To Whom Much Is Given
Text: Ezra 8: 24-36
Proposition: That God would entrust into our hands enormous temporal and eternal spiritual wealth for the building of His kingdom is both a blessing of great responsibility and a concern that requires daily caution.
Introduction: Ezra was about to lead the second wave of 5000 people back to Israel, almost 70 years of captivity in Babylon have been completed. Just as they begin the trip he gathers them by the river of Ahava to pray and fast for three days. They were being entrusted with considerable wealth to transport to Jerusalem, Ezra had over 1800 key leaders for the future of Israel with him. There is a picture here of how we too are picked to be the guardians of a great hope, of how we too are about to set out on the next leg of our journey. There is a picture here of the great riches of God in Christ Jesus that have been entrusted to each of us as we too have come from a place of captivity and are headed home. Let’s read Ezra 8:21 -36.
I. Into the Hands of Many Vision Was Built.
Ezra has 12 priests come to him and he shares with them the valuable things they are about to transport to Jerusalem. The intriguing part here is that Ezra does not put this under one treasurer or keeper of the wealth. He portions it out to 12 priests of Israel and entrusts each to bear its responsibility well. You can imagine what this might have looked like when you consider the amount of wealth detailed in verses 25,26. It’s been said that a talent was a measure of weight equal to about 75 pounds so the amount of silver was over 24 tons, that meant 2 tons of silver were entrusted to each priest. The gold weighed over 4 tons meaning each person was responsible for at least 600 pounds of gold. In addition to these were the other valuable objects for the Temple. What do you suppose would be the benefit of such an investing strategy? Would each protect their part with more creativity and diligence than any treasurer could? Would each leader in turn select other leaders who were also entrusted to carry this responsibility? Would this be an effective strategy to hide so great a responsibility that any prying eyes would only see one group of people winding along on their journey? What if the choice of 12 leaders came as a result of the three days of fasting and prayer when Ezra had called out to God asking Him to show them the right way for the possessions and people to be able to arrive safely in Jerusalem (8:21)? If that is indeed the case, then the strategy belongs to God as it comes as answered prayer. And we can’t really stop there, would God indeed use a strategy where He entrusts great responsibility into the hands of 12, and if so, why? The first part is easy to answer, we just look at Jesus and the 12 disciples that He chose. Though 12 seems like a small number for such a great task it was perfect to accomplish what God intended. In fact we’ve been copying that model ever since. In time we use 12 in months and 12 hours to mark time. In mathematics 12 is the smallest number capable of being divided by 6 other numbers; in technology there are 12 function keys on every keyboard, 12 dialing buttons on every numeric phone pad; in music 12 is the number of pitch classes in an octave; in art there 12 basic hues in the color wheel; even anatomically, there are 12 pairs of ribs in every person, 12 cranial nerves in our brain and on and on. When Jesus picked 12 men to be His disciples He invested into each of them the truth of Who He is and then He sent the Holy Spirit to secure that investment of faith in each one who believes in Jesus as the One who can bring forgiveness of sin. What’s the point? God entrusts much into the hands of few. We need to be faithful in what He’s given us, we need to see what He has entrusted us with and seek His wisdom for how we are to best see it arrive safely at the destination point. Jesus is the One upon whom our faith rests, in the sufficiency of His blood alone as the sacrifice for our sins, we collectively carry to our Jerusalem, the New Jerusalem of eternity, that which He has entrusted to us. How we are to do that will require the vision that we are about to seek from the Lord. We’ll talk about that process in just a minute.
II. We Are Holy, What We Carry Is Holy, Both Belong to the Lord.
Have a look at verses 28, “And I said to them, “You are holy to the LORD; the articles are holy also; and the silver and the gold are a freewill offering to the LORD God of your fathers.” Ezra reminds these leaders that they are holy to the Lord, that is he reminds them that God sees them as different from the rest. They have been assigned a special role, they have a holy identity, they have before them a mission. Then Ezra reminds them that what they are entrusted with is also viewed in the eyes of God as being different. It has been dedicated to a special use, the revealing of the glory of God. It will be useful only for that and especially for that, it is therefore called holy. Then the command is given to them, “Watch and keep these things until you weigh them…in the chambers of the house of the Lord.” In other words, guard what you have been given for you will not only return it but it will be weighed on the scales to determine its actual value. These leaders took this instruction very seriously. The journey they were about to begin would take more than four months and at the end all would be weighed out as a proof of their faithfulness. These are the historical details, let me now shift this to another level.
Did God the Father assign a special role to Jesus, an identity as the Redeemer, a mission of salvation through sacrifice? Did Jesus have entrusted to Him something that was holy, that was especially designed to reveal the glory of God? Is this what the incarnation was, the assigning to Jesus of a body born of a virgin, a body without sin meant for the glory of God in the work of redemption? In Hebrews 10:5 it says, “Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, but a body You have prepared for Me…”.
Did Jesus use His body to help us to see more of Who God really is? The blood and body of Jesus were holy to the Lord, that is, it had a separate purpose, a purpose that it was especially intended for, the perfect purpose of the cross. Jesus kept watch over His body and His soul in perfect obedience that He could bring His body and His person, sinless and ready, to the Temple. We could say that at the cross it was proven, it was weighed out and the value of His body and blood perfectly met what God required for the penalty of sin.
When Jesus had risen from the dead, when He had by the provision of the Father completed the dangerous journey through death, then Jesus said to us, “Follow Me.” He entrusted the call to 12 and they have been instructed of God to issue that same call to us here. We are a holy people, we have been entrusted with holy things and we will account for them by a fine measure of weights. I believe that the vision we are about to uncover for how to manage these holy things we have been entrusted with will be found through a prayer and fasting that seeks to lay hold of the very things that Jesus loves. For the next weeks let’s seek His will and vision for this church.
Seven Things That Jesus Loves
Jesus loves the Father
Jesus loves the Word of Scripture, truth
Jesus loves the lost, sinners, rebels, His enemies
Jesus loves the least, little children
Jesus loves the lonely, widows and orphans
Jesus loves the unlovely, beggars, lepers, the blind, the outcasts
Jesus loves the church, the Body of Christ