Temple – Michelle Lesley

Wednesday’s Word ~ Haggai 1

May 18, 2016May 16, 2016 Michelle Lesley

Haggai 1

In the second year of Darius the king, in the sixth month, on the first day of the month, the word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai the prophet to Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest: ²“Thus says the Lord of hosts: These people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the Lord.” ³Then the word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai the prophet, ⁴“Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins? ⁵Now, therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways. ⁶You have sown much, and harvested little. You eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And he who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes.

⁷“Thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways. ⁸Go up to the hills and bring wood and build the house, that I may take pleasure in it and that I may be glorified, says the Lord. ⁹You looked for much, and behold, it came to little. And when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why? declares the Lord of hosts. Because of my house that lies in ruins, while each of you busies himself with his own house.¹⁰Therefore the heavens above you have withheld the dew, and the earth has withheld its produce.¹¹And I have called for a drought on the land and the hills, on the grain, the new wine, the oil, on what the ground brings forth, on man and beast, and on all their labors.”

¹²Then Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, and Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, with all the remnant of the people, obeyed the voice of the Lord their God, and the words of Haggai the prophet, as the Lord their God had sent him. And the people feared the Lord. ¹³Then Haggai, the messenger of the Lord, spoke to the people with the Lord‘s message, “I am with you, declares the Lord.” ¹⁴And the Lord stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua the son of Jehozadak, the high priest, and the spirit of all the remnant of the people. And they came andworked on the house of the Lord of hosts, their God, ¹⁵on the twenty-fourth day of the month, in the sixth month, in the second year of Darius the king.

Questions to Consider:

1. What is the purpose of the book of Haggai? Which genre(s) of biblical literature (prophecy, epistle, narrative, wisdom, etc.) is the book of Haggai? What is the historical backdrop for this book?

2. What was the people’s position on rebuilding the temple? (2) Did God agree with them? What did God say about the priority of rebuilding the temple? (3-4) Read Acts 7:48-50. If God doesn’t need a building to live in, why was it so important to Him, and to the people, that they rebuild the temple? What are the two reasons God gave for rebuilding the temple? (8)

3. List the negative consequences the people experienced for neglecting to rebuild the temple. (6,9,10-11) What reason did God give for sending these negative consequences (9), and what was their intended purpose? What does God mean when He says, “Consider your ways,” in verse 5? In verse 7?

4. What were the two ways the people responded to the prophecy? (12) What were the two ways God responded back to them? (13-14) How is this similar to God’s response to our repentance? How would the words “restoration” and “reconciliation” apply in both this passage and in our repentance today?

5. What does this passage teach us about prioritizing our relationship with Christ, and our obedience to His word, above all other temporal concerns and activities? What can we learn about the negative consequences of sin? Has God ever used the negative consequences of sin to get your attention and draw you to repentance? What is God’s response to our repentance and obedience?

Wednesday's Word

Wednesday’s Word ~ Ezra 3

October 21, 2015June 23, 2021 Michelle Lesley

For further study on the book of Ezra, try my study, Ezra.

ezra 3 11

Ezra 3

When the seventh month came, and the children of Israel were in the towns, the people gathered as one man to Jerusalem. ²Then arose Jeshua the son of Jozadak, with his fellow priests, and Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel with his kinsmen, and they built the altar of the God of Israel, to offer burnt offerings on it, as it is written in the Law of Moses the man of God. ³They set the altar in its place, for fear was on them because of the peoples of the lands, and they offered burnt offerings on it to the Lord, burnt offerings morning and evening. ⁴And they kept the Feast of Booths, as it is written, and offered the daily burnt offerings by number according to the rule, as each day required, ⁵and after that the regular burnt offerings, the offerings at the new moon and at all the appointed feasts of the Lord, and the offerings of everyone who made a freewill offering to the Lord. ⁶From the first day of the seventh month they began to offer burnt offerings to the Lord. But the foundation of the temple of the Lord was not yet laid. ⁷So they gave money to the masons and the carpenters, and food, drink, and oil to the Sidonians and the Tyrians to bring cedar trees from Lebanon to the sea, to Joppa, according to the grant that they had from Cyrus king of Persia.

