Nothing is impossible with God

The speaker wishes everyone a happy Father's Day and acknowledges the different experiences people may have on this day. He emphasizes the importance of recognizing and celebrating fathers, but also acknowledges that Father's Day may not be happy for everyone, as some may have lost their fathers or have difficult relationships with them. The speaker encourages everyone to remember that they have a heavenly father who loves and cares for them. He then welcomes newcomers to the church and gives a brief overview of the book of Ezra, highlighting the themes of returning and rebuilding. He discusses the concept of exile and how it represents both physical and spiritual separation from God. The speaker reminds the audience that God always promises a return home and encourages them to have hope and trust in God's control in their lives. He then moves on to discuss the lie that change will never come and counters it with the truth that nothing is impossible for God and he has the power to chan Happy Father's Day! Where my dad's at? What the heck, man? Happy Father's Day. You know. Well, I just want to say Happy Father's Day to those of you that are seasoned dads. Your kids are grown up, right? Those that are young dads. Those that are inspiring dads. We want to celebrate dads because, you know, dads are awesome. I'm not speaking because I am a dad, but they're awesome. But, being a dad, it's fun to negotiate with little terrorists all the time, right? Amen, Dad? You negotiate and, you know, it's a constant combative, but we love being fathers to kids as adult kids, apparently, what I was trying to say, right? Come on, dads. Let's go. I want to say just Happy Father's Day but I also recognize that Father's Day isn't awesome and happy for everybody. Some of us inspired to be a dad, and it's just not happened yet, right? Some of us have lost our fathers. I lost my father just about, gosh, I think it's almost two years now. And so Father's Day kind of brings about this bittersweet, I'm happy to be a dad, but I miss my father. And so it brings about this bittersweet feeling. Some of us in the room just have painful relationships with our dads, right? And when we hear about Father's Day, it's bittersweet, too, right? And sometimes just the word father angers us. It could frustrate us, right? And some of us in the room have never met our fathers, right? And when Father's Day comes, we'll feel a little bit disembodied, disconnected with what that even means. And so wherever you're at today, I just want to recognize that, and I also want to encourage all of us today that we have a heavenly father, right? We have a heavenly father that looks out for us and loves us. Us as Christians, the Lord provides a father to the fatherless. And so we can always have that hope. We have that encouragement. And so I hope you're encouraged by it. We've got a God that looks out for us as his children. Amen? Amen. So if you're new here today, you're investigating this church, I just want to say welcome. We love that you're here. Like Pat said, if you're a drag tier, that's okay, dads. If you're a drag tier, your wife brought you here. We're excited to have you here, okay? And we want you to know we're grateful that you chose today to be with us, right? You could be anywhere today. You can be out at the lake. You can go be fishing, right? But you're here with us today, and we're honored to have you. I want to also say my name's Tim. I'm the lead pastor. Welcome, and to our members, love you guys. We're in the book of Ezra. You might have been looking at that little bumper and been like, what in the world was that all about, right? First time I watched it, I'm like, what? But the reality is, we've got to kind of look at the context, right? The reality of Ezra is that the Jewish people put a facade on, kind of a mask. They acted the part. They did all the right things, but they had their hope in the wrong things. They had their hope in their own strength rather than their hope in God. And I think sometimes that's us. It's true. It applies to us today. You know, every time I come up here in the morning, I go, how are you guys doing? You go, oh, good. I know that's not true. I'm just saying, I know that's not true. Not all of you are good. Some of you guys are like, eh. Some of you guys are like, I have no idea how I'm going to get through the next day. Right? And so there's a sense of, we put a facade on, we put a mask on. But let me just dive in. Let's get a little bit of context. We started the sermon series last week. We can't go too much into that part. If you missed that, look back at that and watch that as we dissect it. But let's just do a really quick recap of the context of Ezra and what we kind of discussed last week. Ezra is the second to last book in the Old Testament. You know that? It's the second to last book in the Old Testament timeline. It was written 450 years before Jesus showed up. After Ezra and Nehemiah is written, there's this quiet. There's nothing that goes on. 450 years of silence. And all of a sudden Jesus pops up on the scene and changes everything. It was written about 450 years. The book of Ezra has two major themes in it. The two major themes are returning and rebuilding. They're returning because they were exiles and they're rebuilding the temple. And they're also rebuilding what it looks like to worship God. The book of Ezra is anticlimactic. Meaning, as you're reading through it, it tugs and plays with your emotions. It's like a bad date. No? No laughs there? Alright. There's excitement and then