Priests


Sermon by Derek Thomas on June 8, 2008 Ezra 8:15-20

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The Lord's Day Evening

June 8, 2008

Ezra 8:15-20

“Priests”

Dr. Derek W. H. Thomas

Now turn with me if you would once again to the book of Ezra. We are in chapter 8 of the book of Ezra. We were looking last week at the list of names from twelve different families who were returning with Ezra at the behest of Ezra and King Artaxerxes to return from Babylon to Jerusalem. This of course is the second wave of returnees. We are in the middle now of the fifth century, but 80-90 years before this, in 537, at the decree of King Cyrus, there had been the first wave of returnees to Jerusalem, some 43,000 of them.

Now this evening as we pick up the reading in verse 15, we are going to discover that Ezra, as he examines this list of men and women, and presumably children, in the first fourteen verses of chapter 8, this list of names from twelve different families, Ezra is going to discover that there is one particular group of individuals, one important section of the community, that is entirely missing. Now before we read the word of God together, let's look to the Lord in prayer. Let us pray.

Our God and our Father, we bow in Your presence. We come before You as needy sinners with outstretched arms and hands, looking to You for grace and mercy, thanking You for the provision of the Bible that is given in all of its totality by inspiration of God, and profitable for doctrine and reproof and correction, and instruction in the way of righteousness, that the man of God might be thoroughly furnished unto every good work. And so we pray, O Lord, as we read this particular section of Scripture together. We know that You have something in here for us to learn, something from which to profit, something to teach us about our sin and our need, and our guilt and corruption, but also something about Your marvelous and wonderful grace in the Lord Jesus Christ. So amaze us again, O Lord, with Your provision. Help us to discover all of the treasures that You have placed here in this particular passage. We ask it now in Jesus' name. Amen.

This is God's holy and inerrant word:

“I gathered them to the river that runs to Ahava, and there we camped three days. As I reviewed the people and the priests, I found there none of the sons of Levi. Then I sent for Eliezer, Ariel, Shemaiah, Elnathan, Jarib, Elnathan, Nathan, Zechariah, and Meshullam, leading men, and for Joiarib and Elnathan, who were men of insight, and sent them to Iddo, the leading man at the place Casiphia, telling them what to say to Iddo and his brothers and the temple servants at the place Casiphia, namely, to send us ministers for the house of our God. And by the good hand of our God on us, they brought us a man of discretion, of the sons of Mahli the son of Levi, Son of Israel, namely Sherebiah with his sons and kinsmen, 18; also Hashabiah, and with him Jeshaiah of the sons of Merari, with his kinsmen and their sons, 20; besides 220 of the temple servants, who David and his officials had set apart to attend the Levites. These were all mentioned by name.”

Amen. And may God add His blessing to that reading of His holy and inerrant word.

Now you will recall, at the very beginning of chapter 7 we have already been given, as it were, a kind of synopsis, following which, in the rest of chapter 7 and now in the rest of chapter 8, we are returning and looking at it in more detail. Back in chapter 7:7, we're told that

“There went up also to Jerusalem, in the seventh year of Artaxerxes the king, some of the people of Israel, and some of the priests and Levites, the singers and gatekeepers, and the temple servants.”

 

So we've already been let in to the fact that there were Levites who actually went with Ezra to Jerusalem. But now Ezra has gone back…it looks as though Ezra is now inserting something from his memoirs, his personal diary, perhaps even his official diary for King Artaxerxes, and he's telling us the story now in more detail, because although there were Levites who came to Jerusalem in actual fact, initially at least there were none.

These folk — about five thousand of them — one-seventh [I know; I was challenged about my mathematics, but when you add all of the servants and temple servants and others, it roughly comes to about one-seventh of the original number that came back in 537 BC at the time of the decree of King Cyrus]…these folk now are making a one-way trip to Jerusalem.

Let's remind ourselves of the difficulty of this journey. We are going to be told something of the difficulty of the journey next week. It was a journey that would follow the River Euphrates, heading west from Babylon for five or six hundred, maybe seven hundred miles, and then turn southwards toward Jerusalem. It's the middle of summer; it's a journey that's going to take four months to complete. We’re not told how old these men and women were. Some perhaps weren't young. Perhaps the most elderly didn't go at all. There would have been children perhaps along with the caravan. There would have been beasts of burden. We’re told of the first return a century before that there were mules, and camels, and horses and donkeys to carry all the paraphernalia that they would need to take with them on a one-way trip to Jerusalem. Now on this occasion we're not told about the horses and donkeys, but presumably there must have been.

