passover.
SPEAKER_00: If he does, he will be cut off from among his people because he did not offer a sacrifice to Yahweh at this appointed time.
SPEAKER_00: That man will die in his own sin.
SPEAKER_00: That's Numbers 9:13.
SPEAKER_00: If you are an able-bodied Jew, so to speak, and you're clean, in other words, you haven't touched a dead body, then you have to celebrate the Passover.
SPEAKER_00: And if you don't, you're cut off from your people.
SPEAKER_00: This is why the Pharisees didn't want it to have anything to do with the body of Christ and the cross after sundown, because then they wouldn't be clean.
SPEAKER_00: They wouldn't be able to celebrate the Passover.
SPEAKER_00: So they hand them to a, you know, a Gentile king and let him kill Christ so they can keep the Passover.
SPEAKER_00: They're such hypocrites, but that's that image that if you can celebrate Passover, you must do so.
SPEAKER_00: And here's six reasons why that's true.
SPEAKER_00: First, blood protects.
SPEAKER_00: And this is all in your booklet if you have the Ezra booklet, but first, blood protects.
SPEAKER_00: Passover marks the flight out of Egypt.
SPEAKER_00: And if you remember why they had to flee Egypt, it was because they were in slavery there, and God had been giving them the plagues.
SPEAKER_00: Passover was really the tenth plague.
SPEAKER_00: It's the death of the firstborn.
SPEAKER_00: If you remember the plagues, the water turned to blood and the fish died.
SPEAKER_00: Frogs, gnats was the third one.
SPEAKER_00: Flies, the cattle died was the fifth one.
SPEAKER_00: And starting at the fifth one, the Israelites were spared from these.
SPEAKER_00: The Israelite cattle did not die.
SPEAKER_00: Boils and hail fell on the crops, locusts, darkness descended, and the death of the firstborn.
SPEAKER_00: The Israelites were spared the brunt of many of those plagues because of God's protection.
SPEAKER_00: And that was seen in Passover.
SPEAKER_00: They had to literally spread the blood on their doorpost, and God would spare them.
SPEAKER_00: The hail didn't hit them.
SPEAKER_00: God was sparing them.
SPEAKER_00: That's why they had to be ready to run, because God was sparing them.
SPEAKER_00: The point of the blood is a reminder of their protection.
SPEAKER_00: They put the blood on the door as a visible reminder that as long as they made the sacrifice, God would protect them.
SPEAKER_00: God protects his people through the shedding of blood.
SPEAKER_00: This goes back to Cain and Abel.
SPEAKER_00: Cain wanted to offer grain.
SPEAKER_00: Abel wanted an animal sacrifice, and God told Cain, I can't protect you.
SPEAKER_00: I can't forgive you of your sin unless you sacrifice an animal.
SPEAKER_00: It has to go back to blood.
SPEAKER_00: That's the first reason.
SPEAKER_00: The second reason, I have this on here just in case we have any PETA members here tonight.
SPEAKER_00: Blood offends.
SPEAKER_00: It is offensive.
SPEAKER_00: This is not politically correct to sacrifice this many animals.
SPEAKER_00: And these animals were innocent animals, and they had to be flawless animals.
SPEAKER_00: They couldn't be defiled.
SPEAKER_00: It's stunning how God made animals.
SPEAKER_00: Animals can be domesticated.
SPEAKER_00: Animals trust people.
SPEAKER_00: They have an inherent trust in people.
SPEAKER_00: Domesticated ones do.
SPEAKER_00: It's remarkable.
SPEAKER_00: You know, you c if you have a cat or a dog, there's even a sense of loyalty.
SPEAKER_00: We have two gerbils right now, and I think those gerbils are loyal gerbils.
SPEAKER_00: They don't even bite, they're just the gerbils.
SPEAKER_00: They're so cool.
SPEAKER_00: How did God make these things loyal to us?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they look like a mouse, but a mouse would bite you, a mouse would give you.
SPEAKER_00: The plague and then bite you and defile your house and run away.
SPEAKER_00: But not these gerbils, they only bring love into our family.
SPEAKER_00: And this is what God is doing is He made animals this way.
SPEAKER_00: And then He wants you to kill them for your own sin.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, imagine that at our house.
SPEAKER_00: We've got to kill the gerbil so that we can live.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, if my daughters would never talk to me again.
SPEAKER_00: But this is what happened with the lamb.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, you would bring the lamb in the house for a week.
