40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Ezra 3:4-4:5 (Episode 354)

Episode Date: March 28, 2023

There is a lot of joy and a lot of tears as the foundation of the temple is laid. Certain adversaries ask to help rebuild the temple and their offer is rejected. But the people of God are made afraid and discouraged from continuing to rebuild the temple. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network Donate HWSS Regional Conference 1517 YouTube

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast and check out all the other podcasts that are living over there While you're over there, make sure you check out all the other things that 1517 is doing. I happen to know that we are in the process of filming brand new academies. There's a couple of academies in the works. If you haven't taken advantage of the other academies, you should go check some of those out. And keep an eye out for the new ones that are going to be released.

I won't say too much about them until they come out. But two good ones. Two good academies coming out this year that you guys can take for free. And you should avail yourself of that. Chad, last week we were in Ezra. We got through Chapter 2, did a little bit in Chapter 3. Mostly we saw a bunch of people going back, or some people going back home, and going back with all the supplies that they need to sort of rebuild the temple,

and they got all the things that they need to put in the temple because Cyrus is just being that guy. He's just giving them all the stuff. He don't need it, and he knows that if you want to get in, you know be a popular guy who's got you know a lot of power over people and he's not going to make you like totally free but you know you want to be that benevolent dictator there you go and that's what he's doing and he's sending these people back and now we got to uh see some rebuilding of the altar and so people are getting busy but this is going to be uh quite the process

that these guys have to undergo yeah they're going to get started uh but then as we'll see pretty pretty quick there's going to be a delay so they start out well i mean they get back this is uh not the first way but the at least as far as we know the second wave of folks who come back as we mentioned last time most stayed in babylon but yeah you you've got some some folks who are super super committed they come back got a couple leaders uh yeshua and zerubbabel and they get the get the altar rebuilt they're starting to offer some some burnt offerings and we find ourselves in the seventh month. So the seventh month is,

I think we talked about this last time. It's kind of the big month for feasts. You start out with Rosh Hashanah, which is Hebrew for the head of the year, beginning of the year. It's kind of a one-day deal. Ten days later, you've got Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.

And then after that, you've got what became really the most popular of the three big feasts of the Israelite year. And there's the Feast of Sukkot, sometimes translated Feast of Booths, sometimes translated the Feast of Tabernacles. So that's where we're at. And this is the same same month in which Solomon's temple was was dedicated. So they're kind of lining things up here historically so that what they're doing matches what what happened earlier. So, I mean, everything's kind of going well. They're they're off to a good start. But there's going to be hiccup hiccup along the way.

So verse four, kind of pick up here with the feast itself. They kept the feast of Sukkot, translated also booths and tabernacles. So this was the annual time when it's actually a fitting time to do this, because this was the annual time in which Israelites would gather around. Well, it used to be around the temple. There's no temple now. So it's kind of gather around where the temple would be. and they basically remember when their forefathers were journeying through the wilderness during

those 40 years, living in these temporary shelters, living tents. So that's, it's called the Feast of Sukkot, which is like a little temporary shelter. So when I went to Hebrew Union every fall, when the Feast of Sukkot would come around, they would build this temporary shelter with all sorts of leaves and fruits that were on it. That's a way that the Jews celebrate that still today so they're celebrating this uh and it i say it's a it's a good time to do it because what happened to them well they just had their own kind of uh exile they were they were they were in babylon and then they came home just like their forefathers came out of egypt and so it's appropriate that they are celebrating this homecoming in which they're remembering those

times when they were not able to to be in jerusalem and they don't celebrate the feast of booze also says they offer their daily burnt offerings by the by number according to the rule as each day required and after that the regular burnt offerings the new moon offerings at all the appointed feast of the lord and the offerings to everyone who made a free will offering to the lord so all that all that stuff that we talked about many years ago when we covered leviticus so the you had a morning evening offering you have special sabbath offerings you have all these various kinds of offerings so in other words they're trying to kind of get back into into the levitical sequence of sacrifices so they're they're starting out right they got the altar rebuilt

