You are holy to the Lord

And I said to them,

"You are holy to the Lord,

and the vessels are holy,

and the silver and the gold 

are a freewill offering to the Lord,

the God of your fathers.

Guard them and keep them

until you weigh them before the chief priests and the Levites

and the heads of fathers' houses

in Israel at Jerusalem,

within the chambers of the house of the Lord."

~Ezra 8:28-29

Recently, I've had the privilege of studying the book of Ezra.  Although I had read Ezra, I never studied it before.  When I studied chapter 8, the above passage caught and held my attention.

You are holy to the Lord.  And so is the treasure I am weighing out for you to carry.  Guard it and keep it, until you have brought it all the way safely to the officials in Israel, in Jerusalem, in the Lord's temple.   (That is my own paraphrase.)

Here's the background of the story:

Throughout history, God's chosen people, the nation of Israel, had struggled to be obedient and faithful to their Lord.  Again and again, they broke His commandments and (worst of all) worshipped false gods.  Again and again, they were unfaithful to their covenant with the Lord.  Again and again, God reached out to them, to get their attention.  He sent prophets, whom they disregarded, mocked and sometimes even killed.  At times, God humbled them by allowing their enemies to overwhelm them in battle.  These defeats usually caused the Israelites to run back to God temporarily, and beg for help.  However, as soon as they won the next battle, they forgot that God had been their strength and their source of victory.

After many cycles of faithless disobedience, it was time for God to call Israel to account.  By now, the disobedient nation had fractured into two kingdoms, a northern kingdom and a southern kingdom.  In 722 BC, the northern kingdom (Israel, sometimes known as Ephraim) fell to Assyria.  In 586 BC, the southern kingdom (Judah, where the line of David ruled as kings) fell to Babylon.

The Babylonians broke down the walls around Jerusalem, and burned down the glorious temple that King Solomon had built, as well as all the other important buildings.  They gathered up everything that was made of precious metals, plundering the temple treasuries and chopping up large artifacts and architectural features of bronze, for easier transport to Babylon.  Along with the treasures of Jerusalem, the Babylonians carried the surviving Jews into exile in Babylon, except for a few of the poorest people, whom they left behind to farm the land.

Now, the prophets had predicted all these events.  Over 800 years earlier, Moses had written that Israel would disobey the Lord, that they would be driven out of their land, and ultimately that God would gather them back to the land and restore their blessings (Deuteronomy 29-31).  Isaiah had prophesied around the time of the fall of the northern kingdom, predicting the fall of the southern kingdom, and remarkably prophesying (100-200 years before it happened) that God would raise up someone named Cyrus to rebuild Jerusalem and the temple (Isaiah 44-45), after the destruction had taken place.  Jeremiah wrote during the last days of the southern kingdom of Judah, suffering a great deal as he watched, with his own eyes, the sacking of Jerusalem.  Jeremiah prophesied that the exile of the nation would last seventy years (Jeremiah 25, 29), and encouraged the Jews to be cooperative and agreeable while they waited it out.

Learned, God-fearing Jews like Daniel and Ezra studied the ancient scriptures to try to understand what was happening to them during the difficult years of punishment, and to find hope.  Of course, in His great mercy, God had left a very traceable record of hope to which they could cling.

Daniel served in the courts of the kings of Babylon, gifted by God with supernatural wisdom and the ability to interpret dreams and predict the future correctly, consistently outperforming the Babylonian magicians.  Daniel's study of scripture led him to discover that the Jewish captivity should end after seventy years (Daniel 9).  Daniel was in royal service when the Medes and Persians seized Babylon and took over world dominion in 539 BC.  By this time, Daniel was quite an old man.  He had been deported in 605 BC, approximately 66 years earlier.  He would have been well aware that 66 years were getting close to 70 years.  Daniel himself would have been between 81-86 years old when King Cyrus of Persia overthrew Belshazzar of Babylon in 539 BC.  Although he was too old to undertake the long journey back to Jerusalem, I imagine that his heart filled with joy when he learned that the new ruler was named Cyrus, just as the Lord had prophesied more than a century earlier.

The book of Ezra recounts the miraculous hand of the Lord working to restore His people to their land and their temple worship of the one true God.  It opens with the amazing edict that Cyrus wrote, granting both permission and provision for the Jews to go back and rebuild the Lord's temple.