SPEAKER_00: He had to be in your house for a week.
SPEAKER_00: That thing would be named.
SPEAKER_00: He'd be sleeping with the kids.
SPEAKER_00: And then on the Passover, the father gathers the family around and cuts the lamb's throat in front of his family, the lamb that they've named and bleeds out in front of everything.
SPEAKER_00: Well, he explains to them, we're doing this so that God doesn't kill you.
SPEAKER_00: It's supposed to be offensive.
SPEAKER_00: The animal, of course, is innocent.
SPEAKER_00: The animal doesn't break God's moral law like you and I do.
SPEAKER_00: They're innocent.
SPEAKER_00: They have big eyes and furry necks, and yet they get killed because we're sinners.
SPEAKER_00: It's supposed to just be abrasive.
SPEAKER_00: It's not supposed to be clean and neat.
SPEAKER_00: It's supposed to offend clear-thinking people.
SPEAKER_00: Thirdly, blood cleanses.
SPEAKER_00: Blood cleanses.
SPEAKER_00: Fifty-one times in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: It says that our sins are cleansed by the shedding of blood.
SPEAKER_00: And forget the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: I read earlier in our scripture reading for the evening, Hebrews 9.22.
SPEAKER_00: Under the law, almost everything is purified with blood.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, the blood actually does purify.
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews 9.23 is just an incredible verse, which I don't understand.
SPEAKER_00: Thus it was necessary for the copies of heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, what it's described in Hebrews there is that the temple layout is a mirror, a model of something that is in heaven, and what is on earth needs to be cleansed with blood.
SPEAKER_00: What is on heaven needs to be cleansed with something better than the animals that are bleeding out on earth.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, the blood of Christ cleanses the model in heaven of what is on earth.
SPEAKER_00: Blood actually purifies.
SPEAKER_00: And that's because God makes a real substitution.
SPEAKER_00: Our sin is really, in a real sense, placed on Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That's why the offense of it has to be so clear.
SPEAKER_00: It is offensive that we are sinners, it's offensive to God.
SPEAKER_00: You're bothered by an innocent animal being put to death.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine how God feels about your sin.
SPEAKER_00: And then, because of the death, you have a picture of what sin does.
SPEAKER_00: You can have your forgiveness, which leads to the fourth point here.
SPEAKER_00: The blood instructs.
SPEAKER_00: Teaching was a central point to Passover.
SPEAKER_00: The family gathered around, the head of the household taught them while they were gathered around the Lamb.
SPEAKER_00: They would gather the family around, and the Father would teach them why they're doing what they're doing.
SPEAKER_00: It was not just ritual.
SPEAKER_00: It was not allowed to be ritual.
SPEAKER_00: There had to be teaching so that you would know what you were doing.
SPEAKER_00: This is why Jesus, on the night he was crucified, brings his disciples together to celebrate what they're doing.
SPEAKER_00: Celebrate the Passover.
SPEAKER_00: That's Jesus' language.
SPEAKER_00: Let's celebrate the Passover.
SPEAKER_00: And then he instructs them in how the Passover points to himself.
SPEAKER_00: The beginning of a Passover meal, which I'm sure many of you have taken, the very beginning of the meal, a piece of bread is broken in half.
SPEAKER_00: And then you hide half of it until the end of the meal.
SPEAKER_00: This is the time that Jesus would have broken the bread and said, This is my body broken for you.
SPEAKER_00: He's going to go into the grave and be hidden from us until the end of the meal.
SPEAKER_00: They would eat bitter herbs then, usually horseradish, which would point to the just the bitterness of sin and the bitterness of separation from God.
SPEAKER_00: Then a child, of course, goes to the door and opens the door to see if Elijah is outside.
SPEAKER_00: Did Elijah show up?
SPEAKER_00: It's like a little ritual.
SPEAKER_00: Looking for the Savior, because Elijah comes before the Savior.
SPEAKER_00: Then they read and sing Psalms 113 to 118.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 118, of course, is the passage of the builder, the stone the builders rejected, becoming the cornerstone.
SPEAKER_00: There's four cups of wine throughout the night.
SPEAKER_00: They represent the four different key promises God made Israel.
SPEAKER_00: The first promise is that God would rescue Israel.
SPEAKER_00: And so you talk, you pour the first glass of wine and you talk about how God has rescued Israel.