they're uh trying to get everything going again with the sacrificial liturgy verse six says from the first day of the seventh month they began to offer burnt offerings to to the lord but the foundation of the temple of the lord had not yet been laid so they got the altar which is the the one thing you have to have so uh you you can have the you can have an altar without a temple temporarily but you can have a temple without an altar so they got the altar built and they start to gather the stuff in verses seven yeah verse seven to build the uh build the temple so they gave the money to the masons and to the carpenters and food and drink and oil to the Sidonians and the Turinians to bring cedar trees from Lebanon to the sea to Joppa, according to the grant that

they had from Cyrus, king of, king of Persia. So this, I mean, this is great for them. I mean, they evidently got some, uh, got some funding from Cyrus, who, as you mentioned at the beginning, uh, was, was all supportive of, of the rebuilding of the temple. And just like Solomon did and David before him, they get their cedar from where everybody got their cedar up in the area of, of Tyre and Sidon. I guess what they did is once the, I mean, they got to get it over land, you don't have interstates and, and trucks to, to haul this with, uh, with flatbeds. So you, what do you do? Well, you float it. So they would take it down to the Mediterranean And they would float it down southward to Joppa, which was one of the port cities.

And then once it was there, it had to be hauled inland. But at least you saved some time by floating it down to Joppa. So they're getting started. That takes us through verse 7. That's one of the things you don't think about when you read about building projects and stuff. man the transporting the material in some ways the building of the thing is the easier part it's getting the stuff to build the thing that's the hard part yeah and getting the stuff from wherever that stuff is to where you need it to build it yeah because i mean you've got plenty

of stone in israel what you don't have are plenty of trees that lend themselves toward toward building. That's why I know this is a kind of a, uh, uh, uh, in the weed sort of thing, but that's why when, uh, Jesus is called a carpenter, it's, it's not entirely accurate. Uh, because you know, people who were doing the kind of building that, uh, Jesus and Joseph and others like them would have been doing a lot of their work would have been with stone. I mean, they probably knew how to work with, with wood, but the Greek word tech tone that's usually translated as carpenter uh would probably be better translated something like i don't know craftsman right because they get yeah you got to be know how you got to know how to work with stone

and yeah you're going to work with wood some uh but most of the buildings most of the homes that were built in uh in galilee for instance where jesus was they were built out of stone they were built out of wood maybe some wood was incorporated there but most of the building was was with stone So anyway, they had to get the trees from somewhere. And even the Egyptians, even the Egyptians got their cedar from the region of Tyre and Sidon. That's just what it was was known for. So that's where they're getting building materials. Can't run to the local Home Depot.

So they had to float this stuff down and haul it inland. Now, verse eight picks up, it says, in the second year after the coming to the house of God at Jerusalem. in the second month. Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, he's the one that is the grandson of one of the last kings of the southern kingdom. We talked about him last time. So Zerubbabel, he's in the line of David. He's not a king, but he at least has that Davidic lineage going on for him. Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, and Yeshua, that's the Aramaic name or later Hebrew name of jesus himself so yeshua the son of joseph made a beginning together with the rest of the kinsmen the priests and levites and all who had come to jerusalem from the captivity so they're starting

out making a beginning this is the second year they uh they want to make sure all the levites are organized so they appointed the levites uh everybody who was 20 years old and upward to kind of be the supervisors they're going to be the ones who are uh making sure everything that is done there at the temple is done properly. They're sort of supervising the work in the temple. And Yeshua with his sons and his brothers and a guy named Kadmiel, who was a Levite. Kadmiel and his sons, the sons of Judah together,

they all supervise the workmen in the house of God along with some other guys, the sons of Hinnadad, Levite sons and brothers. So basically they're just trying to get everything organized here. You got the Masons, you have the other people who are going to be working. You're getting the materials in. you got everything kind of set up here with the supervision of of this work so all this is kind