One has to imagine the farewell scenes. We know on the first occasion that family had parted from family. All the names but one of these twelve families mentioned in the first fourteen verses of chapter 8 are mentioned in the family names of those who had gone a century before. Family had been divided from family, and there's no reason to assume that that wasn't the case on this occasion. Perhaps there would be some bidding farewell to elderly parents who couldn't make the journey.

I remember a dear, dear friend — whom Rosemary will recognize immediately — Nan Dunlop. Nan Dunlop was a missionary in Jabalpur in central India. She was there for upwards of 35 years. She retired in the congregation that I served in Belfast. I went with her for a month on a return visit, to visit some of her orphans and to speak to some ministers in India.

But she was describing to me on the journey across to India, and on the two-day train journey from the place that we had landed in Delhi…in New Delhi…and all the way down to central India. It was a two-day train journey… She was describing to me the day she left, in 1945. The war had not yet finished, and she went in a convoy of military ships to India. The entire church gathered at the dockside to bid farewell to her, and sang (and you can imagine the tears), “Till We Meet Again.” And you see, in 1945, there was no guarantee that they would see her again — at least not in a hurry. In fact, it was upwards of 15-20 years before she made her first trip home again, by which time some of her family members had died.

Well, imagine the scene here. They’re making a one-way trip to Jerusalem. There probably is no sense in which any of these are going to come back to Babylon, or any of those in Babylon are going to make their way to Jerusalem. Now we do know that some did come later, but there would be scenes of farewell. There's a meeting point, “the river that runs to Ahava.” [Now don't ask me where that is, because nobody knows!] It's somewhere outside Babylon. It's one of the rivers or canals that perhaps leads into the Euphrates River. It was a location big enough to hold five thousand and perhaps as many more members of family who weren't going to go, plus donkeys and camels and horses and mules, and bits and pieces of paraphernalia. So, a meeting point beside a river — which makes sense, because they would need to take some water with them.

I want us to see four things tonight. As you hold that picture in your head of this mass of people gathered together by a riverside just outside Babylon, and Ezra is going through the list of names. He's going through the list of names that we have in the first fourteen verses of chapter 8, and what we see first of all is careful planning.

I. Careful planning.

Ezra is a leader, and he has all the skills (and pitfalls) of a leader. He has all of the bureaucratic skills of a good leader. He's a civil servant, after all. He can organize and motivate and challenge, and exercise authority when he needs to. He provides a unified vision for this trip. We’ll notice next week how he organizes a fast before they go.

Now you might think that a list of names and an inventory or two is decidedly boring. It's the sort of thing that bureaucrats do. It's unspiritual work. I want to put it to you — and I don't want us to miss the point. It's not the most important point in this passage, but I want us to see it nevertheless, that here is a man, a leader, a leader of men, a man who provides a vision for the people of God, and he's engaged in careful planning. He needs to know who's going. He would need to know that for all kinds of reasons.

Imagine taking a caravan of upwards of 5,000 men and women and children on a journey by foot, 1,000 miles to Jerusalem, in mid-summer. There would be frequent stops. There would be children who would go missing. There would need to be kept a perfect record of who had left, and maybe each evening along the way a count. They would probably do it by heads of families, making sure that all of their clan was accounted for. It's the motto of the Scouts, isn't it? “Be Prepared.” “Trust God, but keep your powder dry,” Cromwell said. It's stewardship. It's accountability. There's careful planning here. We’re going to see this on several occasions in the book of Ezra. We’re going to see it again in the book of Nehemiah. Careful planning — it's not unspiritual to plan ahead. It's not unspiritual to look at a list of names, and to take down those names, and to write those names, and to number the people

II. Critical shortage.

The second thing that we see here is a critical shortage. A critical shortage, because we're told that there were no sons of Levi. At the end of verse 15…there were no sons of Levi. Now, there were priests, and in a sense the priests were also Levites. But by the time of Ezra, by the time after the exile, there is a marked distinction and a growing distinction between priests and Levites. We’ll talk about that in a minute.

Now we know that there were priests present. We’re told in verse 2 of the sons of Phinehas and the sons of Ithamar, and those are priestly names. So there were priests who went to Jerusalem to join fellow priests in the temple at Jerusalem, but there were no Levites.