SPEAKER_00: The second cup of wine talks about how God freed Israel.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't just rescue them, he gave them freedom.
SPEAKER_00: The third cup of wine talks about how God redeems Israel through the sacrifices.
SPEAKER_00: And the fourth cup of wine talks about how God owns Israel.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus took the cup of the Passover on the third cup, was the one that he took, and said, This is my blood, the cup of redemption.
SPEAKER_00: This is my blood.
SPEAKER_00: Given for you.
SPEAKER_00: There's no record of Jesus ever taking the fourth cup.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, Jesus expressly says, He will not drink the wine of Passover again until he drinks less in his kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: So the closing cup, the last glass of wine designed to close out the Passover meal, he never drank.
SPEAKER_00: The bread was hidden, never found.
SPEAKER_00: The last glass of wine never drank.
SPEAKER_00: Elijah not outside.
SPEAKER_00: Only Christ's betrayal.
SPEAKER_00: That's all that happened.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, it was probably the second cup to speaking of freedom when he sent Judas out to betray him.
SPEAKER_00: All this is going around Passover.
SPEAKER_00: They would have talked about all of this here in Ezra chapter 6, all of it pointing, of course, to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Blood sanctifies.
SPEAKER_00: As I mentioned this earlier, it doesn't just cleanse you, is what the language of Hebrews, but it actually sanctifies you.
SPEAKER_00: Passover is an ethical celebration, it has ethical implications.
SPEAKER_00: This is what Haggai says in Haggai chapter 2.
SPEAKER_00: It was Haggai's preaching that would have taken place here at this Passover.
SPEAKER_00: And some of us recorded Haggai chapter 2.
SPEAKER_00: Haggai asks the question: if someone holds holy meat, Passover meat in the fold of his garment, and he's walking around, and he touches something unclean, he touches a dead body, Haggai asks, does his Passover meat in his garment become defiled by touching the dead body?
SPEAKER_00: Or does the dead body become sanctified by touching the Passover meat?
SPEAKER_00: Well, obviously they both come defiled.
SPEAKER_00: That's what the priests say.
SPEAKER_00: Haggai says, So is it with this people and this nation before me, declares Yahweh, with every work of their hands.
SPEAKER_00: What they offer here is unclean because they're not sanctified.
SPEAKER_00: That's likely why in Ezra it says only the priests in verse 20 could do the sacrifices.
SPEAKER_00: The idea was the sacrifices would sanctify you.
SPEAKER_00: If you were unclean, you could not touch the Passover.
SPEAKER_00: And then finally, blood celebrates.
SPEAKER_00: There are no tears here.
SPEAKER_00: When they completed the temple, there was weeping.
SPEAKER_00: There are no tears here now.
SPEAKER_00: Now there is only celebration.
SPEAKER_00: They're rejoicing.
SPEAKER_00: Earlier they wept over the size of the temple, but now the key word repeated in this last paragraph here, joy, joy, joy.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 22, the first seven days they did this with joy.
SPEAKER_00: First Corinthians 5, verse 7 says, Christ is our Passover lamb.
SPEAKER_00: He's been sacrificed.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, let us celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, which is malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
SPEAKER_00: I love that image.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is our Passover lamb.
SPEAKER_00: He has been offered and sacrificed.
SPEAKER_00: His body was buried.
SPEAKER_00: It has been found.
SPEAKER_00: It has been resurrected.
SPEAKER_00: John was Elijah.
SPEAKER_00: He came first.
SPEAKER_00: We celebrate communion to celebrate him.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul keeps the image going.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Since he is our Passover Lamb, let's also keep the feast of unleavened bread by having a sincere heart and speak truth to each other.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, our gospel doesn't end with the ascension.
SPEAKER_00: Be holy, he says.
SPEAKER_00: John 6, verse 53, truly, truly I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.
SPEAKER_00: Here John takes all of this, Jesus does, takes all of this, and in John 6 ties it to himself.
SPEAKER_00: It's a reference to Numbers 9.
SPEAKER_00: That quote is, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: Numbers 9, unless you celebrate the Passover, you cannot have your sins forgiven.
SPEAKER_00: John 6, 53, Jesus changes it.
SPEAKER_00: Unless you eat my blood, or eat my flesh and drink my blood, you cannot have your sins forgiven.
SPEAKER_00: He is the true Passover lamb.
SPEAKER_00: All of these other sacrifices just pointed to him.
SPEAKER_00: Those other sacrifices were bloody.
