Year 5, Day 41: Ezra 3

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Up

• Up: Up is the word we use for what we worship.  If we are following God’s will, God will occupy the Up position.  Our life, our identity, our mission, our family on mission is all derived from Up.  This is why God needs to be in our Up position.

It is easy to get a sense of the Up that was felt by the returning exiles coming out of Persia.  Ezra is a book that should naturally feel to us like a people starving for Up.  So how do we see that in Ezra 3?  It is most clear in that one of the first things that is built with respect to Jerusalem is the altar.  The people want a place to worship God.

I think that this is a difficult perspective for us to imagine.  Remember that these people were plucked from their homes about 70 years prior by the Babylonians.  (The people of Israel were plucked about 150 years prior to the people of Judah, too!)  They had gone several generations away from their homeland.  They had gone several generations away from their ability to offer sacrifice to the Lord.  They had god several generations without a proper worship time.  They had gone several generations without the assurance of the atonement that comes through the sacrifice.

Can you imagine?  Imagine going several generations without being able to worship.  Imagine going several generations without being able to hear about forgiveness with any kind of assurance.  Imagine a community where most of the religious people around you can’t even remember what worship looks like and feels like.

Can there be any wonder that the people built the altar first and worshipped God first?

I know I can take much from this chapter.  I can’t imagine going a day without seeing a church, much less going more than two weeks without being inside one.  I can’t imagine going several generations!  It is easy for me to take God – and my Up – for granted.  It is too easy to take God for granted.  I rejoice today that because we have Christ, I don’t have to go more than a few seconds without being reassured of God’s forgiveness and love.  Now that deserves the worship of God!

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