there's a great disappointment in Ezra. If you guys read through Ezra, you'll see. It's just like a story. It gets you really excited. Oh man, the Israelites are going to go build the temple. God's going to show up. And then it's really disappointing because what the Israelites realize is that they're still sinners. They're still broken. And God doesn't show up in the same way that they expected. You see, the Israelites were conquered by the Babylonian Empire. They've been in exile for 70 years. And then all of a sudden this Persian king comes around. King Cyrus. He's a king for about a year. That's what we recapped last week. He releases the exiled people from captivity to return home. That's kind of it in a nutshell. But what we're going to notice and what we're going to highlight a little bit today is the word exile. What does that even mean? It's not a word we actually use often. And so I want to just give us a little definition of exile. The biblical definition of exile has a physical and spiritual dimensions to it. Physical exile refers to the physical displacement from one's home. They were removed from their home. They had no national identity anymore. And then there's a spiritual exile that signifies a separation from God and His presence. So exile is not only physical separation from their land, but it's also they experience spiritual separation from God, God's protection, God's blessing due to the Israelites' disobedience. But what we notice because it sounds kind of grim when we look at that, but as we noticed last week, God always promises a return home. He always promises a return home. And what we learned last week, what was the lie last week? Do you guys remember? God lost control. The exiles would have felt that. The Israelites would have experienced that. My situation, my circumstances, it appears that God has no control in my life. But what did we look at last week? That God has control in everything. He's sovereign over everything. Even when it looks like God's not in control, He's just working behind the scenes. It was God who stirred the heart of King Cyrus to release the Israelites home. It was God who initiates rescue for His people. God's got it. He's in control. You see, this passage today is really about how God stirs His people. How He stirs His people's heart to cause change in their lives. You see, we framed this sermon series on the idea of the lies we tell ourselves. Really looking at the perspective of those that lived in exile, specifically looking at one lie each Sunday and counteracting that lie with a truth from God. A truth from God. You see, the problem with the Israelite people was they began to tell themselves some lies. They put their hope in the wrong things. They were saying, if we rebuild the temple, we'd be okay. God would show up. If we have better spouses, we'll be okay. God will show up. We can fill in the blanks, right? If we had a better job, we'll be okay then. God will show up. If we had more money, then we'll be okay and God will show up. But the reality is they were putting their hope on their own strengths rather than God. Today's lie comes from the idea of being trapped in exile for a long time. They lived in exile for 70 years. That's three generations. Some that were born and raised in exile. That's all they know. They lived in the same circumstances, the same displacement, the same struggles, the same problems, the same frustrations, the same sin constantly they struggled with. They felt spiritually, physically hopeless. And here's where our lie is today. The lie we tell ourselves is this. Change will never come. Change will never come. Change will never come. I will never change. My circumstance will never change. I've tried to change, but I can't. It's impossible. I'm stuck. There's no hope. My life right now feels like I'm walking through the mud or quicksand. I ain't going nowhere. Nothing's changing. I'm just sinking. Is that where you guys are at today? Does that resonate with anyone? Because I think we all experience this. This is a human experience. We may not verbalize this, but internally we say it to ourselves. And there's a couple, a few ways that this lie can play out in our lives, okay? And I wanted to break this down. When we hear the word change, what's the first thing that comes to mind? What's the first emotion that pops up? I think sometimes, exactly, fear comes up. Fear. Change can be a fearful thing, especially if we're content on where we're at. So the first thing we can do, I don't want change. I don't want change. I'm comfortable. Change is kind of scary. But here's my rebuttal. Change is good because all healthy things grow. All healthy things grow. If you're not growing, that's not good. That's not even healthy. The second thing, which is the opposite side of saying I don't want change, is I don't need change. I don't need change. In fact, other people need change. Does that strike something? Right? Other people need change. But you see, if we don't see that we ourselves need to be changed, then we actually can't see our need for a savior. We need radical transformation in our lives. If we say we don't need change, I think we're having a little bit high of a view of ourselves. A little high of a view of ourselves. The third thing when we look at the word change is say I can fix it. I'll explain. I can change my circumstances. I can ultimately change what I'm going through. I can make the adjustments. I can lean on my own strength. You see, this is what the Israelites did. They're like, okay, I can do all the right things. I can change