Old Testament
Lesson
Ezra 3:10-13
“For he is good,
for his steadfast love endures forever towardIsrael .”
for his steadfast love endures forever toward
And
all the people responded with a great shout when they praised the Lord,
because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid.
12 But many of the priests and
Levites and heads of families, old people who had seen the first house on its
foundations, wept with a loud voice when they saw this house, though many
shouted aloud for joy, 13 so that the people could not
distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people’s
weeping, for the people shouted so loudly that the sound was heard far away.
New Testament
Lesson Hebrews 13:2-8
6 So we
can say with confidence,
“The Lord is my helper;
I will not be afraid.
What can anyone do to me?”
I will not be afraid.
What can anyone do to me?”
7 Remember
your leaders, those who spoke the word of God to you; consider the outcome of
their way of life, and imitate their faith. 8 Jesus
Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
In
Ezra, our Old Testament lesson for today, something interesting is going
on. Something exciting. They are rebuilding the temple. It was destroyed 66 years earlier, but now
they are rebuilding it and they have laid the foundation. So they have a great worship service. The priests are in their finest
vestments. The choirs are signing. The musicians are playing their instruments. The young are shouting with joy.
But
– the Bible says “many of the priests and Levites and
heads of families, old people who had seen the first house on its foundations,
wept with a loud voice when they saw this house.”
It is so easy for people to say, “Back
in my day – things were better. We had a
better temple. We had better music. We had better worship. We had better fellowship activities.”
Everything in life changes. We need to get used to that, and we should
rejoice at many of these changes.
You know what happens when an organization or an individual
refuses to change? It dies.
AT&T – anyone know what those
initials mean?
American Telephone and TELEGRAPH.
Telegraph?
Who sends telegraph messages today?
I have one telegram in my scrap book. I was 7 years old and a man came to the door
and when my Mom and I answered it, the man said, “Telegram for Master William
Maynard Pittendreigh.” It was from my
Dad sending me a birthday greeting from New
York because he had to be there on business on my
birthday.
No one sends telegrams anymore. Western Union
stopped in 2006.
And no one refers to little boys as “Master” so and so –
people haven’t done that in decades.
But AT&T – American Telephone and TELEGRAPH - is still a
large company, earning $42 billion in revenue in 2016. AT&T was founded in 1885, but it changed
and adapted. Along the way they understood
that they were not in the telegraph business but the COMMUNICATION
business. Instead of telegraph machines,
today they are into cable television, cell phones and internet technology.
They changed and adapted.
On the other hand, there is the Kodak
company.
Back in my day, Kodak ruled the
world’s photography culture. Back in my
day, I took photographs with a camera that held a roll of film. I would then take the film in my dark room
and developed the negatives. When the
negatives dried I put the negatives into an enlarger and projected an image on
paper, then dipped the paper into a developing solution then a solution of
fixer and let that paper dry.
Those days are gone. Very seldom does someone take pictures with
film. It’s all digital.
Today, I take a picture with my
telephone and in an instant I post it on Facebook and people all over the world
can see it.
Do you know what company invented the
digital camera?
Kodak.
But after they developed the digital
camera in 1975, the company dropped it because they were afraid of change. They felt threatened, so they tried to keep
change from happening. "Kodak's Last Days". nst.com. February 5, 2012. Retrieved March 14, 2012.
Kodak is still a good company, but it
is not the company it once was. In 1988
the company employed 145,000 people.
Today it is about 6,000. In 1999,
the value of its stock was $80, earlier this week it was about $9.
You can change, or die.
Things change in our families.
Change happens at work and in school.
Things even change in the church –
believe it or not!
In Ezra, things were changing for the community of
faith.
Without getting too bogged down in the history, let me give
you a brief summary.
The people of Judah
were invaded. They rebelled. They lost and were exiled in the land of
their invaders.
Decades go by.
The time comes when politics change, and the people of Judah
are beginning to be allowed to return home.
That brings us to the book of Ezra.
Big change!
The people who go back to Jerusalem find that it is not what they
expected. They grew up hearing stories
of this great Temple
of God , and they find it
destroyed. In the books of Ezra and
Nehemiah, the people begin the work to rebuild the Temple .
They could have easily sat back and done nothing about
rebuilding the Temple .