⁸Now in the second year after their coming to the house of God at Jerusalem, in the second month, Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel and Jeshua the son of Jozadak made a beginning, together with the rest of their kinsmen, the priests and the Levites and all who had come to Jerusalem from the captivity. They appointed the Levites, from twenty years old and upward, to supervise the work of the house of the Lord.⁹And Jeshua with his sons and his brothers, and Kadmiel and his sons, the sons of Judah, together supervised the workmen in the house of God, along with the sons of Henadad and the Levites, their sons and brothers.

¹⁰And when the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord, the priests in their vestments came forward with trumpets, and the Levites, the sons of Asaph, with cymbals, to praise the Lord, according to the directions of David king of Israel. ¹¹And they sang responsively, praising and giving thanks to the Lord,

“For he is good,
for his steadfast love endures forever toward Israel.”

And all the people shouted with a great shout when they praised the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. ¹²But many of the priests and Levites and heads 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, though many shouted aloud for joy, ¹³so that the people could not 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 far away.

Questions to Consider:

1. The book of Ezra deals with the second wave (out of three) of Israelites returning from exile in Persia after the destruction of Jerusalem. Why was it important to them (3) to set up the altar? Why did they begin keeping the feasts and offering sacrifices before the temple was rebuilt?

2. What was the Feast of Booths (4), and which event in Israel’s history did it commemorate? What are some similarities between the Exodus and Israel’s recent return from exile which might have made this celebration of the Feast of Booths especially meaningful for the people? Which attributes of God are on display in both the Exodus and the return from exile?

3. Why would it have been important for the Levites (8) to supervise the work on the temple? How does this show the people’s reverence for God’s house and their desire to do things “decently and in order“?

4. Try to put yourself in the shoes of the average Israelite in verses 10-11. Think about what your experience in exile might have been like and how you might feel finally back, free, in your homeland. Now, the temple is at last being rebuilt so you can worship God – maybe for the first time in your life – in the place and the way He intended. What emotions might you be experiencing? What sorts of things might you be praising God for? Take some time to thank God for some specific things about your own church.

5. For what reasons might the old men have been weeping? (12-13) How could both tears and joy be proper expressions of worship in this passage and in worship today? What gives you joy in worship? What brings you to tears when you worship?

Law- Old Testament, New Testament, Sunday School

Woe is We ~ Sunday School Lesson ~ 11-9-14

November 9, 2014April 5, 2019 Michelle Lesley

These are my notes from my ladies’ Sunday School class this morning. I’ll be posting the notes from my class here each week. Click here for last week’s lesson.

Through the Bible in 2014 ~ Week 45 ~ Nov. 2-8
Luke 18:15-21:38, Mark 11-13, John 12, Matthew 22-25
Woe Is We

Matthew 23

Background:
The Pharisees* were the movers and shakers in Jewish religious life. They held positions of authority in the Sanhedrin (Jewish governing council) and temple, and generally concerned themselves with keeping and enforcing what they perceived to be proper law and order within Judaism.

The main problem with the Pharisees (as Jesus so often, and rightly, pointed out) was that they had added hundreds of their own laws on top of God’s laws and equated the keeping of their laws with the keeping of God’s laws. We often look back through history and chide them for this (sometimes deservedly, sometimes hypocritically), but let’s keep something in mind: they had seen what disobedience to God’s law had caused. Warfare, siege, starvation, bloodshed, exile. It was horrific. But instead of seeking to love God with all their hearts and obey Him out of that love, they started “double fencing.” If God put up a “no trespassing” fence around, say, working on the Sabbath (doing your regular job/work instead of resting and worshiping), the Pharisees backed up about 100 yards and put up an additional fence to make sure you wouldn’t break that law. You couldn’t walk more than a certain number of steps- that might lead to working. You couldn’t rub grain in your hands to hull it and eat it (Luke 6:1-2)- that was too much like working.

