All right, Ezra chapter four,
we're just gonna look at the first six verses. And the title
of the message is Christ and the Purity of Grace. So I'm gonna
talk about purity. But I wanna make it clear from
the outset, the purity that I'm gonna talk about is not any kind
of a moral purity that would cause us to be self-righteous.
or as the Bible says, holier than thou, that we won't accept
sinners into the church to hear the gospel. The church is a hospital
for sinners. And that's what we are, we're
sinners saved by the grace of God in Christ. So we're not talking
about some kind of pharisaical purity. that causes us to self-righteously
set standards that we won't associate with certain people. Now, I know
there's certain places and environments that we ought to avoid, don't
get me wrong, but anybody's welcome into our church. If they're believers,
they're welcome into our fellowship. If they're unbelievers, they're
welcome in just to sit and hear the gospel and we pray for their
salvation. But it's kind of like, you know,
when the Pharisees, you know, when they were trying to criticize
the Lord and they would go to his disciples and they make this
statement, they'd say, your master eats with publicans and sinners. And that's so self-righteous. People they wouldn't associate
with. That's not what we're talking about here. What we're talking
about here is actually doctrinal purity. It's gospel purity. And it's what I call the purity
of God's grace. Now, it comes in, it's illustrated
here in Ezra chapter four. Look at the first two verses.
It says, now when the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that
the children of the captivity builded the temple under the
Lord God of Israel, Now, this is where, you remember Cyrus,
the king of Persia, had allowed the Israelites, the Jews, to
come out of captivity and go back into their land, and he
commissioned them to rebuild the city of Jerusalem, its walls,
and rebuild the temple. And when they got back and they
started rebuilding the temple, these adversaries of Judah and
Benjamin, now what these adversaries were were the Samaritans. Now
you remember when the Assyrian Empire destroyed the Northern
Kingdom and they scattered them around, it was established a
new order, you might say, of Jews who intermarried with Gentiles,
which they weren't supposed to do according to the law of Moses,
and that's what became the Samaritans. And in Samaria, they established
their own way of worship, which was against the worship that
God had prescribed. and they were adversaries of
Judah and Benjamin, and they heard that the children came
out of captivity, and I believe this is the way they referred
to these Jews, the children of the captivity, and they were
building a temple, and look at verse two. It says, then they
came to Zerubbabel, now Zerubbabel, remember he was the governor,
he was in the line of Judah, He was commissioned by the king
of Persia to be the governor of Judah. He wasn't officially
on the throne, but he was in the line of Judah. In fact, he's
mentioned, I mentioned this last week, Zerubbabel is mentioned
in the earthly line of Christ in Matthew and Luke, Matthew
one and Luke three. So they came to Zerubbabel and
they came to the chief of the fathers, these are the leaders
of the people, and said unto them, now listen to this, let
us build with you, For we seek your God as you do. And we do
sacrifice unto him since the days of Esarhaddon, king of Asher,
which brought us up hither." So they're saying, well, we worship
the same God. We're seeking the same God. Now
understand, this was not true. Now they may have really thought
in their minds that they were seeking and worshiping the same
God as the God of Israel, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
but they weren't. And one of the keys to this is
how they refer to God. Now back up in verse one, it
says that Jews were building, the children of the captivity
were building the temple unto the Lord God of Israel. Now that's
a title for God that means the God of salvation. That's what we transliterate
into our English language, Jehovah God, the Lord of all salvation,
the Lord God of Israel, the Lord God of all grace. But when these
adversaries, these Samaritans referred to God in verse two,
they used the term Elohim. That's the first term in Genesis,
you know, God created the heavens and the earth. And that's the
God of creation. In other words, they didn't refer
to him in his specific character as the God of salvation. It's
just like most people today, you know, well, God created all
things, and so we all worship the same God, they're saying.
Now, God is Elohim. That's the plural form, you know,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He is Elohim. But we who have
been saved by the grace of God in Christ, we know him in a more
intimate way. a way that he's revealed himself
to us as our heavenly father, a just God and a savior who saves
sinners like us based upon the righteousness of his son. That's
how we know him. And they didn't refer to him
that way. They just referred to him in a general way as the
God of creation. And they're saying, well, we
worship him like you do. Well, these Samaritans, They
had committed many offenses against the God of Israel, mainly what
I mentioned earlier, that they had intermarried with Gentiles,
and they took on these Gentile traits and ways and religions,
mixing their gods with what they thought was the worship of the
true God. And if you want to read about them, I've got it
marked here. It says 2 Kings 17, verses 25
through 41. It tells you about it. It tells
you about all the offenses they committed. at 2nd Kings 17, 25
through 41. And I've got a quote here from
2nd Kings 17, 33 that describes their attitude. And here's what
they said, what it says, they feared the Lord and served their
own gods. Now you hear that? They feared
the Lord. Now it's good to fear the Lord.
The Bible tells us that man by nature has no fear of God before
his eyes. That's a respect and a regard
and a worship and a faith in the true and living God. Man
worships a God, a God likened to himself by nature, but he
has no fear of the true and living God. Well, it says they feared
the Lord that they claim to fear the God of Israel, but they serve
their own gods. That's opposites, you see. And
it says, after the manner of the nations whom they carried
away from thence, the nations that carried them away. So their
claim that they feared the Lord was a lie. And it's indicated
by their idolatry. So what they wanted, they wanted
to become partners in the building work of the temple with the people
of God. And yet they were still adversaries,
that's how they're identified here. when the adversaries, you
know what an adversary is? It's an enemy. One who's not
in fellowship, but they wanted to be partners in the work. We
don't know what their motive was, but it seems that their
motive was this. They wanted to become partners
in the work, either to ruin it or corrupt it or to influence
it for their own benefit. But it wasn't to worship God.
And so they did this on the claim that we seek God as you do. And again, they may have genuinely
believed that they sought the same God in the same way, but
they added this, we have sacrificed to him since the days of Irshadon,
king of Assyria. That's what they said. And that
means they sacrificed, they didn't have the temple because the temple
was being rebuilt. They didn't have the sacrifices
or the priesthood or the proper sacrifices. And so that contradicted
their claim. So what do we have here? We got
false professors. That's what it's talking about.
And here's, I'll put this in the lesson. They're like those
people who today call themselves Christian, but who deny the truth
of God's grace. That's what you have here in
picture. People today say, well, we all
worship the same God. There's the Methodist God, there's
the Baptist God, there's the Pentecostal. We all worship the
same God. Well, it's just not true. Because
you cannot worship God. You see, to worship God is to
give him glory. Isn't that right? To glorify
God. That's what we're here to do
this morning. We want to glorify God. We're not here to lift up
men and women and to put us in a place of where people look
up to us. We want to worship God. Well,
my friend, you cannot worship God without acknowledging God
as he reveals himself in his word. So whatever God says about
himself in this word from Genesis to Revelation, whatever God does
as he reveals himself in his, that's how you glorify God. And
if you deny that, you're not glorifying God, you're not worshiping
God, you're not serving the same God that we do, if you deny that. And these people who think, first
of all, you take the most popular doctrine of false Christianity,
God loves everybody, Christ died for everybody, and therefore
salvation is conditioned on you, well, that denies grace. That
denies the gospel. That denies the God of the Bible
because the God of the Bible says otherwise of himself. He
chose his people before the foundation of the world gave them to Christ
and conditioned all of their salvation on Christ, sent Christ
into the world to fulfill those conditions and ensure the salvation
of his people. And anything more, anything less
than that, that denies God is false Christianity. So understand,
that's what you've got here. And so look at the answer that
Zerubbabel gave. Look at verse three. But Zerubbabel
and Joshua, that's the high priest, You may remember in the book
of Zechariah chapter three, Joshua the high priest was given a vision. He's standing before the angel.
This is the same guy here. He's the high priest of Israel
at this time. So Zerubbabel and Joshua and the rest of the chief
of the fathers of Israel, they were all in unison now. They
said unto them, they said unto these Samaritans, these adversaries,
you have nothing to do with us to build a house unto our God.
But we ourselves together will build unto the Lord God of Israel
as King Cyrus, the King of Persia, hath commanded us. We're gonna
do what God in his providence has commanded us and enabled
us to do, and you don't have any part in this. Now what is
he saying here? He's saying you don't worship
the same God that we worship. You worship a different God.
You try to mix the worship of God with your idolatry, your
ideas, your thoughts, your sinful thoughts. And so they said, no,
we don't want your help. Now, you know how people are. Most people, if you would bring
this situation down to modern times. You see people in religion who
deny the gospel of God's grace, the purity of the gospel. Somebody
asked me one time, said, do you think you preach a perfect gospel?
I sure do, because God is the author of this message, not me. Do I always preach it perfectly?
No. Am I a perfect person? No, not
in myself. I am in Christ, but not in myself. But the gospel is an objective
truth that's revealed to God's people by God. It's not our opinion. It's not what we think or how
we feel or how we figure things. It's God's word. And so people
today, you know, they think, well, we all believe the same
gospel. Well, we don't. Most people, in essence, without
realizing it, try to mix grace and works, and you can't do that.
If it's by grace, it's all of grace. If it's by works, it's
all of works. And so I had a man tell me one
time, he said he was going to a church, he said, well, he says
the preacher preaches grace sometimes and preaches works sometimes.
No, he preaches works all the time. Now that's the truth. But this is the issue here. But
when somebody comes to you and says, well, let me be in fellowship
with your church, the first thing we wanna know is what gospel
do you believe? Have you been brought to faith
in Christ and repentance of dead works? And if they haven't, we
have to reject them. Now that doesn't mean we're gonna
kick them out or anything. They're welcome to come and sit
and hear the gospel. Who do we preach the gospel to? Anybody who'll listen, isn't
that right? And whether or not they're brought
to faith in Christ and repentance, that's up to God. But we'll preach
to anyone who'll listen. Fellow asked me Wednesday night,
he said, well, how long should we put up with that? I said,
as long as they'll listen. That's right. And that's the
key. But most people would look at
men like Zerubbabel and Joshua and these fathers and they said,
boy, they're just mean. They're so unloving and all that. And that's not the truth. You
know what people, love today in religion is compromise. That's what love is today to
most people. In other words, it doesn't matter
what you believe, we're all one big happy family, come on in.
There are churches today, false churches, who actually advertise
their neglect of doctrine. We don't preach doctrine here,
they say, which is a lie, but they say, it doesn't matter what
you believe. We'll accept anybody. Doesn't
matter what you believe. Well, Zerubbabel, they thought
differently, and we do too. And so what Zerubbabel and Joshua
and these other leaders of Israel said, what they were doing is
they were showing and maintaining the very holiness without which
no man will see the Lord. Remember there in Hebrews 12,
14, I've got that listed in your lesson. It says, follow peace
with all men and holiness without which no man will see the Lord.
What that means is we're to seek to be peaceable and friendly
and inclusive of all people, but there's a codicil there.
not at the expense of the purity of the gospel, not at the expense
of the glory of God revealed in his truth, the purity of God's
grace. That's what that means. That
holiness there is not some kind of a human morality, all right,
as people see it. It's that which sets us apart
from the world. Be not conformed to the world,
the scripture says. And what sets us apart? Well,
the first thing, let me put it to you this way. I preached a
message on this not too long ago. What really separates true
Christians from the world? It's not our morality, because
all religions, even all the religions of man, the religions of works,
promote some form of morality. Now, we have a different motive,
but you can't see that. That's in our hearts. But what
really separates true believers from the world? What separated
Zerubbabel and these Jews from the Samaritans? And the first
thing that I would tell you, it's our gospel. Our gospel,
the gospel of God's grace. That's what Paul said, I'm separated
unto the gospel. the good news of how God saves
sinners. If you're with us on how God
saves sinners, according to his word, we gladly say, come on
in. You're one of our family. But
if you preach and believe a false gospel, you're not part of our
family. And that's what's happening here.
That's why he said, be not conformed to the world. Over in 2 Corinthians
chapter six, the last few verses of that chapter that says, be
ye not unequally yoked, You know, most people look at that and
they refer to marriage. And of course that would include
that. But what he's talking about is
the fellowship of God's people, the purity of fellowship because
of the purity of God's grace. This is Christ. Who is Jesus
Christ? We all agree on who Jesus Christ
is, don't we? And we agree on it, not because
we just took a vote. We agree on it because that's
what God's word says. What did he accomplish on Calvary's
cross? Did he make sinners savable?
Did he make salvation possible if sinners would do their part?
That's not what we believe because that's not what the scripture
says. Christ on the cross put away the sins of God's people.
He purged them away. They cannot be charged with their
sin. Christ worked out a perfect righteousness
that enables God to be just and justify and actually demands
the salvation and glory of all for whom he died. That's what
the scripture says. So think about this. You look
at, you know, they're building a temple here. Well, you know,
What is the temple of God today? It's the church, isn't it? And
Christ is building his temple. He said, I will build my church
upon this rock, talking about himself and his finished work.
And he said, I will build my church and the gates of hell
will not prevail against it. And he's building his church.
Well, how is he building his church? Well, here in your lesson
on page one, right after Ezra four and verse three, the second
paragraph there, look at what I wrote here. It says, as he
has always done since the fall of man in the garden of Eden,
Christ has been building his temple, the church. Isn't that
right? It says the church is made up of God's elect, chosen
before the foundation of the world by God in the Lord Jesus
Christ. Doesn't the Bible reveal that?
Does the Bible hide that? Or is that a doctrine for only
the most mature Christians? No, it's plainly written out. Christ was chosen to be their
surety, their substitute, redeemer, and preserver to establish the
only ground upon which God justifies us, adopts us, saves us, and
brings us to glory. That's the truth, isn't it? Christ
has established the foundation upon which his church is built
by his obedience unto death on the cross, dying for their sins
imputed to him and establishing a perfect righteousness which
God has imputed to them. I don't mean just to be reading
to you, but I want you to see this. This is fundamental. This
is important, see. How does God justify the ungodly? by his grace through the blood
and righteousness of Christ, his righteousness imputed. And
he says, this is confirmed by his resurrection from the dead
and his ascension into glory where he sat down on the right
hand of the father. That's right hand, it should
be hand of the father. And ever lives to make intercession
for them. And he continues, now listen,
here's what I wanted to get to. He continues in building his
church, how? By calling his people to himself
by the power of the spirit under the preaching of the gospel.
giving us spiritual life, giving us faith to believe, the gift
of faith and repentance, submitting to His righteousness, turning
away from everything else. And He saves and preserves His
people by His grace, not by their works or their wills, for by
grace are you saved, through faith, that's not of yourselves,
it's the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast.
We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works,
which God hath before ordained, that we should walk in them.
and he does not build his church upon or with lies. Do you understand
that? Christ doesn't build his church
by the preaching of lies, a false gospel that deny the glory of
God and deny him. His church is the pillar and
ground of truth, the scripture says. That's the whole issue. So Zerubbabel back here, he said,
you have nothing to do with us. Now I listed out a scripture
here. This is 2 John on the back of your lesson. Because this
kind of summarizes, I believe, what this lesson is saying. And
2 John verse seven, for many deceivers are entered into the
world who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh.
This is a deceiver. and an antichrist, okay? Now, who is Jesus Christ? Did he come into the world? Yes,
he's God manifest in the flesh. That's who we serve. That's who
we look to. Jesus, who saves his people from
their sins. Jesus, the author and finisher
of our faith. And so many deceivers have gone
out speaking different things concerning him. And it says in
verse eight, look to yourselves that we lose not the things which
we have wrought, but that we receive a full reward. What he's
saying there is let's look to ourselves that we're not just
being false professors, that we're not claiming to believe
something we really don't believe. And that's important. You know,
the Bible says examine yourselves whether you be in the faith.