By the eighth chapter of Ezra, which I quoted above, the temple had been rebuilt, even despite opposition.  However, the practice of worship had not become what it needed to be.  Nearly twenty years had passed since the first group of exiles returned to Jerusalem with their leader, Zerubbabel (who was the living remnant of the line of Davidic kings).  The newly rebuilt temple lacked much of its original splendor, and the people did not have good background in or understanding of the Word of God.  The hand of God moved Ezra's heart to go back to Israel and teach the scriptures to the Jewish people.

God continued to pour out miracle after miracle.  The ruler of Medo-Persia, King Artaxerxes, gave Ezra an official letter to carry on his travels, granting him permission to go to Jerusalem and to take silver and gold which Artaxerxes and his counselors had given him, as well as freewill offerings of silver and gold from all the people.  The letter also gave Ezra permission to use the resources to buy whatever was needed for making sacrifices (animals, oil, grain, wine, etc.), and anything else required for the house of the Lord.  The king furnished Ezra with beautiful vessels made of precious metals, to be used in the Lord's service.  Furthermore, King Artaxerxes decreed that all the treasurers of provinces beyond the river needed to participate in providing supplies to Ezra, and that Ezra and all his traveling companions would be exempt from any taxes, duties, tolls and tributes.

Ezra thanked God for these miracles, and took courage, knowing that the hand of God was on him in his endeavor.  When Ezra assembled his group and discovered that he was short-staffed in certain areas of personnel, he prayed, and again God provided exactly the right people.  When everyone was finally all together, they fasted and prayed for safety, because Ezra was ashamed to ask the king for a guard, after he had proclaimed the Lord's reputation as his mighty Protector.

It was at this point when Ezra picked out particular people, priests, and placed them in charge of seeing that all their treasures arrived safely at the Lord's temple.  Ezra meticulously weighed out the silver and the gold, and counted the vessels, recording the inventory.  Then he passed the treasures out to these chosen men, keeping records of who was carrying what, and gave them this charge:

"You are holy to the Lord,

and the vessels are holy,

and the silver and the gold 

are a freewill offering to the Lord,

the God of your fathers.

Guard them and keep them

until you weigh them before the chief priests and the Levites

and the heads of fathers' houses

in Israel at Jerusalem,

within the chambers of the house of the Lord."

~Ezra 8:28-29

Now, this was obviously good practice, good leadership, good accounting.  Ezra was both carefully responsible and warmly encouraging.  He demonstrated that he would hold his men accountable for their cargo, but he also inspired them to fulfill their calling by reminding them that they and the cargo were holy to the Lord.  He entrusted them with valuable, holy treasures to be used in the service of the Lord, and he exhorted them to guard them carefully until they could be delivered and weighed in the chambers of the house of the Lord.

Ezra's word to the priests who carried the treasure were good words for the time, but they are also good words for our time.

We are holy.

Each one of us who believes in Jesus, depending on Him in faith for salvation, is holy to the Lord.  In fact, we are considered priests.  Peter wrote, "But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light."  (1 Peter 2:9)

The treasure we carry within us is holy.

The leaders among the priests who traveled with Ezra carried a load of precious treasure.  The priests were holy, and the treasure was holy.  Believers in Jesus also carry a precious treasure: the very Spirit of Christ.  Jesus said, "I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you . . . In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me and I in you." (John 14:18, 20)

The Holy Spirit of Jesus is the treasure in us.

That their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.  (Colossians 2:2)

To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.  (Colossians 1:27)

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of His glory He may grant you to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may live in your hearts through faith.  (Ephesians 3:14-17a)

Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you? (1 Corinthians 3:16)

I simply cannot get over this.  The Spirit of the God of the Universe, the Sustainer of all Creation, dwells inside my body.  He is my strength, my hope, my treasure.  He actually fills me with power and wisdom.  Imagine that.  Can you imagine that?  My God lives in me, and because He lives, I live.  Because of His grace, I can walk in His power, with His wisdom, confident of the hope He gives me.  This is utterly astonishing; yet, how rarely we seem to ponder it.

I'm not making it up.

But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us (2 Corinthians 4:7). We are jars of clay, filled with the treasure of the all surpassing power of God.  By His power, we can withstand whatever comes our way.

Christ, our treasure, abides in us and makes us holy.  We are holy to the Lord because the treasure that abides in us is holy.