myself. They had this delusion that they could change their own heart, but the thing is you can't. And they can't fix it. Is that where we're at? I can fix it and we rely on our own strength above the strength of the Lord. That was a peel-out right there. I thought I was back in Cali, man. I was like, ugh. Dive, guys, dive. All right, let's focus here, all right? I can fix it. Do we rely on our own strength to fix our situation? Here's the reality. When we rely on our own strength, you're going to burn out eventually. Your energy is going to wear thin. And then on the opposite of saying I can fix it, I can change my circumstances, is that I've tried to change my circumstances, but I've failed. And now I'm convinced I can't fix it, and I'm convinced I'll never change. I'll never change. And you know what we can get wrapped up in in this, is that because I can never change, how can God ever love me? And we walk around with our head down, defeated. Here's the truth. All right, we've got to counteract this truth, right? The lie we tell ourselves is change will never come. The truth is nothing is impossible. God has the power to change everything. He has the power to change everything. You see, God is unchangeable, but He changes everything. We see God working through this story. We saw in the story of Ezra, God changed everything for the Israelites. But first we have to come to recognize that God is the first one that initiates change. The first one that initiates change, that's my first point. God is the one who initiates change. First we have to see that God initiates salvation for His people first, right? He stirred the heart of Cyrus to release His people. And throughout Scripture, you're going to see a pattern as you're reading it. A pattern throughout Scripture is there's human disobedience that leads to exile. Remember we talked a little bit more about exile is when we're disobedient, it's like a time out. It's like a dad putting come on dad, we have to hit our kids in time out sometimes. It's for their good. When Israel was disobedient, God put them in exile. But exile leads to God's promise. And God's promise leads to rescue, salvation of His people. And we could just look to Adam and Eve for that, right? The story of Adam and Eve in Genesis. Adam and Eve sinned against God. They were disobedient. They were cast out of Eden. But God gave them a promise that one day there would be a rescuer to bring them back. Bring them back from what was lost. We see this in the Exodus story of Moses. The people were in exile under Pharaoh. And what did they do in exile? They cried up to God. The Lord rescues them by sending Moses to bring them to the promised land. There's a rescuing. We see this pattern in disobedience, but God always rescues. He always rescues. See, God is the one that always takes the first step in all of these stories. Do you know that? He's the one that takes the first step and we are the ones that are called to respond to His first step. He leads. We follow. And you might be saying, wait a minute, Pastor Tim. I choose God. I choose God. I choose to follow Him. I choose to respond to Him. And you may even be saying, and I'm a good person. I'm a good person. I follow God. I'm not like the people out there that didn't come to church. Those dang heathens. I came here. I'm good. Right? Right? And I would just, two things, two things to respond to that. Are you a good person? Are you? You're only a good person if you're measuring yourself up to someone else. Right? The murderer in prison. I'm better than him. But that's your measuring stick. In other words, you need a bigger tape measure. You need a bigger tape measure to measure what goodness looks like because in Scripture God does not measure our goodness in comparison with someone else. He measures our goodness in comparison with Him. And He is righteous and just. He has a standard of holiness and goodness. We don't measure up. We actually fall very, very short. And if God's standard of goodness, that's a measuring stick, that's a tape measure, we don't have. But we have it in Jesus. We have it in Jesus because we're not measured by us. We're measured now by Christ if we're found in Christ. He's got a long enough measuring stick. We don't. Second thing. Did you choose Him? Did you choose God? Did you choose to follow Him? Or did you just respond to Him initiating that relationship? Let me rephrase it like this. Did your kids, parents, did your kids choose you? Or they're like, that's going to be my parent. Some of our kids would be like, I don't want that parent. Some of you guys are like, dang it. I had a choice in the matter. No, right? Here's the reality. You didn't choose your parents. God chose you. He chose you. See, remember we talked about last week, there are no coincidences that you're here for a reason. Like as you were driving down the street and you saw the Livingstone sides and you had this tug on your heart or feeling to go to church. I want you to recognize something. That's not coincidence. And that wasn't you. It wasn't you. That's God initiating relationship with you. As Scripture tells us, we're blind, we don't even look for him. He initiates to you first and draws you in. There's no coincidence that you drove down. Maybe you saw the Livingstone sign or you looked up churches near me and firmly. Right? That's not you. That's the Spirit of God saying the Lord Almighty wants a relationship with you. If you're a Christian for a season, what you realize is that God took the first step and you took the second step. God initiates the relationship with us. And