of leading up to uh probably one of the better known passages in the book of ezra i know ezra is not an extremely popular book but if people know anything about ezra maybe they would recognize what's about to happen here so uh kind of leading up to it so verse 10 says when the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the lord the priests and their vestments came forward with trumpets and the levites and the sons of asaph and they have their symbols and they're all there to praise the lord according this is interesting uh detail according to the directions of david king of israel so uh i don't think that we covered this because this is like chronicles material and uh we we moved out of kings and into directly into ezra so we'll come

back to chronicles eventually but one of the things we learned from uh first chronicles such as verse uh chapter 6 and 16 and chapter 25 is that when david was kind of planning for the temple he was gathering materials together that solomon was to use he also organized the levites into uh choirs basically so one of my one of my favorite uh old testament scholars john kleining who is an australian professor he i'm pretty sure he wrote his dissertation on how david organized all the levitical levitical choirs it's kind of kind of fascinating stuff just give you uh this is first chronicle 631 these are the men whom david put in charge of the service of song in the house of the Lord after the ark rested there. And then this is

1 Chronicles 16, verse 4. Then David appointed some of the Levites as ministers before the ark of the Lord to invoke, thank, and praise the Lord, the God of Israel. So he was basically just kind of setting up some sort of organization of the Levites into certain choirs. And that was one of one of their duties so we kind of picture the priesthood you know mainly concerned with sacrificing and things like that but keep in mind that there was worship going on all the time at the tabernacle and at the temple and so you had to have you had levitical choirs and there's plenty of evidence within the psalms themselves that some of these were sung antiphonally you think of psalm 136 where you have uh every other verse is uh give thanks to the lord for he is good for

mercy endures forever it was probably uh an antiphonal chant on the part of the people so the levitical choirs would sing one part that people would respond with one part kind of this back and forth antiphonal uh antiphonal song so uh they uh back to ezra that's what's going on here you have david having organized the levitical choirs to praise the lord with their various kinds of instruments and various kinds of songs and we're kind of given a snippet here verse 11 says they sang responsibly they sang antiphonally praising and giving thanks to the lord and here's the quote of just one of the verses that would have been part of their song for he is good for his steadfast love his chesed his steadfast love endures forever toward israel and that verse

is found in a number of number of different places it's psalm 136 psalm 105 first chronicles 16 so So anyway, they were all organized, kind of getting them together in order that not only sacrifice, but also the song should continue in the worship of God's people. There's something kind of cool about, you've been, at this point, a fair time ago, carted off into captivity, been living in a land that's not your own, you don't have your temple, you don't have your stuff, it seems like you're God lost, right? Or at least if he didn't lose, which of course he didn't, but he at least turned you over, let go of you, and you come back home and you're building your stuff, and the first thing you say is that God is good and his steadfast love endures forever towards Israel, which is a very promise-focused thing to say. it's not what you would expect under the circumstances right you might think a i don't

know maybe a lament or at least some sort of very fervent intercession like oh god you know uh restore us or uh give us strength in the midst of our weakness whatever you know something along those lines but yeah i love it the very first thing they say is our god is good and his his chesed his steadfast love it's not going to stop didn't stop not going to stop not stopping now it endures forever toward israel yeah pretty bold confession yeah and this this has to be leaning this sort of confession has to lean pretty hard on god the promises that god has made because it doesn't look like that right now yeah this picture the scene so you're you know jerusalem is in bad shape and we're not we're not told a lot of a lot of this now but the walls are not

rebuilt you got no protection the temple i mean i mean you kind of get in the foundation laid but i'm guessing everything it's like you're living in a city that's got a lot of rubble i mean probably there was because the city had not been rebuilt yet right uh you're you got the altar made so you're sort of in a place that probably looks like like a half-finished city, you know, it was a war zone 70 years before this or 80 years before this, whatever. So you're standing in the midst of this

and you're singing with this great boldness, he is good, and his steadfast love endures forever. Yeah. Now you are going to get like a little bit of a different reaction. It's not different, it's not contrary or opposed to this reaction, but there are going to be some old-timers, right?

And this is a pretty big deal for them, probably something that they thought they would never see. Yeah, and when you say old-timers, you mean old-timers, because a lot of time has gone by. So some of these people who are there are going to be ones who actually laid their eyes, no doubt as pretty young children, on the original temple. so it says after that quote about his steadfast love all the people shouted with a great shout when they praised the lord because the foundation of the house of the lord was laid but many of the priests and levites and head of fathers houses old men who had seen the first house wept with a loud voice when they saw the foundation of this house being laid so you got that going on and then it goes on to say though many shouted aloud for joy so the people couldn't distinguish the sound of

the joyful shout from the sound of the people's weeping for the people shouted with a great shout and the sound was heard was heard far away yeah yeah you got it you got a mixed response it seems that this is weeping over something that you just never thought you would see again you know and uh if you're young younger person you know to say the younger response is to be excited and that kind of stuff and if you're if you're older and you gotta think these guys are like you said these guys are old probably won't ever see this thing fully built this is probably as far as this goes for them yeah yeah well as we'll see in the next chapter there's going to be a significant delay yeah so they'll probably never see it finished but uh i mean there's no interpretation given

of why they wept with a loud voice i mean i have heard this explained that they were as they were weeping because they realized that the structure was not going to be as impressive as the one that was destroyed i don't know that that can be really ascribed as a motivation here uh it seemed like the weeping could be coming from a lot of different a lot of different uh reasons i don't i don't i don't see that you just mentioned i don't see i think that if um if my house burnt down and i lived in a hotel for three months and as they cleared away all the debris and then me and my wife went out and uh she saw the the footing laid for the house to be rebuilt she would probably cry oh yeah yeah i think it's that i think it's that kind of thing

i mean imagine that but now amp it up a whole bunch i mean you're talking about something like way way bigger deal than that that's how i read it i don't read it as like oh this isn't going to be as good i just think it's a this is a response of uh of something it's because there's a return like when you're going back it's one thing to go back to the land it's another thing to say you know what like we were holding out hope that like we weren't completely abandoned that we weren't going to like to be we would not become just absorbed up into our captors cultures and into this entirely different people group and for for israel having the temple is a very key part of their identity and you're getting to see the beginnings of like are we gonna are we

actually going to get all that back? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's a signal of hope, of bright hope for them. So yeah, the people are together. That's great. They're back in their land. That's great. Got the altar built. That's great too. But to kind of make this come full circle, you need the whole temple. I mean, this is a big part of the unfolding plan of salvation. So it makes sense. I mean, how many times in life, I mean, I can say this for sure. I've, I've, I've wept not because I'm sad because I'm just overcome with elation because something happened I didn't think was going to happen. Yeah. So the tears aren't because I'm sad. The tears are just a, an expression of, uh, just uncontrollable joy and maybe relief because of the way, the way events transpired. So I think

you kind of got, you got tears, like we talk about tears of joy, right? So you got, uh, you got these tears of joy of relief of of hope all this is going on uh kind of a big emotional mix of of things in these these verses that close out chapter three so great great for the people of israel they're making making good progress uh now you can sometimes you're if you're watching tv you're watching a movie you're watching a series like when things get going really well you know and Everything kind of seems to be good. You know what's going to happen, right? You know.

All of a sudden, something bad is going to come. It's inevitable. You can kind of feel it coming. That's kind of where we're at now. Especially if you've got a handful of episodes left. You're like, clearly, something bad is going to happen. I've still got four episodes left. These things are going way too good.

And you've got a lot of books left, so I don't think it's ending here. yeah it's the same thing here so i mean all all great uh to the end of chapter three everybody's back everybody's organized getting some getting some building materials pulled together got that altar built uh everything's great and then chapter four rolls around so we're going to hear about some uh adversaries now and i wonder if the closing of chapter three by the way is like uh kind of uh winking at us the sound was heard far away so it's almost like the the ears of the enemies kind of pricked when they when they heard this and like oh what's going on jerusalem we better just go check that out so it starts out the adversaries of judah and benjamin of course

those are the two main tribes that that remained uh so when these adversaries heard that the returned exiles were building a temple to the Lord, the God of Israel, they approached Zerubbabel and the heads of the father's houses and said to them, let us build with you because we worship your God as you do. In fact, we've been sacrificing to him ever since the days of Esarhaddon, king of Assyria who brought us here so um yeah this is this is a pretty fascinating section so if uh in it in it I will say this up front I know we're kind of pausing to go through this but it is important I think to kind of take this whole whole chapter in it's it's it can be kind of a historically confusing chapter Ezra chapter four uh because there's gonna be a whole lot that's

kind of thrown at us in this chapter in fact it's kind of a uh a telescopic view of history because there's going to be we're going to hear about okay this this offer and in just a minute we're going to hear about the the rejection of the offer and then we're going to hear about uh all the various problems that the adversaries of israel caused over the reign of like three or four different uh persian kings so when you're reading through as before as you're listening to it keep in mind that some of the stuff that's presented here can be a little bit uh a little bit difficult historically to put together but what the author has done is he's compressed a lot into this one chapter not just uh one letter for instance it was written to try and stop this but another letter

and he's kind of pulled all this together he's like got a bunch of resources in front of him that's kind of where you can picture this so he's a historian and he's writing long after these events. And he wants to kind of give us, the reader, a picture of the opposition that these people faced when they were trying to kind of get things going again. And so he's going to throw a whole lot of things at us. He's going to quote some letters. He's going to tell us about this and whatnot. So I say that because the context is going to help us to understand why when this this group came forward and said hey we want to help you why the israelites said thanks but no thanks because this was judging by what happens afterward this was this was by far kind of a uh

a sincere offer to help on the part of those who share the exact same theology as the israelites did because when you just kind of read it up front this is the way i one of the reasons i'm kind of stressing this because this is the way that i used to read it i used to think god these guys were uh they were just offering to help so why why were these people kind of jerks to them you know rejected it but so i think it's important to kind of keep all that in mind as we as we proceed through here yeah they might have some like you know awareness of uh other people groups and their gods uh didn't serve us well and even though these people are saying they worship the same god god seems to be like wanting to be worshipped in a very particular way not just

sort of acknowledge like this seems like a risky proposition here like we don't we we really really need to do this on our own i mean there could be some of that in there yeah i think i think a lot of the stuff that we see happening in ezra and nehemiah is a reaction a very careful a very calculated reaction to what brought the israelites to where they are now so you know if if if they're looking at their own history um and they're like you can kind of think of it this way so uh if i'm sitting here and i'm looking at my my life and then i look at what happened with my dad and my granddad and my my great granddad and i'm thinking you know uh the mistakes that he made and that he he made and that he made kind of brought me to the situation which i find myself now you know

and i'm not saying this is true in my own life i'm just gonna kind of theoretically then you'd be like well i want to make sure i don't repeat the mistakes of that generation right yeah because i see where that led that's kind of where the israelites are now they're looking back they're like wow if you look from david all the way to the last king of the south you can kind of see how a bunch of really bad decisions had some really bad and lasting impacts upon us as a people so that we ended up in exile well now that we're back now that exile is over now that we have another chance here to kind of regroup and rebuild let's make sure and be extra careful not to do the same stupid stuff that our forefathers did so yeah that's part of what's

going on here and yeah i think these these groups that came in they're probably uh yeah i i don't doubt that they've been sacrificing to yahweh uh and they've been worshiping yahweh this entire time but i also suspect they were worshiping him as a god within a pantheon right as did most of these people yeah sure yeah we're we're fine with worshiping yahweh was we'll also we'll add him alongside our long list of other gods and goddesses so anyway they they offer to to do this But, verse 3, Zerubbabel, Yeshua, and the rest of the heads of fathers' houses in Israel said to them, You have nothing to do with us in building a house to our God. Notice the pronoun there.

