Rebuilding the Church
In the spring of 2020 our world got turned upside down. Some might say completely changed. In the book of Ezra the Jews’ world got turned upside down just like us. They were slaves of the Babylonians and then of the Persians. But just like me they found something good. God had stirred up the king of Persia, Cyrus, to go and make a decree that the Jews should go back and rebuild Jerusalem. This was a good thing. So basically in Ezra and Nehemiah the Jews were having to rebuild Jerusalem with problems along the way. Just like we are rebuilding after Covid. At the church I go to we built phases along the way and still are not fully rebuilt even now. So in this blog I'll be comparing rebuilding the church to the Jews rebuilding the temple and the wall.
First, I want to start out in the beginning of Ezra. At the start of this book king Cyrus makes a decree for the Jews to go rebuild the house of the Lord. Why is this important? Because before this Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonians and enslaved by them. So the Israelites were in bad shape because they disobeyed God's rules. After a while God stirred up the king and that's why he made the decree. So basically that's what the whole book of Ezra is about, but I still have to tell you how this relates to three years ago. When Covid hit, most churches had to stay home and do YouTube streams which was somewhat of captivity. Not exactly, but pretty close in my eyes. So when the church gave the green light to go back to worship things were different, just like when the Jews rebuilt the temple. Older men cried because it just wasn't the same. The same thing happened to us but no crying old men. Things changed in how we worshiped like communion, masks, and worship time.
Nehemiah is about the Jews rebuilding the wall of Jerusalem and starting a war. But there was no fighting. So for our last point I want to talk about the stuff after we rebuilt Sunday mornings like VBS, Wednesday nights and other church events. Just like the Jews first built the house of God (for us Sunday mornings) because it's the most important. And then they built the wall (for us Wednesday nights etc.) because God comes first.
This is the conclusion of my blog. I hope you enjoyed and agreed with the analogy of God's house and wall to Sunday mornings and extra church activities.