he causes change in our life if we respond to him. I love what Jesus says in Matthew. He says, No one comes to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. You have to be drawn to him. Which is encouraging because if you're here and you're like, I don't know, I just don't hear the Lord speak to me. It's like he spoke to you. You're here. He called you here. I love the story of Paul that really just demonstrates God's initiative to seek after his people, to cause change in their life, to cause thriving in their life. I want to read the story of Paul in Acts 9, verse 1-4. He says this. You can read along or you can just look on the board here. It says, Paul was uttering threats with every breath and was eager to kill the Lord's followers. This is Paul, the Apostle Paul. He was eager to kill the Lord's followers. So he went to the high priest. He requested letters addressing to the synagogues in Damascus asking their cooperation to arrest of any followers of the way he found there. He wanted to bring them, both men and women, back to Jerusalem in chains. As he was approaching Damascus on his mission, a light from heaven suddenly shone down upon him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, which is Paul, why are you persecuting me? And then here's what Paul's response. Who are you, Lord? And the voice replied, I am Jesus, the one who you are pursuing. Now get up, go into the city, and you will be told what you must do. I love this because do you see the weight of this story? Paul was on a path. His mind was set. He had no intention on knowing Jesus or anything like that. His intention was to persecute the Christians. He wanted to drag them off in chains. Then all of a sudden, Jesus shows up. He initiates. And he goes, Paul, let me summarize, you're persecuting me. You know what? I'm changing your course. I'm changing your trajectory. I'm going to lead you on a different path. I love what that first verse 5 says. And you will be told what you must do. Basically, what Jesus said is like, you're mine now. There's no debate. You're mine now. God initiated this. He changed the whole course of Paul's life. I love what Paul says in Romans 7, 23 and through 25, he says, but I see my members and he's talking about his sin and his struggle with sin. I see my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Paul understood that there's still sin. We live in a broken world. But because of Jesus, he said, because of Jesus, everything has changed. When Jesus enters the scene, everything changes. We have a God that initiates and pursues his children despite us not measuring up to his righteousness and goodness or our estimation of worth for ourselves. God initiates and pursues us by his estimation of worth in us. And here's a really big truth for us to hear today, and I want us to hear this. You are worth the blood of Jesus on the cross. If you hear anything, you are worth the blood of Jesus on the cross. That's your worth. He went to the cross for you. And exposes his love for you. See, God initiates salvation for captive people. For captive people and for those who are in captivity. And brings us to Jesus. And Jesus changes everything. It changes the whole course, the whole directory of our lives. You know how God does this? How does he change us? How does he change the whole dynamic of our lives? He saves us through his son is the first thing. We were destined, we were on a path for hell, but Jesus intervened and brought us to the path to heaven by dying on the cross for us. And then even after Jesus died, he resurrected defeating death. And he tells his disciples, I gotta go. I gotta go, guys. And they're like, why do you have to leave? Just stay here with us. He's like, I gotta go because I gotta send the helper. See, how God brings change in our life also is he gives us his spirit. The spirit of God to help us change. Right? This is what sanctification is. And we've talked about this before, right? Sanctification is God making us more like Christ. But this process is super slow. So some of us are like, but I want change now. It's like, well, God's the one that's changing you. You kind of have to release control and go with the process. Right? Like the Israelites wanted change, but they were in captivity for 70 years. Hopefully our change doesn't take 70 years, but sometimes it does. Right? And ultimately, we're never completely changed and transformed in the likeness of Christ until we die and go to heaven, until we are in the presence of Christ. Another way that God changes our reality is that God adopts us as sons and daughters. Amen? If you have no family, you have got a family in Christ. We were orphans, but now we're not in Christ. See, God has the power to change everything in our lives. So if God initiates change first, He has to stir change. And that's my second point. God stirs change to bring us home. He stirs change to bring us home. Let's read verse 5. It says, Then he rose up the heads of the fathers, houses of Judah and Benjamin, and the priests and the Levites, everyone whose spirit God had stirred to go up and rebuild the house of the Lord that is in Jerusalem. As we look at this text, the Jewish people are called to come back home. They're called to go back to Jerusalem. But this is an easy task. You would think, well, it seems like, of course, we'd all go to Jerusalem. God's saving us. We're going to Jerusalem. It wasn't. Some of the people didn't want to return. They wanted to stay in Babylon. They built a life there. They settled down there. It was comfortable there. It's kind of interesting