Am I in the faith? Am I looking to the right Jesus? Think about it that way. Is the
one I'm looking to, is he a counterfeit? Is he the one who accomplished
redemption for his people? Or is it another Jesus? Remember
2 Corinthians 11, Paul talked about that. And so he says in
verse nine, now listen to this. Whosoever transgresseth and abideth
not in the doctrine of Christ, the doctrine of his person, the
doctrine of his finished, accomplished work, whoever transgresseth and
does not continue in that, hath not God. He that abideth in the
doctrine of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son. That's the first evidence. Somebody
says, well, we all believe the same God. Well, tell me about
the God you believe in. And I'll tell you if he's the
same one I believe in. You understand that? The same
Christ, the same way of salvation. Well, look at verse 10. Now here's
where this applies to Ezra chapter four. If there come any unto
you and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house,
neither bid him Godspeed. Now he's talking about the household
of God here. He's not talking about your homes.
You're gonna have people in your homes who are unbelievers, family
members and friends and all that. He's talking about the house
of God, the fellowship of faith. If they come to you and bring
not this doctrine, the purity of God's grace, the purity of
the gospel, he said, don't receive them. Just like Zerubbabel said,
you have nothing to do with us in this thing. You're idolaters.
And verse 11 says, for he that biddeth him Godspeed is a partaker
of his evil deeds. So understand that. So we as
believers in the Lord Jesus Christ are commanded to strive to maintain
the purity of God's grace. And we do that not by setting
up standards of moral purity that we don't even meet, some
sliding scale of righteousness that we can't even achieve, but
we do it by preaching the gospel, preaching the truth. Somebody
comes in and says, I believe what you preach. Well, that's
good. We hope you do. And we tell people,
examine yourselves. But if they say, well, you know,
I believe that Christ died for everybody and that salvation's
conditioned on our decision, you're not in our fellowship.
Now maybe one day you will be. You may be a lost sheep. And
that's the way we're to look at. We'll look at the last few
verses here and I'll close. It says in verse four, now this
is how the Samaritans responded. It says, then the people of the
land weakened the hands of the people of Judah and troubled
them in building. They didn't let it go. They went
after the people of God. And they hired counselors against
them to frustrate their purpose. Hired counselors. That means
they paid them money to frustrate their purpose. All the days of
Cyrus, king of Persia, even until the days of Darius, king of Persia,
and in the reign of Ahasuerus. I always slow down when I pronounce
that name. Somebody said that that's the name of the man, the
king of Persia that Esther married. All right, even in his reign,
in the beginning of his reign, wrote they unto him an accusation
against the inhabitants of Judah and Jerusalem. They wrote letters
to this king accusing the people of God. Well, that's the response
of the natural man. This is the life. comes into
the world and men love darkness rather than light. Christ said
in John 15, 18, marvel not if the world hates you, they hated
me before they hated you. Why did they hate Christ? Because
he would not speak peace to them. He would not acknowledge that
they were the children of God. He stood and told the Pharisees
in the book of John, I think it's chapter eight in verse 44,
he says, you are of your father, the devil. Now think about that. Well, that didn't make them feel
loved, did it? No, they hated him. And here we see the natural
man's response to it when we do what God tells us to do. Think about passages like Romans
16, where he says, mark them which cause division among you
contrary to the doctrine which we have preached. Galatians 1, 6 through 9. If
we are an angel from heaven preaching any of the gospel unto you, then
that which we preach, let it be anathema. But this is a persecution
that's common to all believers. And let's close on a positive
note. Scripture I put here at the end. We need to remember
what the Lord said to us in the Sermon on the Mount. Blessed
are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for
theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when men shall
revile you and persecute you and say all manner of evil against
you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be exceeding glad
for great is your reward in heaven for so persecuted they the prophets
which were before you. Okay.