Now the Levites did all sorts of things. They did all sorts of menial work. They were essentially servants to the priests. The priests had access to various parts of the innermost temple to which the Levites generally had no access. The Levites were the ones who kept the outer gates of the temple. Now there are no gates as such at this second temple as yet. We believe that there was a stone wall that surrounded this temple, and in that wall there were various rooms, accommodations for priests and perhaps some of the Levites who were on duty there for upwards of a week at a time. There will be storerooms for utensils and food and other bits and pieces, pots and pans and so on, within that wall. The Levites were the ones who would keep the temple and the surroundings of the temple clean. They would make sure that the utensils were cleansed. They were the ones who would keep watch over the temple. They would police the temple. They would guard the entrance ways into the temple to ensure that only those could enter that were allowed to enter. But on the whole the Levites did menial work.

Just before the exile began, there were Levites who were exercising priestly functions in sanctuaries outside of Jerusalem — sanctuaries which were destroyed during the reign of King Josiah. Essentially the Levites were demoted by Josiah. The memory of that…some scholars who look into these things believe the memory of that was still prevalent after the exile. The description of the renewed temple, for example, in the closing chapters of Ezekiel — nine chapters in the closing section of Ezekiel where he describes the temple and describes the work of the Levites, and it was demoted work that Ezekiel describes.

Perhaps you’re beginning to see a reason or two why there were no Levites returning to Jerusalem. You’ll remember in the reading that Ezra sends some of the leading men and two of what appear to be scribe-like persons — people who knew the law; people who could bring to bear upon the Levites the teaching of Scripture. They go to a man called Iddo, in a place that is called Casiphia. And there is what's called (at least in the ESV that we're reading)…there is something of a temple … “…the temple servants at the place Casaphia.” Why would there be temple servants in the place called Casaphia? And some believe that there may well have been something of the rudiments of a temple in Casaphia. We know there was one in Elephantine in Egypt, on the River Nile. We know that Jews had gathered there and had actually built a temple. Scholars believe that there may well have been a temple here, too, in which the Levites may have been exercising beyond what was allowable in the Old Testament canon in the books of Moses. And that would be another reason why they didn't want to go back to Jerusalem. Who, after all, would want to go back and be a servant, when you had tasted perhaps something more honorable and more glorious, and perhaps more productive?

There were no Levites. But there was a need for Levites. We know that along the journey they would be carrying treasures for the temple, treasures which would be put into the hands and under the care of Levites. One of the first things that they do, as we shall see, when they get to Jerusalem is to engage in offering enormous amounts of burnt offerings, in which the Levites would be involved in helping the priests. There would be need for Levites. There are no Levites.

You see, this isn't something that's true just of this period of history, is it? Shortage in the kingdom of God…shortage of helpers, shortage of ministers, shortage of servants in key areas. We’re going through an election process. Some scholars believe that what you see after the exile is the emergence of two quite distinct roles, the priests and the diaconate. Not exactly the diaconate as you see it in the New Testament but a role specifically for diaconal ministry, and that role was conducted by Levites. But who wants to be a deacon when you can be an elder? [Oh, don't tell me you haven't thought that! I won't believe you.]

Here's a lesson: there were no Levites. There should have been Levites. There should have been willing, voluntary, heart-filled service. “I'd rather be a doorkeeper in the house of God than dwell in the tents of wickedness.” We serve a Savior who thought it not robbery to have the chief post of all, to be head over all things, but He made himself of no reputation. He made himself a deacon. He made himself a servant. He made himself a foot washer, to engage in the most menial service of all for the likes of you and for the likes of me.

My friend, I want to ask you tonight: Is there something that God is asking you to do that you think is beneath your dignity? You think it's too menial for you? You want the job and the role that brings glory and limelight, and your name blazoned from the roof of First Presbyterian Church, and God is saying to you, ‘I want you in a little small corner, and no one is going to see what you do, and no one is going to acknowledge what you do. But I want you to do it for Me.’ Will you do it for your Savior? There were no Levites.

III. Urgent appeal.

And the third thing that we see is an urgent appeal. An urgent appeal, and you see it in verse 16. Ezra sends these leading men, along with two instructors in the law, and it's a lesson in how to convince…how to convince the reluctant. You notice there is no attempt to compel. He wants willing service.

I'm trying to imagine what they said. They go to a place where evidently there were a lot of Levites and a lot of temple servants. And if there was no temple in this location, who knows what they were training for, unless it was for the day when they would return to Jerusalem? And maybe that was just it — that all of their lives they had been told since they were little ones, ‘You are a Levite. You’re a temple servant.’ And here is the opportunity for you to engage in that ministry. But they didn't want to go.