You have nothing to do with us in building a house to our God, but we alone will build to the Lord, the God of Israel, as King Cyrus, the king of Persia, has commanded us. Yeah, I feel like that part's added as a little bit of a, he told, hey, we're going to do this. You're not going to do this. And we're going to do this all by ourselves. Just like the king of Persia, you know, Cyrus the Great told us to. So it seems like a little bit of a, don't push this issue, man. Or like, you know, getting ideas about trying to stop us. Or like, there's a guy with a huge stick standing behind us.

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. if you have any questions talk to the king kind of kind of situation now i i love the next verse verse four uh because it is so consistent with uh not only with humanity but with biblical history itself so all this was almost sort of a setup so you get these people they're they came back to jerusalem they're doing all this stuff they're uh laying the foundation of the temple and even when these other guys come in they say no no no no we and we alone are going to build build this temple yeah a lot of seal a lot of confidence i mean like yeah you got to really be feeling it

if you're going to start declining help like i mean you think you think you are on the on the fast track to temple worship man yeah yeah and then you read verse four then the people of the land so the these adversaries and whatnot the people of the land discouraged the people of judah and made them afraid to build and bribed counselors against them to frustrate their purpose all the days of Cyrus, king of Persia, and even until the reign of Darius, king of Persia. Now, the reason this is sort of a setup is because I think this is so,

it's almost predictably consistent with what we've seen over and over and over. So just this morning as I was working my way through this, I was thinking of all the instances that we've seen so far leading up to this where you've got either a chosen person or a chosen group like Israel and they alternate between on the one hand having this zeal or God giving them this promise or them agreeing to keep the terms of the covenant or whatever it might be and then bam you turn around and the next thing you know they're not doing it or they're breaking the covenant or they're

falling flat in their face i mean adam obviously but look at noah noah's given god promises kind of the covenant he's establishing the whole rainbow and everything in chapter chapter eight chapter nine you have you have noah getting drunk you have the curse all of that all that coming abraham get covenant of circumcision genesis 17 the very next chapter he's lying about sarah being his wife again so one right after the other i mean israel is a basic best example of this When they're at the foot of Mount Sinai, God gives them the 10 words. They're like, yeah, everything you've said we're going to do. And then the next thing you know, golden calf.

David, given the promise that one of his sons is going to sit in the throne in 2 Samuel 7, 2 Samuel 11, everything falls apart with Bathsheba and Uriah. So I think the same thing's happening here. You kind of alternate between what seems to be this great human zeal and they're going to get it done. And the next thing you know, all because of some fear or discouragement or whatever, they stop. And I think the lesson in that is that built into that is the fact that it's going to take more than human zeal. It's going to take more than a declaration of devotion. that's going to take a whole lot more than people are ever going to be able to muster on their own to actually keep the terms of covenant and to accomplish what God wants to be accomplished.

All of this is kind of implicitly telling us, hey, we need something more than what we can supply. And of course, the supply is going to eventually come when salvation history reaches its goal in Christ. He comes to do what nobody else had ever done before him. He actually keeps the law. He actually is able to do, in every area of God's will, what everybody else before him was unable to do. So the failures, as it were, in an unexpected sort of way, the failures of these people throughout history are preaching the need for Christ to come and to do what we could never do on our own. Yeah, I think it's also important to note that, I mean, it wasn't as though God, you know, said, go back to the land and rebuild the temple. They're not on a mission from God here to do this thing, right? This is something they want to do, and it might be a fine thing to do, and Cyrus is okay with them doing it, and they're going to try to go do this stuff.

