Let It Be Given

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Good morning. Please pray with me. Lord, we pray that you would open our eyes this morning to all that you want to speak to our hearts. We've come here today seeking you, to worship you, to hear from you, to learn more how we may please you in this life. And as we open up Scripture in the Old Testament today, we ask that you put into our hearts the message that you would have for us. Make us pliable and have open ears to hear your word today. In Jesus name. Amen. We're reading Today from Ezra6, if you'd like to read along with me in your pew Bible. Page six. I'm sorry, Page three. Six, nine. And you can judge for yourself if I'm able to say these Old Testament names. All right. Beginning in chapter six. Then King Darius made a decree. And they searched the archives where the documents were stored in Babylon. But it was in Ecbatana, the capital in the province of Media, that a scroll was found on which this was written. A record. In the first year of his reign, King Cyrus issued a decree concerning the house of God at Jerusalem. Let the house be rebuilt, the place where sacrifices are offered and burnt offerings are brought. Its Height shall be 60 cubits and its width 60 cubits, with three courses of hewn stones and one course of timber. Let the cost be paid from the royal treasury. Moreover, let the gold and silver vessels of the house of God, which Nebuchadnezzar took out of the temple in Jerusalem and brought to Babylon be restored and brought back to the temple in Jerusalem, each to its place. You shall put them in the house of God. Now, you, Tattenai, governor of the province beyond the river Shethar, Bozanai, and you, their associates, the envoys in the province beyond the river, keep away. Let the work on this house of God alone. Let the governor of the Jews and the elders of the Jews rebuild this house of God on its site. Moreover, I shall make a decree regarding what you shall do for these elders of the Jews for the rebuilding of this house of God. The cost is to be paid to these people in full and without delay from the royal revenue, the tribute of the province beyond the river. Whatever is needed. Young bulls, rams or sheep for burnt offerings to the God of heaven. Wheat, salt, wine or oil as the priests in Jerusalem requirements. Let that be given to them day by day, without fail, so that they may offer pleasing sacrifices to the God of heaven and pray for the life of the king and his children. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. [00:03:30] Speaker B: So, as many of you know, it has been my practice for well over a decade to preach through a particular book of the Hebrew Scriptures each fall. Been doing this since 2011, starting with the book of Genesis. And when we ended with Second Kings last fall, I was already anticipating that come 2025, we'd look at the Book of Ezra. Well, by divine providence, here we are in Ezra, a book that's all about return, recovery, and. And rebuilding after disaster and loss. Sound familiar? So many of us are in that kind of a journey. Return, recovery, and rebuilding. I don't know about others in this congregation who lost their homes, but we recently got a new version of the architectural plans of our new house, of the house we hope to rebuild at the place where our former house once stood. And when I got these plans, I was actually encouraged. They're not final yet. A lot of work still to be done. But I realized I'd been a part of actually a building project of a whole new house before. This wasn't the first time I realized. And I don't just mean Habitat for Humanity builds, which a number of us have been a part of and probably will be on November 15th up in Altadena, But I was actually part of building a house from the very beginning and see it come to full fruition. Now, I will admit it was a dollhouse, but it's a house, right? I can take encouragement from that. I've seen it done before. So it was back in 2007 that this began, back when our daughter was just two years old. And I had this idea. I'd seen a bunch of these handmade doll houses people make from a kid. I thought, oh, that would be really fun to make with my dad. So I asked him, would you be open to doing this? He said, sure. And so we consulted with my wife, whose taste on these things is far greater than mine, and she picked out a wonderful Victorian dollhouse kit that we then purchased. And for well over a year, my dad and I would, when I go down to San Diego, work in his sort of tool work room and hammer out this house. And it was a lot of work. Each of the parts had to be painted, sanded, painted again, sanded again multiple times, glued these little pieces together. But finally, come November of 2008, we had it completed. So after that, Jill sent out an email to family members and said, hey, if you're thinking about Christmas gifts for our daughter Lucy this year, I have a great idea. Doll house furniture, one inch scale. It would be perfect. As we're planning to give this gift to her this particular Christmas season, and many family members did just that. And come Christmas 2008, under the tree, or rather