From Exodus to Ezra: Historical Continuity

SPEAKER 01 : 0:00

Greetings to the brightest audience in the country and welcome to Theology Thursday. I’m Nicole McBurney. Every weekday we bring you the news of the day, the culture, and science from a Christian worldview. But today join me and Pastor Bob Enyart as we explore the source of our Christian worldview, the Bible.

SPEAKER 02 : 0:15

For the burnt offerings of the God of heaven, wheat, salt, wine, and oil, according to the request of the priests who are in Jerusalem, let it be given them day by day without fail. That’s just so funny. Poetic justice doesn’t begin to describe it. And he’s obviously rubbing salt into a wound here. What would that be like today? It would be like telling the Democrats in the Senate that they have to fund Don Wildman’s American Family Association. You guys got to pay for that. You got to pay for James Dobson’s Focus on the Family. Oh yeah, whatever it costs to reinstall Judge Roy Moore’s Ten Commandments monument, You got to pay for that too. It would just kill him. That’s not what Tat and I and company wanted to hear. So just in case they’re not understanding the king’s intent, verse 10, do this that they may offer sacrifices of sweet aroma to the God of heaven and pray for the life of the king and his sons. So he’s saying, I want them to pray for me. I want the blessings of their God upon me and my household. Now, by the way, the Bible speaks often of animals sacrificed as burnt offerings, describing the smell as a sweet aroma. And why does it do that? Well, of course, if you have a backyard barbecue, you got spare ribs or lamb chops on an open fire, smells great. But, That’s not necessarily the point. Yeah, it smells great, but it’s a sweet aroma because it’s acceptable to God as a substitutionary sacrifice. God wants to redeem his children who have rebelled against him, but he can’t just make believe we never hurt anyone, we never did anything wrong. Because we’ve sinned, there has to be a punishment for the sin The only acceptable punishment, since we are eternal creatures who now deserve eternal death, the only way that God could forgive that is to pay for it with something that’s valued or worth more than the debt, equal or more than the debt. So what’s worth more than the eternal death of millions or billions of human beings? What’s worth that much? Well, in all of creation, There’s no animal that’s worth that much, no tree, no star, no angel. The only thing that could be worth that much is the creator, God the son. So God decided that he would offer himself as a blood sacrifice to die for us so that we can have new life, so that the debt would be justly paid for. And so the Bible refers to the sweet aroma of, to the Lord as God accepting the animal sacrifices as pointing to Christ’s sacrifice. That’s why we read in Isaiah 53, verse 10, speaking of the crucifixion, that it pleased the Lord to bruise him. Now that’s an especially harsh verse to read a week after most all of us went to see The Passion, Mel Gibson’s movie, And we saw the suffering Christ went through. And then we read, it pleased the Lord to bruise him. So that the crucifixion was at the same time wonderfully beautiful and utterly horrible. Horrible in what Christ had to go through, but beautiful because God loved us so much. The Son and the Father loved us so much that he was willing to do that for us. Okay. Okay. So Darius, he’s speaking like he’s a believer. It’s amazing how he is interested in getting the blessings of the God of Israel. And just in case, Tat and I, the governor and your cohorts, just in case, now wait a minute, don’t go anywhere. I’m not done yet. Just in case you need some fatherly encouragement to make sure you adhere to my wishes here, Verse 11, I also wish you would decree that whoever alters this edict, let a timber be pulled from his house and erected and let him be hanged on it. Sounds like what happened to Haman, doesn’t it? And let his house be made a refuse heap because of this. So, hey, if wicked men refuse to honor God, well, then at least they’ll have to honor the governing official who honors God. for the time being. And God will punish the unrepentant by turning his eternal habitations into a pile of refuse which burns forever. That’s what Jesus describes hell as, like a junkyard, a trash heap that burns forever. And so for now, the king, this earthly king, will turn a wicked man’s earthly home into a refuse heap. Same punishment, just different order of magnitude. Verse 12. And may the God who causes his name to dwell there destroy any king or people who put their hand to alter it or to destroy this house of God, which is in Jerusalem. I, Darius, issue a decree. Let it be done diligently. Okay, so that’s the letter that they received in return. Last study, we saw the letter they sent out and we thought, here we go again, same story. And they got quite a response, one that they were not expecting. So how did these mid-level bureaucrats respond to the letter? Then Tatanai, governor of the region beyond the river, Shethar-Baznai and their companions diligently did according to what King Darius had sent. So, Call me a hopeless romantic, but this reminds me of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi. He’s divesting himself of weapons of mass destruction as quickly as his bureaucrats can