The Prophetic Jumpstart Text: Ezra 5:1-2
Introduction: The Glorious Dust Collector
Every man who has ever decided to remodel a bathroom or finish a basement knows the pattern. There is the initial burst of glorious vision. Sledgehammers are swung with gusto, drywall comes down, and the possibilities seem endless. The first weekend is a flurry of productive noise. But then, life happens. The plumbing turns out to be more complicated than the YouTube tutorial suggested. The budget gets tight. The children need to be driven to their various activities. And soon, the once-promising project becomes a monument to stalled intentions. The new tools sit in the corner, collecting a fine layer of sheetrock dust, a silent rebuke to abandoned zeal.
This is precisely where the people of God found themselves in the time of Ezra. They had returned from exile with high hopes. They laid the foundation of the Temple with great celebration, with shouting and with weeping. The work of God had begun again. But then, as always, the opposition arose. The Samaritans, the original concern trolls, came with their threats and their political machinations, and the work ground to a halt. For sixteen long years, the foundation of God's house sat there, exposed to the elements, a testament to fear, compromise, and misplaced priorities. The people, as the prophet Haggai tells us, got very busy with their own projects. They built their own paneled houses while the house of the Lord lay in ruins. Their zeal had evaporated, and they had settled for a comfortable, private faith that made no public demands and provoked no public opposition.
But God does not abandon His work, and He does not suffer His people to remain in their comfortable disobedience forever. When the Church gets stuck, when our projects stall, when we have traded the glory of God's house for the comfort of our own, God has a designated instrument to get things moving again. That instrument is the preached Word. He sends prophets. He sends preachers to afflict the comfortable. Today's text is about that divine kickstart. It is about how God takes a stalled, dusty, and disobedient people and gets them back to the main business of building His kingdom. This is not just ancient history; it is a permanent lesson in how God advances His purposes in the world.
The Text
And the prophets, Haggai the prophet and Zechariah the son of Iddo, prophesied to the Jews who were in Judah and Jerusalem in the name of the God of Israel, who was over them. Then Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel and Jeshua the son of Jozadak arose and began to rebuild the house of God which is in Jerusalem; and the prophets of God were with them supporting them.
(Ezra 5:1-2 LSB)
The Divine Irritant (v. 1)
The first verse shows us God's chosen method for rousing a sleeping church.
"And the prophets, Haggai the prophet and Zechariah the son of Iddo, prophesied to the Jews who were in Judah and Jerusalem in the name of the God of Israel, who was over them." (Ezra 5:1 LSB)
Notice how the action resumes. It does not begin with a new political strategy, a capital campaign, or a leadership seminar. It begins with preaching. Reformation always begins with the Word of God proclaimed. God sent two men, Haggai and Zechariah, to be a divine irritant in the oyster of Judah's complacency. And they were a study in contrasts, a one-two punch of law and gospel.
Haggai comes first, and his message is a short, sharp, practical rebuke. His book is filled with pointed, uncomfortable questions. "Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins?" (Haggai 1:4). He diagnosed their central sin: they had prioritized their personal comfort over God's corporate glory. They were suffering economically, their harvests were failing, and Haggai tells them exactly why. "You look for much, and behold, it comes to little... Why? declares the LORD of hosts. Because of my house that lies in ruins, while each of you runs to his own house" (Haggai 1:9). This is not health-and-wealth preaching; this is its opposite. It is covenant curse preaching. Their selfish, pietistic disobedience had real-world consequences. Haggai's message was simple: stop making excuses, consider your ways, and get back to work.
Then comes Zechariah. While Haggai provides the street-level rebuke, Zechariah provides the glorious, cosmic vision. His prophecy is filled with flying scrolls, horsemen, and magnificent visions of the Branch, the Messiah to come. He shows them that their work of stacking stones in Jerusalem is tied to God's grand, eternal purpose of redemption. He lifts their eyes from the rubble at their feet to the glorious future of the Kingdom of God. A church needs both. It needs the sharp, practical rebuke of Haggai to address its present sins, and it needs the soaring, eschatological vision of Zechariah to fuel its hope.