in front of the tree, since it was too big to fit under the tree, was this dollhouse. And there's Lucy with the furniture. And years later, when Jill, Lucy and I would be watching the Gilmore Girls, I was thrilled to see that one of the houses that's featured in, that in Lorelai's bedroom, looks a lot like this particular house that Jill, that my dad and I had made. Well, for years, Lucy loved playing with that dollhouse. But by the time she was in high school, well, her dollhouse days were past. You know, it was stored upstairs in my family room. That's, by the way, the one for the Gilmore Girls, if it looks familiar. Years later, I was looking one particular time up in our family room. The dollhouse was too big to really store in our one house, in our one car garage. It was also, you know, didn fit in Lucy's room anymore. So where do we put it? I didn't like that it was kind of just gathering dust. It seemed like something people would enjoy and that maybe we'd want to think about giving away. But then I thought, well, we might want this dollhouse later. I might want to give it as a gift to Lucy's kids, if she has kids. We might want to pass it on in that way. So wrestled with it, I talked to my dad and Jill and Lucy, and we all thought about what to do with it. We decided we would give it away. And then I promised in the future, if she wanted, I would make a new dollhouse for her kids if she wanted that. So we made plans to give it away. And then I thought maybe not. You know, it's like these things, particularly after the fire, things are sometimes more than things. They've got associations, you know, they're part of relationships. They evoke memories and times and history. They're a part of identity. And you fear that losing that means you'll lose your kind of mooring to the world, to the earth, and the good stuff of earth. Part of me wanted to hang on to this, but part of me, too, thought, man, it'd be great if someone else could enjoy it, too. I don't know if you felt that tension before. Should I keep this thing? Should I let it go? I'll be honest with you. I feel that tension around this time every year when I look at that pledge card that arrives in the mail many of you have received and you've seen in your seats, too. I think about that portion of our household income that we plan to give to the church. And I experience this tension around money, especially in 2025. Part of me thinks, man, this is a time I want to cling to what I have, every dollar we possess, because we may well need it on this house rebuild. The numbers are staggering. But then I think about others who could benefit from it. And I want to be generous. I want to be part of a community of generosity that's responding to God's generosity to us, to be part of a circle of giving. We've been so deeply impacted by so many great gifts passed on to us. We want to return that. But there's that tension. I wouldn't quite call it the tension of the rich young ruler. I've known people who've really thought of, should I give everything away or keep everything? A kind of an all or nothing. You remember how Jesus challenged a rich young ruler to give everything he had to the poor and come follow him. That's not usually how I experience the tension. It's more around that percentage of giving that I really could give away, but kind of don't really want to also. Or those items like a dollhouse, that I could give away or could keep. That's where the tension lies. It's like there are two mindsets doing battle. One says, keep all that you have. Cling tightly to it. And another says, you have so much life, community, goodness of the earth, God and God's grace shown to you in Jesus Christ. The presence of the Holy Spirit. Having been given so much, shouldn't you freely give? And I bet you too have known that kind of tension, that pull one way and another way at the same time. Well, in today's passage from the Book of Ezra, if we look closely, I believe we can see a character shifting between these two mindsets, struggling between them in a way and moving from a space of control and keeping to a space of letting go and giving. The character I'm thinking about is Tatine, an official in the Persian government. You know, in so many stories that are told in the Hebrew scriptures, the hero's not always a member of the ancient people of Israel, the ancient Jewish people. Sometimes the protagonist is someone like the Moabite Ruth or the Canaanite Rahab. In today's passage, the action, so to speak, concerns a Persian governor of the province west of the Euphrates River, a governor called Tatine. This province, some English translations call beyond the river, others call the Trans Euphrates. And we read about this governor Tatine not only in the Bible, but there is also an ancient clay tablet that's been discovered mentioning him and dating back to, well, the time of King Darius I. Well, Tatine's province, this province beyond the rivers, it included Judah and the capital of Jerusalem. And the word had reached Tattene's ears back in Ezra, Chapter 5, that a rebuilding effort had been undertaken by Jews in that region, Jews who had returned following a season