as I was thinking through this. It was comfortable in slavery than in freedom. Because they just got used to slavery. Like, I don't want to go. I built a life here. It's okay. See, a change like this was uncomfortable for them. It was uncomfortable. Some looked at this task to rebuild the temple as impossible, right? Jerusalem was a desert wasteland, a ghost town. The whole city and temple was destroyed. And for 70 years it sat there. This would be like if I came to you guys this morning and said, Happy Father's Day. By the way, guys, God told me that we're moving the church location and we're going to go to this place right here. It's in the middle of the desert. Like, that might be Silver Springs. I don't know. Some of you may be here from Silver Springs. Like, that's rude. I'm like, come on, guys. God's calling us to go here. That means we've got to sell all of our stuff. We're all going to move together here. Oh, by the way, there's lions roaming the streets. Do you like my... That took me way too long to do, by the way. I hope you appreciate that. There's lions in the street. Right? This is what Scripture tells us. It was abandoned for so long. There's literally giant lions roaming the street. But, come on. We got this. Who's with me? I was hoping someone would raise their hand. Thank you. So, there's lions in the street. But, hey, if that's not a selling point, you've got this sweet house. No? It's a fixer-upper. Sure. You've got to patch up the holes because there's lions. And at least you get a car. So, let's look at the... There you go. There's two of them. Right? This was kind of the circumstance. This is kind of crazy. We built a life here in Babylon. We kind of are okay with slavery. It kind of reminds me back in Exodus. I want you to realize that the story of Exodus and the story of Ezra are very, very similar. Very similar. The story of Ezra is basically the second Exodus. Right? The second Exodus. What's kind of interesting is even when the Israelites in Exodus had freedom, they longed for captivity because they were uncomfortable in the wilderness for a while. They're like, ah, it was better in prison. Right? But here's the thing. God didn't tell me we have to move there, okay? Don't worry. But God is calling us to be on mission here in Fernley. Fernley's not as bad as that. We don't have lions roaming the streets, I think. Right? And so not everyone went. God had to stir some people. He had to stir the hearts for people to go. And when we see this in this passage that God stirs people, this simply means to wake someone up from a dead sleep. That they were in a dead sleep and God needed to stir it. Imagine the illustration of a campfire. It goes out, right? And to get the fire going back up, you've got to stir up the coals to get the fire going. That's what the Lord had to do in their hearts. He had to stir up the fire within them to get them to move and go. And this stirring happened in a few ways in this passage. It says the Lord stirred the hearts of leadership first. You see that? It says it rose up the heads of the fathers, the houses of Judah and Benjamin, the priest and the Levites. Notice it doesn't say that he stirred everyone. First, God stirs the fathers and the leaders. This is really important for us to see. Sometimes God starts a movement and starts change through the stirring of leadership. Through the stirring of leadership. A lot of times God's going to bring change in your households when the fathers are stirred to God. When the fathers are stirred to God. When the fathers wake up from the sleeping on the wheel, right? Driving and passing out. God needs to stir the fathers to cause change. Now, we see in scripture too that if the fathers don't wake up, God will stir the moms, right? He'll stir the moms to lead the house. Here's one thing I want to just kind of invite you into. God is an order. He's an order to God. He's an order in how he made family. I love what one pastor says. God's men are called to lead the home and God's women are called to set the tone of the home. A lot of times the tone can't be set because the man, the father, is asleep at the wheel. Or vice versa. Sometimes the man can't lead the home well because their wife is not setting the tone. This is important for us to understand. Fathers. It's Father's day. Is God stirring you? Are you asleep at the wheel? God's like, you want to know why change isn't happening right now? It's because you are sleeping. You want to know why change isn't happening? Dads, it's because you are not present and you are not leading your family into this calling that God has created you for. Sometimes God causes change by just the stirring of leadership to bring the whole family into health. The second way God can stir the heart is through conviction. Through conviction. We talked about the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God gives us a holy conscience. We just can't do the same things we used to do. We don't find enjoyment into it. Or if we do do those things, we quickly feel like, oh man, we're such a jerk. We're such a, oh my gosh, I can't believe I did that. And there's a great conviction, right? How do we discern the difference between the Spirit's conviction and our own conviction? It's because we will normally, or our own conscience normally will try to justify our sin. The Spirit never tries to justify our sin. It points us to truth. So sometimes God stirs us just by a conviction that brings us to repentance by seeing our sin, by seeing and not ignoring who we are and looking at Jesus. And so God gives us the