You notice in verse 17 how Ezra — and here's a leader for you — he sends men. He doesn't go himself, but he does tell them what to say. In the Hebrew it's very strong. He puts words in their mouths, telling them what to say to Iddo and his brothers and the temple servants at the place. He marshals these arguments as to why it is they ought to go. They had, you see, impeccable credentials. The Levites …and those who eventually come, come from two families, both of whom can trace their lineage back to the sons of Levi. Their credentials are impeccable. But they’d been unwilling to come.

There was once a Chicago bank that asked for a letter of recommendation for a young Bostonian being considered for employment, and the Boston investment house exuded over this young man: ‘His father was a Cabot, his mother was a Lowell. Further back, there was a marvelous blend of Saltonstall's and Peabody's and others of Boston's elite.’ He was recommended heartily. Several days later, the Chicago bank sent a note notifying the investment operation that the information given was completely inadequate. It stated (and I'm quoting): “We’re not contemplating using the young man for breeding purposes, just for work.”

Well, the credentials of these Levites were impeccable, but they needed to come for the purposes of work. Are you willing to work?

Are you willing to work for the Lord?

And in one case twenty, and in another case eighteen, Levites come forward. Thirty-eight, and 220 temple servants – an even more lowly office. Can you imagine what they’re saying? Well, it wasn't “health and wealth,” to be sure. ‘Follow us and you’ll know hardship and pain, and long days of labor, and sometimes sleepless nights, but you will do it all for the Lord, and you will get peace that you've never known before. It's peace in ministry. It's peace in service. It's joy in the knowledge that you are serving the Lord in the fullness of your hearts.’

IV. Humble acknowledgement.

There's a fourth thing I want us to see here, and that is a humble acknowledgement. You’ll notice in verse 18 (and I'm suggesting here that we're probably following Ezra's memoirs here), “And by the good hand of our God on us, they brought us…” and so forth. “By the good hand of our God on us….” Ezra's giving a testimony as to what happened, and he's telling us that what happened is that 38 Levites came forward, along with 220 temple servants. The mission to Iddo had been somewhat of a success. You might have credited that to Ezra. Ezra is a phenomenal leader. But he credits it all to the Lord. The kind of leadership that Ezra wants us to emulate, you see, is a leadership in which God is given all the glory. Ezra didn't sit back and say, ‘Well, if God wants Levites to come, He’ll bring them.’ No, he marshaled arguments, he sent his best men, he gave it his best shot! But the outcome was of the Lord. Man may plan, and man may marshal arguments, and man may scheme, and man may plot, but the outcome is of the Lord.

Do you know why the outcome was of the Lord? Turn with me just for a second to Jeremiah. Jeremiah, you remember, is one of the great prophets preaching just before the exile. Jeremiah won't go into exile; he’ll actually spend those years of exile in Egypt. But turn with me to Jeremiah 33, and let's pick it up at verse 17:
“For thus says the Lord…” [And this is a chapter in which God is speaking through Jeremiah of His abiding covenant with His people…that God will not break His covenant. That God is going to instigate a new covenant, a new covenant in the blood of His Son, Jesus Christ.] Verse 17:

“For thus says the Lord, ‘David shall never lack a man to sit on the throne of the house of Israel.’”

 

Remember that last week we signaled the importance of the name Hattush in verse 2, because he was of the house of David. This man Hattush ensured that a lineage from the house of David returned to Jerusalem. Well, back in Jeremiah 33, verse 18:

“And the Levitical priests shall never lack a man in My presence to offer burnt offerings, to burn grain offerings, and to make sacrifices forever.”

 

Well, there's too much in that prophecy in the time I have now, but just as God was concerned about the line of David, God was also concerned about the line of Levi. And the reason, my friends, why the good hand of God was upon Ezra was because God had made a promise that there would be a Levitical line among His people. From that line He will eventually do great things.

The story, you see, is not really about Ezra, and it's not really about this return. The story is about the hand of God. God is working out His purpose. In all the details of this story, God is working out His purpose. And He does it still, my friends, in your life and mine. He will never leave us. He will never forsake us. He will accomplish all that He has promised. Let's take it to heart.

Let's pray together.

Our Father in heaven, we thank You now for Your word. We thank You that it is a word that can be trusted in all of its detail. We pray now for Your blessing. Hide Your word within our hearts, that we might not sin against You. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.

Please stand. Receive the Lord's benediction.

Grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.

 

 

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