And notice the basis of their authority. They spoke "in the name of the God of Israel." They were not sharing their opinions. They were delivering a message from the King. And the text adds a crucial, clarifying phrase: "who was over them." This is the foundation of all covenant obligation. The God who gave the command was not a distant suggestion-maker. He was their immediate sovereign. He was over them. Their failure to build was not just a lapse in scheduling; it was an act of rebellion against the throne of heaven.
The Obedient Response (v. 2)
Verse two gives us the glorious and necessary result of faithful preaching. The Word of God is not an abstract lecture; it is a creative and powerful force that demands and produces a response.
"Then Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel and Jeshua the son of Jozadak arose and began to rebuild the house of God which is in Jerusalem; and the prophets of God were with them supporting them." (Ezra 5:2 LSB)
The first word is "Then." This is the conjunction of revival. The prophets prophesied, then the leaders arose. The Word of God, faithfully preached, does things. It does not return void. It builds up, and it tears down. Here, it builds up. The Word landed on fertile soil in the hearts of the leaders.
Zerubbabel was the governor, the civil authority. Jeshua was the high priest, the spiritual authority. Here we see the beautiful, biblical pattern of cooperation between what we would call church and state. True reformation is not a solely "spiritual" affair that happens in men's hearts. It is a public, concrete reality that involves both the magistrate and the minister submitting to the Word of God and leading the people in obedience. They did not form a committee to debate the merits of Haggai's sermon. They did not commission a feasibility study. They heard the Word of the Lord, and they "arose." Repentance has legs. It gets up and gets to work.
They "began to rebuild the house of God." The prophetic word re-centered their priorities. They had been busy with their own houses, their own fields, their own lives. The preaching of God's Word reminded them that the central project, the organizing principle of their entire society, was the public worship of the living God. A community that does not have the worship of God at its center will disintegrate into a thousand competing private interests. That is the definition of secularism, and it is a dead end.
But the prophets' work was not done. The text says they "were with them supporting them." This is a vital picture of the pastoral ministry. The true prophet does not just drop the bomb of rebuke and then fly away. He stays. He encourages. He applies the balm of the gospel to the wounds that the law has opened. He comes alongside the people, picks up a trowel, and helps with the work. The ministry of the Word is not separate from the work of the people; it is the fuel for it and the ongoing support of it.
Conclusion: Consider Your Ways
The message of Haggai, Zechariah, and Ezra comes to us today with the same force. The central temptation for the modern American church is precisely the same as it was for the Jews of the restoration. We are tempted to build our own paneled houses while the house of God lies in ruins.
Our paneled houses are our comfortable careers, our respectable suburban lives, our obsession with our children's worldly success, our private and pietistic spiritualities that make no demands on the public square. We run to our own houses, ensuring our retirement is funded and our children get into the right colleges, while the corporate, public testimony of the Church is neglected. We have become experts at minding our own business, which is a sin when God's business is left undone.
The house of God today is not a building of stone, but the "household of faith," the Church of Jesus Christ. Rebuilding it means restoring faithful, robust, God-centered worship. It means diligently catechizing our children in the faith. It means building strong Christian communities that are capable of resisting the cultural rot. It means boldly applying the crown rights of Jesus Christ to every area of life, from the privacy of the home to the halls of government.
God's Word is still our prophet. The Scriptures are our Haggai and Zechariah, calling us to "consider your ways." Are you building your own kingdom, or are you building His? Has your personal comfort become a higher priority than God's corporate glory?
The call is to repent, and to arise. The Word has been preached. Then what? Let the "then" for us be the same as it was for Zerubbabel and Jeshua. Let us arise and build. The opposition is still there, to be sure. But the prophets of God are with us, supporting us. And more than that, the great Prophet, Priest, and King, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, is with us, and He has promised to build His Church, and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it. Therefore, let us get to work.