One of the things Jesus was trying to show people, including the Pharisees, was that a right relationship with God was about loving Him, not rule-keeping. This scared the Pharisees. It probably sounded too loosey-goosey. They were afraid that if Israel didn’t maintain strict adherence to the law, anarchy would break out and result in an even harsher judgment from God than they had previously experienced. And since Jesus was spearheading this movement away from the heavy burden of Pharisaical law, the Pharisees wanted to get rid of Him.

As we approach chapter 23, the Pharisees’ approach to getting rid of Jesus had been largely passive aggressive instead of direct. Hoping to show Jesus for the blasphemer they thought He was, they spent most of chapter 22 trying to trick Him into saying something they could nail Him on. Taxes, the resurrection of the dead (that was actually the Sadducees), the greatest Commandment. They couldn’t seem to trip Him up. Jesus, having answered all their thinly veiled questions, turns the tables on the Pharisees, and manfully addresses them, and their sin, directly, pulling no punches.

Intro to Woe (23:1-12)
Jesus prefaces what he is about to say to the scribes and Pharisees by addressing the disciples and the gathered crowd. He wants to make sure the people understand that there is a difference between God’s law, which is good, and the Pharisees’ perversion of God’s law, which is bad. The people were to keep God’s law as it was presented in Scripture (3), not as it had been built upon by the Pharisees. Furthermore, whatever good motive the Pharisees might have started out with in making all these extra laws (i.e. keeping the people from breaking God’s law), their motive had now morphed into attention and honor-seeking (3-7). They were no longer motivated by a genuine concern for God’s people and holiness, but by a desire for accolades and prominence. Jesus wanted the people to be careful not to fall into that trap themselves (8-10), especially the disciples, who would soon be heading up the New Testament church. They were to humble themselves and serve those they shepherded, not become “celebrity pastors.”

Woes 1&2 (13-15, Luke 3:8, Genesis 15:6)
It’s interesting that the Pharisees were so proud of their Abrahamic heritage (“We have Abraham for our father…” Luke 3:8) but they forgot what God declared to be the theme of Abraham’s life- righteousness through faith, not law-keeping:

And he [Abraham]believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness. Genesis 15:6

The Pharisees were believing and teaching a false doctrine of righteousness by works, not faith. They were teaching this both to the Jews under their care (13) and to any Gentiles who might be seeking the one true God (15). False doctrine, even if it sounds good and holy to the ear, even if it seems to be “Bible-ish,” even if it’s being preached by someone in religious authority, sends people to Hell. Jesus says so right here. The only gospel that saves is the one Jesus preached, the one that is true to God’s word.

Woe 3 (16-22, Matthew 5:34, Exodus 20:16, Proverbs 12:22, John 14:6)
These days, nobody seems to give a second thought to saying, “I swear to God,” to make people believe them, even when they’re lying. People place their hands on a Bible in court, swear to tell the truth, and then perjure themselves, fearing only the legal consequences, not the spiritual. The Pharisees were a little more concerned that God might zap them if they used His name to convince someone of their honesty, all the while deceiving him. Their deceitfulness was so pervasive that they had devised a list of things they could swear by that wouldn’t bring down God’s wrath even if they were lying. But they were only deceiving themselves. It didn’t matter what they swore by, because everything belongs to God and is under His control. God’s command is not to lie (Ex.). Period. He says that “lying lips are an abomination” (Pr.) The God who says, “I am THE TRUTH,” (Jn.) wants us to be so in love with truth that truth is all we speak, rather than seeing how many lies we can get away with.