But we haven't heard a lot from God in this book so far, right? Now, there's some references to a prophecy of Jeremiah and this kind of stuff, but it's not as though you have somebody, you know, you don't have this, and thus saith the Lord, go rebuild the temple, set the footing here, you know, these kind of instructions and stuff. There is a zeal of man to try to do something for God that gets frustrated, which that's how that usually goes. Yeah, yeah.

and we're going to hear uh i think it's the next chapter uh chapter five about some prophets who come in are going to to encourage the people but at this point at this point they're uh the purposes are frustrated and it just it's a demonstration that zeal zeal is great uh be zealous for the lord uh all that but also realize that's only going to get you so far you need much more much more than that does it seem to like i mean i don't know like this might just be because you know the whole book or something you know and by the book i mean the whole bible at first when god is talking about tabernacles and temples and he's giving all these things he seems super into it and he's like and he's painting he wants to get this stuff done so he can paint all these

pictures about what is going to come god seems like he gets less and less interested in such things yeah well you already pick up on that in jeremiah yeah uh jeremiah's got that line about don't think that you can like go and do whatever you want you know go go through jerusalem killing people and uh and abusing the poor and committing adultery and stealing and doing all this and then run back and say the temple of the lord the temple of the lord the temple of the lord like that's gonna like it's some kind of talisman that's gonna protect you so there is a you do kind of begin to pick up on yeah maybe you could call it a disenchantment on the part of god he's like yeah the people really seem to be uh abusing my house he's getting closer he's getting closer

and closer to that day where he's like i'm gonna scrape this thing off the side of a cliff yeah yeah and it's never been rebuilt yeah which is also pretty uh uh i think it's revelatory that The temple was never rebuilt after 70 A.D. God was done with it. Yes. I mean, it was done with it in the incarnation of Jesus, but he was definitely done with it in 70 A.D. Yeah, he's done with it when he straight looks at it

and tells the disciples, hey, if you have a little bit of faith, I mean, like a tiny, tiny, tiny little mustard seed of faith, you can say to that mountain right there, be cast into the sea. I mean, like what he's saying, if you're wondering what that whole thing means, this is not about have enough faith to move mountains. That's not what it's about.

God isn't looking for mountains to be rearranged. What he's saying is that with a little bit of faith, you don't need any of this. You can just throw the whole thing away. You see that stuff right out of the mouth of Jesus. He's looking at the temple. You see him when he's getting a whip in the temple and doing all kinds of stuff.

Those days are over. I think at this point, i mean you're going to have them the prophets encourage them and that kind of stuff but yeah it definitely seems that god is like this is a short-term thing yeah i know when uh i was on my mind when i was when i was in jerusalem uh you know you go there you stand the mount of olives you look across you can see the temple mount uh you see the you know the moss that's built uh on the temple mount you see you know some of some of the walls and we stood there on the steps the original steps went up to the to the temple and it's great i mean a wonderful

experience uh but it's also a very vivid reminder that all that stuff is done yeah i mean it's one of the uh one of the takeaways so like when i looked at it i wasn't like uh oh it's so sad you know that the temple was destroyed and yeah all this all this stuff uh for me it was just a reminder that yeah all this stuff is uh you know when you're done with something you put it on the shelf you it's you don't need it again or you throw it away or you do whatever uh god doesn't need that mountain anymore i mean jesus said it in john 4 talking with the woman at the at the well in samaria there's coming a time he says and in fact it's it's here now when it's not about worshiping on a mountain where the jews have their temple it's not about worshiping at mount

Gerizim, where you Samaritans once had your temple. It's not about any particular mountain at all. So when you, when you go to Jerusalem and you see that stuff and you think about the destruction and you're standing on these old stones where people used to go up to worship and don't anymore, it's like, well, yeah, all that, all that served its purpose. It was great. I mean, I'm very thankful for the tabernacle and the temple that it all served its purpose, but in the purposes of god it also came to the end with uh the coming of christ and the sacrifice that that he offered and the fact that uh we are living stones in the body of his of his temple now and so any physical structure like a temple where sacrifices are offered null and void done

away with long long ago yeah yeah i think i'd stand there and be like man i'm glad i don't have come here once a year it's a long trip yeah it's a long trip for sure yeah so next time we'll get into um um more of kind of the way this looked so we're going to hear about uh some accusations that were leveled against the jews uh we're gonna hear about some uh some letters that were written by some some of their adversaries uh in which they just made up a bunch of stuff about uh the motives of the people who are building the temple and the city and we'll see the outcome of that all right sounds good man well i will see you next week all right see you then