But they are willing to create change.
And as they rebuild the Temple ,
it is not the exact same thing as the former Temple .
It is new. It is ----- different.
And when the foundations are laid in our Old Testament
lesson, the younger people are thrilled, but the old dudes – they are in
tears.
They remember the way it used to be.
Oh the way it used to be.
The choir was so much better back then. Now they sing these new songs.
The
curtains look like this now, but back then they looked different.
Change!
How do you
deal with change?
First, accept it! Deal with it and move on!
In Ezra the
people did not have much time to settle in once they returned from Exile. They had about two months. Maybe three.
They could easily have said, “Wait, you ask me to help building the Temple , let me build my
house first. Let me put my children in
the best schools first. Let me get
adjusted to things. Then call me in 18
months and I’ll help rebuild the Temple .”
No – they
got right to work.
Earlier
this week, I was talking with someone about the book and the movie, “Hidden
Figures.”
That is the
story of some very smart folks who worked to put the first Americans in
space. They were human computers. Before the age of the IBM Computer, these
people had to do calculations with pencil and paper. The story is particularly interesting because
they were women and they were African American, and in the 1960s that meant
they had a lot of obstacles placed before them by an unfair society.
But they
overcame them.
One day,
one of the supervisors discovers that NASA is installing a new IBM
Computer. She knows that she will soon
become obsolete.
Change is
in the air!
She could
have sat back and accepted things without taking action, but no, she embraces
the change. She teaches herself computer
programming. She teaches this to all of
her team. So that when the change takes
place, they can work with computers.
They embrace the change and become part of it.
The second thing we can
learn from Ezra is that you can handle change best if God is in the midst of
the changes.
In Ezra,
the people in his day accept change by beginning with God. The first thing they did was to build the
altar. This meant they could make
sacrifices and have worship. They put
God first. They were not just building a
monument to the past, they were building a relationship with God.
Whatever
change comes in your life or to your church, put God first.
When
you see changes happening in your church, you might be inclined to reject it
because it is change! But put God
first. If it is God bringing the change,
you had better embrace that change. It
is one thing to resist change, but don’t be the one who resists God.
Same
thing with changes in your life.
Getting
married? Put God first.
Planning
retirement? Put God first.
Starting
college? Put God first.
A third thing we can learn about embracing change is
that it is important to have an unchanging anchor in your life.
In a world
in which everything is changing, you have to have some anchors in your life
that never change, that keep your life stable.
The problem
is that many of us pick the wrong anchor to hold onto.
For example, at one time, most
Christian churches sang only from the Book of Psalms. These were the divinely inspired hymns and
people refused to sing any other songs.
Then came Isaac Watts. He took the words of the Psalms and
rearranged them and created brand new songs.
“When I survey the Wondrous Cross,”
“Joy to the World,” “Alas! And did my Savior Bleed.”
The response of some churches was
division.
People wanted the old songs and
others wanted the new ones. The church was changing back in 1700, and the church
was changing. Music was changing!
And as in any time of change, people
needed some unchanging anchors to hold onto.
The problem is, many of them chose
the old music they had grown up with as the unchanging anchor.
Bad choice.
Music was changing whether they liked
it or not.
The only thing that does not change
is God.
Of course you need something in your
life that does not change – but the only thing in life that does not change is
God.
In the New Testament, Hebrews tells
us that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.
God never changes – so cling to God
and God alone as your anchor in the storms of change.
As for music, it changed. Some churches began to sing the songs of
Isaac Watts and other contemporary music of the 18th Century. Some churches held fast to the old music –
and where are they now? Can you find a
church that only sings songs from the Old Testament Book of Psalms? No.
They died out in my great grandfather’s time.
Change – it is difficult.
But you have to live with it. Because like it or not, things do change.
But in the midst of change, hang onto
God who never changes. Let God and God
alone be the stability in your life.
And now unto
God the Father,
God the Son,
And God the
Holy Spirit be ascribed all might, power, dominion and glory, today and
forever, Amen.
Copyright 2017.
Dr. W. Maynard Pittendreigh
All rights reserved
Ministers may feel free to use some or all of this sermon in
their own ministries as long as they do not publish in print or on the Internet
without ascribing credit to the author.