conviction. He stirs the heart. And this conviction can bring about change. The third way is God stirs the heart through opportunity. Through opportunity. Here comes the leaders and they're like, yo guys, we're going to go move with lions and holes and these abandoned cars. And some of the people are like, let's go! It was just sheer opportunity. The Lord presented an opportunity and they're like, I want to do it. Let's go. I'll fight a lion. Sure, let's rebuild this temple. Here's the thing, family. There's no shortage of opportunity. God is calling us to serve and walk into His goodness and go on mission with Him. But we actually have to respond to that opportunity. And the fourth way, He stirs us by giving us a desire for Him. Just a desire for mission, a desire for the love of God, the love of God's people. But as I was looking at this sermon too, I was like, okay, so we have to discern what the difference between the stirring of God or something else, right? How do we know the difference between God stirring us and maybe we are stirring ourselves? This is the check yourself before you wreck yourself. Check yourself before you wreck yourself. The first thing you got to do is if you're feeling a calling, a stirring from God, you have to bring it to God's word. Check your stirring with God's word. Does it contradict God's word? Because that's probably not God saying it, it's probably you. For instance, let me give you an example. I've heard this before. Hey Tim, Pastor Tim, I'm not going to really respond as a member of this church, a family member of this church. I really don't feel like serving right now. I really don't feel like giving. God's telling me to work on myself first. And I'm like, that's not God. That's not God. That's you. You're telling yourself you want to do what's most comfortable. God calls us out of the comfort into courageousness. Or for another example, I had a conversation with this young couple, teenage couple, and I was like, you know, God's calling me to love and marry this girl, but she's not really a Christian, she's not a believer, and we're having sex a lot. But God's calling me to this, and I'm like, that's not God. God says preserve their purity, not threaten their purity. And second of all, God's going to call any marriage to seek together the Lord. You may be setting yourself up for not a great relationship. That's not God, that's you. Right? So we've got to check ourselves and our desires with God's word, because Isaiah tells us our heart is deceitful and wicked above all things. There is no you do you, because if we do we, we're in jail. Or, you know, just scooting past the hat, right? The second thing, if we have this desire, or a desire, sometimes it's good, we've got to check ourselves with God's people. Check ourselves with God's people. We need to let God's people discern if this is what we're actually being called to. For instance, like if Jeff came up and said, Tim, I want to sing and be the worship leader, and I feel like God calling me to that. And then he comes up here and starts singing, and you guys are like, that's not his calling. Sorry, Jeff. Like, that's just not his calling, right? And so you've got to, we've got to run those things through God's people. It's good, too. Right? The third thing we have to check is our motives. Sometimes we feel the desire to do something good. It's a good thing, but our motives are bad. For instance, like, I desire, I want to lead, but the only reason you want to lead is to make yourself much. Right? It's for you rather than for God's people. We have to check our motives because sometimes even our motives are twisted. So we've got to check our motives. But I want us to kind of draw back, and I want us to notice something. As we look at these things, as God kind of transforms who we are and where we will go, I want to notice this one truth. God always calls us from something to somewhere. I don't know if you noticed that. God always, he stirs change, but he stirs change to bring us home somewhere. Like the exiled people, when God rescues them, he always has a destination. He always has a destination, and so God calls his people to rebuild the temple. See, because the temple is a place for people and worship and for the nations, for people to know God. But we're in the New Testament time where there's no temple, thank goodness, where we have to bring sacrifices, but we are the temple. So when God's calling us from exile, he's calling us to build something too, and you know what we're building here in Fernley, Nevada, is the gospel of Jesus. We want to see Jesus go out around the nations, right? We want to see Fernley transformed. That's the mission. As we come together, we're building something. This is God's temple. We're building something. We're on a mission for God, and then I want you to notice this as well. It says, as we built something, there was a response, right? God stirs, and then there's always a response. In verse 5, he says, it rose up. They rose up. And you know what that means? The word is actually a word that's derived from the book of Joshua, which it means to stir up is to go to war, right? Or not to stir up, to rise up is to go to war, to a call to action. If God is stirring, it means that we need to respond. We have to respond. Where are we today? Is God stirring in your heart, and have you not responded to him? We have to ask that question. Are we okay with living in comfort? Because if we actually respond to God's calling, it's going to bring discomfort. It's a call to action. See, we can have the desire to change, but we