SPEAKER_00: They were vile.
SPEAKER_00: In Israel, they just opened a new tunnel that you can walk through just in the last year.
SPEAKER_00: We went in May.
SPEAKER_00: It had just been opened a few days earlier.
SPEAKER_00: They're just hanging lights in it.
SPEAKER_00: You can now walk through this tunnel that goes from the pool of Siloam back up to the Temple Mount.
SPEAKER_00: And it's this very interesting tunnel.
SPEAKER_00: It was built to channel the blood of the sacrifices out of the temple down to the brook.
SPEAKER_00: The Romans turned it into a sewage canal, and now American tourists walk in it.
SPEAKER_00: It's really a providential twist.
SPEAKER_00: They even pay money to walk in it.
SPEAKER_00: Things Americans do.
SPEAKER_00: But it's interesting to see this huge canal that was built to channel all of the blood out.
SPEAKER_00: All that just grotesque sacrifice is designed to point you to the reality that Jesus would be the final sacrifice.
SPEAKER_00: When he was crucified, the veil of the temple was torn.
SPEAKER_00: This era of sacrifices came to an end.
SPEAKER_00: Eventually the Romans put an exclamation point on that by destroying the temple brick by brick.
SPEAKER_00: Now whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, Jesus says, and I abide in him.
SPEAKER_00: Now you don't look to the Passover any longer.
SPEAKER_00: You look to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: He is the Passover Lamb.
SPEAKER_00: Understand that our religion, though we don't do sacrifices, is meant to still feature blood.
SPEAKER_00: That's the point of communion.
SPEAKER_00: One of the two ordinances the Lord gave us, to celebrate communion together.
SPEAKER_00: To take the bread, to have it broken, representing the body of Christ that was He was killed for us.
SPEAKER_00: And then to take the cup that represents his blood, that was poured out for us, the blood of the new covenant.
SPEAKER_00: The new covenant is still a bloody thing.
SPEAKER_00: Only we don't get to see the blood of bulls and goats running through the streets anymore.
SPEAKER_00: Now we get to hold in our hands the cup that represents the blood of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And I hope that I know God in his wisdom designed this in such a way that it is for our edification.
SPEAKER_00: We hold the cup and it becomes celebratory.
SPEAKER_00: It makes us look forward to the day we re take this with Christ.
SPEAKER_00: I just hope we don't lose the sight of the fact this cup represents the blood of the gospel, the blood of the new covenant poured out for believers, and that without the death of Christ there is no forgiveness of sins.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we're grateful that you gave us the cup of the new covenant.
SPEAKER_00: You declared to us that your blood is true drink.
SPEAKER_00: Well, the blood of bulls and goats, Paul says, could never really forgive sins.
SPEAKER_00: You are the Lamb of God who does effectively take away the sins of the world.
SPEAKER_00: Your death is effectual.
SPEAKER_00: It's not an arrow pointing to the future.
SPEAKER_00: It's not an arrow pointing to the past.
SPEAKER_00: It's reality.
SPEAKER_00: Your death cleanses us of our sin.
SPEAKER_00: What joy we have then to celebrate Passover.
SPEAKER_00: What joy we have to read of this description of the lambs being killed and the cups being poured and to think about what that would have been like even for our Savior that night.
SPEAKER_00: A night of sorrow and tears.
SPEAKER_00: But also a night that marks a new celebration.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus Himself calls it a celebration, and so we think with joy towards it.
SPEAKER_00: We don't maintain the sacrifices any longer, Lord, but we do celebrate communion.
SPEAKER_00: And so we pray tonight as we turn our attention to the Lord's table.
SPEAKER_00: That we would do so with joy.
SPEAKER_00: Joy for the death of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Joy for his body broken.
SPEAKER_00: Joy for his blood poured out.
SPEAKER_00: We know our sin is offensive.
SPEAKER_00: We know his death is somber and causes grief, but we also want to rejoice like the Israelites did at the Passover.
SPEAKER_00: We rejoice because we know that it is in his death and that we have life.
SPEAKER_00: We're grateful for the gospel and the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: It's in his name we pray.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for being with us today.
SPEAKER_00: And now a parting word from Pastor Jesse.
SPEAKER_00: If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, emmanuelbible.church.
SPEAKER_00: If you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emanuel.
SPEAKER_00: I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.
SPEAKER_00: But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.
SPEAKER_00: Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.