Woe 4 (23-24)
The tithe didn’t really cover these tiny little herbs, but the Pharisees dutifully measured out a tenth of everything to show their righteousness. But they were so focused on the metrics of righteousness that they had lost the heart of righteousness. That’s why we see them, in several instances, not rejoicing that a blind or crippled person had been healed, but chastising Jesus for healing the person on the Sabbath. Notice that Jesus didn’t say they were wrong to tithe, only that they should not have forgotten to love and serve their neighbors while doing so. Their religion had become a rigid skeleton of laws and regulations, do’s and don’t’s. No heart, no flesh.

This is one that so many churches today are guilty of without even realizing it. When we focus on man-made rules and traditions to the extent that we don’t notice the people we’re trampling on in the process, or we cannot help people because we’ve backed ourselves into a corner with our own rules (and please notice, I’m talking about man-made rules here, not strict adherence to sound doctrine, which is required by Scripture), we are doing exactly what Jesus was scolding the Pharisees for.

Woes 5&6 (25-28, 1 Samuel 16:7b)
1 Samuel 16:7b says:

For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”

And what Jesus saw in the Pharisees’ hearts was people who were dead (27) in their sins (25). They concerned themselves only with appearing righteous to others, not with the actual condition of their hearts. Because they were unsaved, the best the Pharisees could do was to put on a facade of holiness, and they worked hard to maintain that facade. Jesus tried to explain to them that if their hearts were right with God through faith, humility, and repentance, a righteous outward appearance would be a natural overflow of the righteousness inside. Righteousness isn’t about what we do, it’s about who we are in Christ. It isn’t about behaving like a good person, it’s about trusting in the only good Person who ever lived and having His goodness credited to our accounts.

Woe 7 (29-36)
Jesus is already pretty torqued, but you mess with His faithful servants, and He goes ballistic. Remember all the prophets we read about in our study of the Old Testament and the way many of them were treated? Many of them were murdered by God’s people simply for speaking God’s word to them. And here came the Pharisees, patting themselves on the back, decorating tombs, and saying, “Well, of course we would never have done such a thing.” Hogwash. They were already plotting to kill Jesus (in fact, by now, they had already tried stoning Him and throwing Him off a cliff), and they would go on to martyr 11 of the 12 apostles as well as others of Jesus’ followers in the early church era. Anybody who spoke the truth of God rather than what the Pharisees wanted to hear was in just as much danger as an unpopular Old Testament prophet.

Some Christians are very much the same today. They read the gospel accounts of the Pharisees plotting against, and crucifying, Jesus and think to themselves, “I would never do that,” but if a fellow Christian calls them to repent of obvious sin, or shows them that they’re following false doctrine or a false teacher, they immediately attack that person as “judging,” “unloving,” “divisive,” etc.

Whoa (37-39)
Christ’s public teaching ministry was over with this final diatribe. Having completed these seven woes, what is His tone? Is it angry? Condemning? No, it is sorrowful. One of the defining characteristics of Jesus is that, no matter how much we have sinned, He loves us. And, in the same way you can be absolutely furious with your child yet still love him, Jesus loved these Pharisees. It grieved Him that they preferred their sin of a fake relationship with God to a real relationship with God. God is not the cruel taskmaster the Pharisees’ endlessly burdensome law-keeping implied. In Christ, there is freedom from the yoke of the law– the freedom to love God and obey Him from the heart. That’s what Jesus wanted for the Pharisees. He didn’t want to punish them; He wanted to set them free. Free from duty and drudgery. Free from facades and fear. Free to rest in Christ and enjoy their Father rather than slaving away for Him.

And that’s what Jesus wants for us, too. He obeyed the Law perfectly for us so we wouldn’t have to (because we can’t). And when we trust that He did that for us, He gives us the righteousness that He earned with His law-keeping. Jesus sets us free from the need to strive, to try harder, to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. He sets us free to love and enjoy Him.

Whoa.

*Who Were the Sadducees and the Pharisees? by Got Questions?