never respond. Change will never happen. If we never respond to God, change will never happen. I think ultimately, here's the problem. Here's the ultimate problem. I think sometimes we just don't trust God. I think sometimes we actually don't truly believe he can change things in our life. I think when we look to Jesus, sometimes we say, it's just not enough for me. Christ's death on the cross isn't enough to change me. I don't believe that Jesus can actually bring about change. What happens is we become disconnected from who God is. We live in the lie that we will never change. We live in the lie that nothing will ever change. I want to just give us three ways that God provides change for us, and then I'm going to wrap this up. Three ways that God provides change for us. He provides for his people. The first one is God provides resources to show his abundant love. We see this in the scripture in verse 6. All who were about them aided them with vessels and silver and gold with goods and beasts and costly wares. God, and I want you to notice, they were called to something, and then God resourced them. It wasn't the people, it was their neighbors. Can you imagine them saying, okay, we're moving to that desert with all those crazy cars and the lions, and our neighbors are like, cool, here's a $100,000 check. You're like, sweet, I guess we can rebuild, right? And all this is exposing is that God provides for his people. There's no lack for them. There's abundant provision for them. Do we trust in that? And the second way, God provides for the mission through his people. It says they gave a freewill offering. They saw this grace that was given by unbelievers to them, and they gave grace. It says they gave freewill offering. It's grace received, grace given. They gave freely to see the mission continue. And then third, God provided through a tragedy to show his victory in verse 7. Cyrus the king also brought out vessels in the house of the Lord that Nebuchadnezzar had carried away from Jerusalem and a place in the house of his gods. So here's what happened. When Jerusalem crashed down and Babylon took it over, they were known for taking the idols from any temple and putting it in Nebuchadnezzar's temple. In the temple of God, there was no idols. There was just gold, silver, all these kind of beautiful artifacts, and so what they did was Nebuchadnezzar brought it, put it into this kind of museum, and as the Israelites walked by, they would see the things that belonged to God that were taken. And it probably always resonated in their mind that that will be impossible to ever get back. It's impossible. But here's what God does. He puts a king in and this king Cyrus gives back what was God's to his people. And here's what God is saying. He provides through a tragedy to show his victory. What God is simply saying is evil won't win. He will be victorious at the end of the day over evil. We are victorious in him. Evil won't win. God provides through a tragedy sometimes to show his victory. God changes everything. Will we respond to him? I think there's a couple applications. We have to release our own control. We have to release our own control and give it up to the Lord. I think another one is we have to take the opportunity that God has given. Some of us are frozen and fear not wanting to respond to God on one simple fact. We don't trust that he will actually show up. And here's the beautiful thing about God. He never tells you to show up equipped to do anything. Throughout scripture, he calls people literally to show up to watch him work. God does everything. We just have to respond to him. We have to come to a place that we acknowledge that we need change and we can't fix our circumstances. That's the first step to understanding that we ourselves are actually exiles. We need to realize that we're exiles so we would actually cry up and say, Lord, rescue. Rescue. Change my circumstance. Change my life, Lord God. And here's the thing. He will. Do we trust him? You see, we see and we can acknowledge and we can trust on what Jesus did on the cross. You see, Jesus initiated salvation for us. Everyone rejected him and he went and marched to the cross. He was stripped naked and run through town. He was mocked and shamed, but he did it for us so that we would be clothed with his righteousness. Jesus provides everything. Do you know that? He provides everything. It was an impossible task to get right with God. It was an impossible task to change our hearts. But what was impossible, Jesus made possible. We now can be right with God. We can now have lives that are changed and transformed by just the presence of the Lord Jesus in our lives. Nothing is impossible with God. Change can happen. Do you trust in Jesus? Do you trust in that? The call is simple. If God initiates, we need to respond. We've got to ask the question, are we responding? Let's pray. Lord God, we thank you that you are a God that initiates our salvation. You're a God that initiates us to come to you, Lord God. You are a loving God that brings us home, Lord God, that there's a destination at the end of the day as we live and we wander through this world, Lord God. You are going to bring us home to yourself. That is our great hope and our great victory, Lord God. As we stand before you, Lord God, we don't stand by ourselves. We stand with Jesus. The punishment of sin is paid for. It's paid for by you. Help us, Lord God, to be joyful and respond to you. We praise you and we ask that your spirit would stir in the hearts of your people. We say all these things in Jesus' name. Amen.