of displacement in Babylon. Now, I don't know about you, but I find it striking looking at the news today, this very morning, and see featured so prominently articles and pictures about a population returning precisely to this region we're reading about in today's text of the Middle East. Only right now, it is displaced Palestinians who are returning following a season of destruction and loss in the hopes they might now know a season of recovery and rebuilding. There are many different people groups we remember that have known that awful experience of displacement and destruction of homes. Well, in the days we read about in the book of Ezra, it was Jewish exiles displaced for decades in Babylon who returned after the Persian king Cyrus had issued an edict around 539bce this edict not only authorized former Jewish residents of Jerusalem and Judah to return, but it instructed them that treasures that had been taken out of the temple by Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon should be returned. And the Persian authorities, the Persian king, wanted to finance this rebuilding effort too. However, that temple rebuild we read in Ezra was thwarted by local opposition. And around 5:36 B.C. it was stopped. Or at very least. And then some 15 years later, in the time of a new Persian king named Darius, rebuilding started again. Tatine, not aware of this former edict of King Cyrus, went to check out something that was happening under his watch in his jurisdiction and wondering, is this authorized? Tatine comes up to those who are building and says, do you have your papers? Who authorized this rebuilding of the temple? Tatine's concern here is clearly that whatever is taking place in his province, it should be authorized by the Crown. This is territory that he, Tattene, is charged to oversee, and nothing should happen that's not authorized by the Crown. Tatine is clearly thinking of holding what he and the Persian Empire have at this point. But the Jewish response to his question, who authorized this? Is remarkable. They say, you know, who authorized this? We're servants of the God of heaven and earth. We're servants of the God of heaven and earth. It's a statement that surely threw Tatine's whole framework out of whack. He represented the king of Persia Darius himself and spoke with that king's authority. The Jews rebuilding the temple now speak with an even higher authority, a ruler of heaven and earth. It's the kind of statement that even today can jar us when we think we own what we own. It's the kind of statement that can throw us and say, oh yeah, I guess I don't really own anything. It's all God's. We are but humble servants or stewards of the God of heaven and earth. The Jewish people rebuilding the temple respond to Tatine's concern. But then those Jews rebuilding the temple go on in detail precisely how God had worked in history to make this temple rebuilding possible. They cite this edict that had been issued by Cyrus. So Tatiana says, okay, let's check on this. He writes to King Darius and says, here's what the Jews rebuilding the temple are saying. Is this true? I would encourage you to search the archives and, and find out if it is. King Darius does just that. And we read in today's chapter six, today's passage for today, Darius response to that inquiry, is there such an edict? And Darius says, yes, in fact, such a decree has been found. And Darius then instructs Tatine not simply to allow the temple building to continue unhindered, but he says, guess who's going to pay for it? You are. You're going to finance this thing. Let it be given to them. Anything those rebuilding the temple need to conduct their worship and life together. Bulls, rams, sheep, wheat, salt, wine or oil. Let it be given without fail. King Darius of Persia says. And I think of how Tatine's whole framework, whole sense of call and his job must have shifted right in that moment. Suddenly it's not just about tightly controlling this particular territory and making sure that what they do meets with the demands of the Persian crown and serves their interest. There's this sense to which, no, we can actually let them be given, contribute to them, be a of part. Part of generously supporting this rebuilding effort, looking at it not as a threat, but something that we can give to. Now, King Darius, in authorizing this, clearly has some ulterior motive. And let's be clear, he's not giving away some huge section of the Persian Empire. In fact, King Darius is writing, if we allow them to carry on this worship unimpeded, if we allow them to, to rebuild the temple, then they will pray for the king and for the king's children. If we give generously to them, allow them to do this and finance it, they will in turn pray for us. You can Say there's self interest involved in this move and yet isn't part of what we're reading about here exactly how generosity works? You give and you become part of a circle giving, where gifts are given in return. You're bonded to people through relationship. Generosity can do that, tie people together. Let it be given. It can even tie Persians and Jews back in the 6th century BCE. Let it be given. That's