We are called to guard our treasure.

Ezra charged the priests to guard the treasure that he was entrusting to them.  In the New Testament, Paul writes twice to Timothy, "O Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you." (1 Timothy 6:20a)  And, "By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you." (2 Timothy 1:14).  But what was this deposit, this good deposit?

The deposit could be the Spirit Himself, but when Paul is writing to Timothy, a fellow pastor, it seems likely that the deposit is something from the Spirit, precious and essential for the nourishment of the church and the expansion of the Kingdom of God.  In this case, my guess would be that the deposit is the truth, the truth of the gospel of Christ.  Of course, Jesus said that He is the Truth:  "I am the way, and the truth, and the life . . . " (John 14:6).  Everything seems always to come back to Jesus in the end.  However, in the meantime, I think we believers are tasked with guarding the truth, sharing it while making sure that it is never changed or twisted.  At the same time, Jesus Himself guards us! (2 Thessalonians 3:3)

We will need to account for how we handled our treasure.

Ezra's crew of priests knew that they would be called to account for the treasure they carried, and so do we.  One day, we will stand before the Lord, and give account for how we handled His truth, whether we lived in accordance with His Spirit in us, whether we were led by the Spirit and bore Spirit fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  We will give account for whether the truth permeated our souls and changed us.

Our job, as members of the church, is to carry the presence of the Holy Spirit into the world, as He dwells within us, so we might radiate the beauty of Christ and demonstrate the love of Christ.  Our job is to be part of the expansion of the Kingdom of God by communicating the truth of the gospel, but also by living and demonstrating the love of God that draws souls into His body, the church.  Our job is to enhance the beauty of the church by serving with whatever special gifts the Holy Spirit has given us.  We all receive different spiritual gifts, so we can complement one another and work together, along with the miraculous power of God, to build something that would be exponentially more than the sum of its parts, if it weren't for the priceless value of the Holy Spirit and the blood of Jesus.*

Like the servants in the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30), we are entrusted with a measure of our Master's riches.  In Romans 12:3, Paul calls it, "the measure of faith that God has assigned."  In the Parable of the Talents, a nobleman gave three servants each some money, and then he went away.  Two of the servants invested their money and presented their master with a gain when he returned, but the third sat on his money, and had only the original amount to give back to his master when he was called to account.  To the two who had wisely invested, the master said, "Well done, good and faithful servant."  But when the lazy servant came with nothing to show for himself, the master rebuked him and ordered others to drag him away.

Ezra chose particular men to carry the treasure on the long journey.  He clearly communicated to them that he knew what they were carrying, and that they would be expected to account for it when they arrived at God's temple in Jerusalem.  God has clearly communicated to us that we will give a reckoning for how we lived our lives, on the last day (1 Corinthians 3:11-15, Revelation 20:11-13).

Ezra's priests arrived in Jerusalem, and everything was counted, weighed and recorded (Ezra 8:34).  It was all good.  When the last day dawns for us, the New Jerusalem will come down out of heaven (Revelation 21:2).  Our journey will end when our destination comes to us.  We will live in the glorious presence of God and see His face, and He will be our light (Revelation 22:4-5).  We will reign in glory forever and ever.

Yes, we need to live out our calling, but we can do this.  We can work out our salvation with fear and trembling . . . because it is God who works in us to will and to act according to His good pleasure (Philippians 2:12-13).  God works in us.  His power is shown to be perfect when it envelops us and compensates for our weaknesses.  As Jesus promised, He will not leave us as orphans.  He has come to us and He lives in us, transforming our minds, and even our appearance, with ever-increasing glory (2 Corinthians 3:18).  If God is for us, nobody can stand against us.  Nothing can separate us from the love of God; He will never leave us nor forsake us.

We do not need to be afraid.  God demonstrated His love for us when, while we were still sinners, Jesus Christ died for us.  Jesus has conquered sin and death, and with Jesus on our side we also will surely triumph.  He has sent His very Spirit to live in us as a foretaste of the beautiful fellowship we will experience when we are finally gathered into His full presence forever.

The Holy Spirit lives in me, and I am holy.








*In other words, our value would be greater than the sum of our parts, if one of the parts were not the Lord Himself, who is of infinite value, thus automatically making it impossible for any combined value that includes Him to exceed the sum of its parts, since His value is infinite from the outset, which is why we are so thankful that He is with us.