find them. Not because he’s had a change of heart, but because he wants to keep his heart right where it is, in his chest, beating. So the bad guys obeyed the king who is siding in a wonderful way with the prophets Haggai and Zechariah with Ezra the priest and Zerubbabel, the governor of Palestine, of Judah. And also he’s the general contractor, so to speak, of the temple project. Now this next verse 14 covers a great part of the story. It encompasses the next four years of construction right through to the completion of the second temple. also called Zerubbabel’s temple. Verse 14. So the elders of the Jews built and they prospered through the prophesying of Haggai, the prophet, and Zechariah, the son of Ido, son of Ido. And they built and finished it, the temple, according to the commandment of the God of Israel and according to the command of Cyrus, Darius, and Artaxerxes, king of Persia. Now, notice again and let your mind keep a mental note of when these prophets lived and ministered. Haggai and Zechariah were prophets of the building of the second temple. And that’s helpful. I try to make mental notes like bookmarks of when certain prophets were working and ministering so that if you happen to hear a quote from their book, or turn and read a chapter, you know the historical context. If you don’t, you open Zechariah and you’re reading, you could get something out of it. But it’s a lot more helpful when you know, where does he fit in? Is he before Noah? Is he during the time of… Where is he? Is he with Jeroboam, the king? Well, if you know, Zechariah and Haggai are involved with the encouraging the Jews to rebuild the temple after it had been destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, you have a pretty good idea. Okay, this is just over four centuries before Christ was born. It was half a millennium after David and Solomon. It was a century or so after Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon. So you start to put it together. And when you then read, you know the historical setting in it. It makes more sense. By the way, if these two are the prophets of the second temple, Haggai and Zechariah, who were the prophets of the first temple, of Solomon’s temple? There were three, and you should be able to guess one. Nathan. Nathan. But then there were two more. There was Ahijah and Edo. I-D-D-O. Now, it’s not the Edo we just read, Zechariah, the son of Edo. That’s centuries later. But what’s with that? Nathan, Ahijah, and Edo were the prophets of the first temple. Prophets of the second temple were Haggai and Zechariah. And if you consider Herod’s temple the third one, who was the prophet then? Well, John the Baptist. So you’ve got three prophets for the first temple, two for the second, and one for the third. This prophet Zechariah, son of Edo, He really wasn’t the son of Edo. He was the grandson of Edo. He’s actually Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, the son of Edo. But in Ezra, and only in Ezra here, he’s referred to as Zechariah, son of Edo. And I actually think, you know, God likes to do that. Even though Jason may take me to task with this. But God likes to cross the T’s, dot the I’s, He likes the parallelism. And it seems like, well, we’ve got Edo, the prophet for the first temple, and here we are half a millennium later. We’re building the second temple. Let’s get another Edo on the scene. Because Edo, what does he do? He doesn’t do much other than he prophesies of Solomon and his time building the temple and the kings that followed Solomon, Rehoboam and Ahijah. And And the Bible repeatedly says that he was a prophet who wrote down the record of what these guys did, but we’ve lost the record. But he was the prophet, one of the three of the first temple. And so anyway, I think that’s why God refers to Zechariah as the son of Edo, who’s really his grandfather. Okay, let’s read again. Verse 14, the last sentence, and they built and finished it according to the commandment of the God of Israel. And according to the command of Cyrus, Darius and Artaxerxes, king of Persia. And I’ve mentioned the difficulty in identifying who these ancient Persian kings are. And that Artaxerxes, he’s the guy who married Esther, protected the Jews and told Nehemiah he could go rebuild the city and the wall. And then their son Cyrus, allowed the Jews to begin rebuilding the temple. But then he turned against them sometime later. And by the word of Darius, who was quite a bit later, the project resumed and the temple rebuilt. Oh, by the way, I brought this book. Bishop Usher did this book. It’s been out of print in English for 400 years. So it’s an old book. And it was just republished. this year by Answers in Genesis, Ken Ham’s group. So I’m really thrilled and it’s a brilliant history. He’s an accomplished historian of the ancient world and he’s an expert at the Bible. And so he attempts to combine ancient history with biblical history and try to put as authoritatively as he could what happened in which years. What I’m hoping is Now that this is available again, which it has not been, not even on the internet, you were not able to get this. So now that it’s available, I’m hoping that some conservative Christian scholars will do a thorough and complete re-evaluation and a harmony of Persian, Babylonian, Egyptian history with the biblical record. Take a new shot at it. I know that Christians have been working on that And their work is being published in some creationist journals, including in Ken Ham’s TJ, Technical Journal. But I’m hoping that work will be expanded. And I think this will be a great resource because Bishop Usher’s done an extraordinary job at a first crack at the project. Okay, let’s continue with Ezra chapter 6, verse 15. By the way, When we break, if anybody wants to look at this, just grab it. Ezra 6.15. Now the temple was finished on the third day of the month of Adar. That’s the last month of the Jewish calendar. The temple was finished on the third day of the month of Adar, which was in the sixth year of the reign of King Darius. Now a numerologist could have a heyday with that. Since Jason’s in the room, I’ll just continue. this month of Adar that was their 12th month just prior to the Passover so it corresponds to the end of winter and the beginning of spring verse 16 then the children of Israel the priest and the Levites and the rest of the descendants of the captivity celebrated the dedication of this house of God with joy and praise the Lord Undoubtedly, for many, it was only a superficial revival. For many, it wasn’t a real revival. They’re just going along with it. But for a good number, there was obviously a real heart, repentance, conversion, a desire to please God. So how many had the history become part of their actual personal relationship with God? We don’t know, but it was very possibly significant. And this was a great milestone, the rebuilding of the temple, because the temple was the center of Jewish spiritual life, their culture, history, and their social center. And it was what helped them keep their national identity over the next four centuries until the first coming of the Messiah. So they remained an identifiable group of Jews from the time of Abraham right till the time of Christ and even till today. Verse 17, And they offered sacrifices at the dedication of this house of God, 100 bulls, 200 rams, 400 lambs, all paid for, no doubt, out of the cheerful heart of Governor Tatanai, and as a sin offering for all Israel, 12 male goats, according to the number of the tribes of Israel. So because there were 12 tribes and God had said, use goats as a sin offering, they offered 12 goats. Now my guess is they paid for them themselves. That’s my guess. But why 12 tribes? I thought the northern 10 tribes were lost. Well, they pretty much were lost. Remember, Israel had a civil war north and south. The north had the 10 tribes called the kingdom of Israel. The south was Judah and Judah was mostly the tribe of Judah and Simeon in the south and the Negev, a little bit of Benjamin just north of Jerusalem. And so when the Jews returned from Babylon to Judah, it was mostly all men of the tribe of Judah. And there were some Levites and descendants of Aaron, some priests, and maybe a few of Simeon and a few of Benjamin, but mostly just Judah and Levi and the priests, sons of Aaron. So why did they do 12 goats for 12 tribes? Well, even though they were not there, a couple of things were going on. One, they could offer the sacrifices for their brothers wherever they were in the world. But two, they wanted to reconstitute the 12 tribes, at least symbolically, even if they were not there in actuality. In the priesthood, the sons of Aaron, now remember Moses was of the tribe of Levi. Pops, do you know what tribe you’re from, your family? You’re Jewish, right? Who knows these days, right? We don’t know. But probably most of the Jews who we identify as Jews are from the tribe of Judah or Levi. Jacob had 12 sons. Levi was the third. Judah was the fourth. Of the tribe of Levi, Levi entered into Egypt with a couple of his sons and they multiplied and eventually from the sons of Levi came Moses. And Moses had a brother Aaron. So Aaron was the high priest and Aaron’s sons are priests. But his cousins… were not priests. They’re still of the tribe of Levi, but they can’t be priests because they’re not his sons. So what do we call those guys? Levites. And God gave the Levites the job of helping the priests. Thus, they decided to do 12 goats, even though the 12 tribes, for the most part, were no more. The northern 10 went to Assyria and the Borg-like Assyrians assimilated them. And some historians say you can trace going up into Europe, but it’s not as clear as tracing the Jews who were taken into Babylon because they returned to Judah and they were the Jews mostly who were there when the Romans came and occupied at the time of Christ. And then in AD 70, there was an uprising of the Jews and the Romans crushed the uprising and destroyed Jerusalem, leveled the temple, eventually saw the suicide of a couple thousand Jews, was it, on the mountain fortress of Masada. And so those Jews then in AD 70 were more identifiable and they were scattered. And so most of the Jews that we’re familiar with today are Jews of the southern kingdom of Judah. Ezra 6, verse 18. They assigned the priests to their divisions and the Levites to their divisions over the service of God in Jerusalem as it is written in the book of Moses. So God had said specifically, here’s what the priests do and here’s what the Levites do. And so they took upon themselves those roles again. But also, King David had taken the priesthood, the sons of Aaron, and I think it’s in 1 Chronicles 24, he took the sons of Aaron and he divided them into 24 groups or 24 courses or orders. And so that through the year, they would cycle through those 24 and they would know when their family had to go to the temple to do the work and they’d all take turns. So that by the time you get to, The New Testament, John the Baptist, his father’s name was Zechariah and he was a priest. So he was the son of Aaron and he was of the order of Abijah. And Abijah was the eighth of the 24 groups that David broke the priesthood up into so that they would know what time of the year each group was due to work at the temple. So it was the time for the order of Abijah to go work at the temple. So Zechariah went, him and all his close relatives. Well, after they came back from Babylon, they had lost those 24 orders. They only had priests from a few of them. So what could they do? They reconstituted the 24, even though they didn’t have actual family members from the original 24. Still, they were all descendants of Aaron. So they took upon themselves the names of the 24 families that David had divided. So when it says here they assigned the priests to their divisions and the Levites, as it is written in the book of Moses, the book of Moses told them their main roles, but then it was David, his work in the book of Chronicles that broke them up into their priestly divisions. Verse 19, And the descendants of the captivity kept the Passover… on the 14th day of the first month. And that’s exactly what God had commanded through Moses in the book of Exodus, that you’re to keep this day, the 14th day of the first month, as the Passover for all your generations. And it turned out to be that day when they were killing the Passover lamb to celebrate the Passover. As the Jews are killing the Passover lamb, that’s the day that Jesus Christ was crucified, on that day. And in Exodus, God says, four days before the Passover, you’re to pay the money to buy the Passover lamb on that day. And so in the Gospels, it’s hard to peg it exactly, but we can see that Judas paid, well, Judas was paid by the high priest 30 pieces of silver to purchase Jesus Christ, who is the Passover lamb, to buy him as the sacrifice for the whole nation a few days before Christ was actually crucified. So my guess is that that happened on the 10th day of the month of Nisan. And it was actually originally called the month of Abib, which was the Jewish name. But when the Jews were taken into exile… In Babylon, when they came back 70 years later, they had all pagan names of the month. When God said, your year shall begin in the month of the Passover, they gave up on that. And so they began keeping their calendar. You know, the Jewish New Year, what’s that feast called? The Jewish New Year is Rosh Hashanah. Is that right? And they keep that. That’s when the Babylonians started their year. It’s not when God said, do it at the month of the Passover. And the original Jewish biblical names for the months, they stopped using. And after 70 years in a foreign country, you come back and you use the pagan names, which they did. And not that that’s evil, but so the month of Nisan is the Babylonian name for the month. It was originally Abib. Okay. So from this, when they kept the Passover here in verse 19, They would do that for the next 450 years or so until the time of Jesus Christ when he came as the lamb from heaven and was offered up. Verse 20, for the priest and the Levites had purified themselves. All of them were ritually clean and they slaughtered the Passover lambs for all the descendants of the captivity, for their brethren, the priests, So after the Passover, beginning immediately, there was the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which would last a week. And they couldn’t put yeast in the bread. And yeast is leaven. It causes the bread to decay. It breaks it down. The bacteria rots the wheat. And as it rots it, it produces the waste result is carbon dioxide. And that gas causes the bread to rise. And so unleavened bread is when the bread does not decompose. It’ll stay for a long time. It won’t go bad. Jesus Christ was the bread from heaven. So he’s the Passover lamb. He was killed like the Passover lamb without his bones being broken. And then the Jews immediately began keeping the feast of unleavened bread when the bread would not decompose. And their Jewish scriptures said that his body would not decompose in the grave. And Jesus Christ, the bread from heaven, was put into the grave and he did not decompose. While in every house in Israel, the bread was not decomposing. And what’s the next feast? The next one on the calendar in Leviticus 23 is the feast of first fruits. And that would fall on that Sunday. So you have the Passover, the feast of unleavened bread. Christ is in the tomb. The next feast is on Sunday, the feast of first fruits. That’s when Christ rose from the dead. The first fruits from the dead, Jesus Christ. before the rest of us as we will follow Him in resurrection. So the Jewish feasts were symbolic and prophetic of Christ’s ministry for us. And let’s finish with verse 22. They kept the Feast of Unleavened Bread seven days with joy, for the Lord made them joyful and turned the heart of the king of Assyria toward them to strengthen their hands in the work of the house of God, the God of Israel. May God bless you all.