what forms, not just the ancient people of God. That's what forms and shapes the church today. According to the book of First Peter, believers in that letter are compared to living stones built into a spiritual house on the cornerstone that is Christ. It's Christ's given, Christ's offering, Christ's sacrifice, Christ's life freely given that forms that cornerstone on which the temple is then built. First Peter notes that when believers offer themselves and their possessions to God in response to God's grace, grace shown in Christ, they are like living stones in a building. They're bonded together. Only the mortar isn't physical mortar. Instead, it's these relationships of giving in response to all that God has given in Jesus Christ. They form a kind of temple as a people, each one a living stone bound together by the love of Christ poured out for them and by a circle of generosity and that each person gets to be a part of giving in response to a gracious giving God. That's the kind of house I want to be a part of building. That's the kind of home I want, where generosity shown to one another builds each other up and allows us together to build something we could never build alone. A people bound together by God's love poured out in Christ. Don't you want to be a part of that kind of temple formed by relationships of mutual giving, all based on that cornerstone of Jesus Christ. I felt like a part of that kind of temple this last year in particular. I'll never forget seeing all these financial gifts pouring out to this church, pouring out to my family, to so many of us impacted by the fire and coming from people all over the country, it was like they were all saying, not only do we allow or permit you to return, recover and rebuild, we want to help finance it. We want to help be a part of it. We have received so much from God. I heard all these gifts saying every corner of the earth is God. [00:21:14] Speaker A: And. [00:21:14] Speaker B: And we want to respond by gracious giving ourselves. And two particularly touching gifts I wanted to lift up today. We got a piano and a china cabinet. Jill Lucey and I had a piano. We love that Many from this church were a part of giving me on my 40th birthday. Some of you will even remember that that piano burned up in the Eaton fire, as did all the china that Jill and I had since our wedding more than 30 years ago. Then one day when I was visiting a resident of Monte Vista Grove home, someone who'd started attending this church, a fellow named Howard Den Hartog, he said, matt, I'd love for you to have this china and a china cabinet and a piano that I have. I have to right now move to assisted living. I'm getting set to move out of independent living. Would you like. Lord have mercy. Did we like that? I didn't know Howard back when he was a child in rural Idaho or when he was a high school teacher in Utah, nor when he first arrived to Monte Vista Grove. I'd just gotten to know him these last couple years. But clearly this was someone who'd learned year after year throughout his life of the value of generosity. He went to be with the Lord this past Sunday afternoon, and it was a great blessing and honor to be with him and members of his family when he left. And for me, one of the legacies he leaves behind is, in a word, generosity. I'll think of it every time I look at that piano or china cabinet. And I hope I can leave behind such a legacy myself, to be known and remembered by what I gave away. Well, I need to tell you what happened to the dollhouse. Right. Well, after wrestling for a while with whether or not to give that dollhouse away and just being torn about it, we finally did. We gave it to Jeff and Katie Riddell. And I asked their permission to show you this video they sent me of them presenting it their children. It's a doll house. [00:23:57] Speaker A: Yeah, but Jonah doesn't have a dog. [00:24:02] Speaker B: Oh, boy. [00:24:03] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:24:04] Speaker B: Well, why have my car stickers? Need the dog's car. Exactly. So just a few weeks after our house burned down, I thought of that dollhouse, and I called Jeff and Katie and I said, you know that dollhouse I gave you so many years ago? I wasn't expecting to ask for it back back. But everything. We possess so many memorabilia, so much memorabilia of my daughter's childhood. Books, toys, schoolwork. It burned up in the fire. And I realized one thing that might still be out there is that dollhouse. And with everything else gone, having that again would be a great gift to us. Well, Katie and Jeff being the people they are, guess what they had done. They'd given it away. But they said, you know, we'll call those people that we gave it to and see if maybe they still have it and might be willing to pass it on. And then I got a text from Jeff that said, Molly and her family still have the dollhouse, and when you're ready to get it back, it's waiting for you. I thought of so many times in the months since that about that dollhouse, and I can't miss the irony of it. What we have after the fire is precisely what we gave away. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen.