The Grammar of a Kingdom: Worship, Wealth, and Worldview Text: Ezra 8:35-36
Introduction: Rebuilding From the Altar Out
We live in an age that is desperate for cultural and political solutions to spiritual problems. Men run to and fro, wringing their hands over the decay of the West, the collapse of our institutions, and the moral anarchy in our streets. They form committees, they draft legislation, they launch campaigns, and they cry out for a political savior to fix the mess. But they are like men trying to straighten the pictures on the wall of a house whose foundations are crumbling into a sinkhole. They are addressing the symptoms while remaining utterly blind to the disease.
The book of Ezra is a divine corrective to this kind of political idolatry. The people of God have returned from a seventy-year exile, a long and bitter lesson in the consequences of idolatry and covenant-breaking. They have come back to a ruined city and a desolate land, surrounded by hostile neighbors. What is their first order of business? Is it to raise an army? Is it to lobby the Persian court for more political power? Is it to launch a public relations campaign to win the hearts and minds of the locals? No. Their first great public act, upon securing the treasure for the Temple, is worship. They go straight to the altar. They offer up an enormous, costly, and meticulously ordered sacrifice to Yahweh. Their first move is a liturgical one.
This is because they understood, in a way that our generation has forgotten, that all of culture is downstream from cult. All of civilization is an expression of worship. A nation's laws, its art, its economics, and its politics are nothing more than the outworking of what it believes about God, man, and the world. You cannot rebuild a godly society on a secular foundation. You cannot have Christian fruit without Christian roots. The exiles knew that if Jerusalem was to be rebuilt, it had to be rebuilt from the altar out. If the people were to be reconstituted as the people of God, it had to happen in an act of covenant renewal, through blood and fire and smoke.
This passage is therefore a profound lesson in godly strategy. It teaches us about the priority of worship, the nature of true wealth, and the proper relationship between the people of God and the secular state. It is a declaration that Yahweh is back in town, and that His kingdom advances not first through political power, but through the power of acceptable worship.
The Text
The exiles who had come from the captivity brought burnt offerings near to the God of Israel: 12 bulls for all Israel, 96 rams, 77 lambs, 12 male goats for a sin offering, all as a burnt offering to Yahweh. Then they gave the king’s edicts to the king’s satraps and to the governors in the provinces beyond the River, and they supported the people and the house of God.
(Ezra 8:35-36 LSB)
Covenant Renewal in Technicolor (v. 35)
We begin with the central act, the great festival of sacrifice.
"The exiles who had come from the captivity brought burnt offerings near to the God of Israel: 12 bulls for all Israel, 96 rams, 77 lambs, 12 male goats for a sin offering, all as a burnt offering to Yahweh." (Ezra 8:35)
Notice who is doing the offering: "the exiles who had come from the captivity." Their identity is bound up in their redemption. They are a people defined by God's gracious deliverance. This is the starting point for all true worship. We do not come to God as autonomous, self-made men. We come as redeemed captives, as brands plucked from the fire. Our worship is not the worship of the proud, but the grateful response of the saved.
And what do they do? They bring offerings. This is not a spectator sport. Worship is not passive; it is active and it is costly. They bring a staggering amount of wealth on legs and offer it up to God. Let's look at the numbers, because they are preaching a sermon. First, there are 12 bulls "for all Israel." After centuries of division, after the kingdom split into Judah and Israel, after both were hauled into exile, the first great act of worship on their return is a statement of unity. This is not the tribe of Judah returning, or the tribe of Benjamin. This is "all Israel." They are laying claim to their entire covenant history and identity. The 12 bulls represent the 12 tribes, reconstituted as one people before God.
Then we see the lavishness of their devotion. Ninety-six rams and seventy-seven lambs. These are not token gifts. This is extravagant. This is a joyful, open-handed, no-holds-barred expression of gratitude. They have been given much, and they are giving much in return. This is what happens when God's grace truly grips a people. It loosens their grip on their wallets and their possessions. Stingy worship is an oxymoron.
But we must understand the grammar of these sacrifices. Two types are mentioned specifically. First, the "burnt offerings." A burnt offering, or an ascension offering, was one in which the entire animal, except for the skin, was consumed on the altar. The smoke ascended to God as a pleasing aroma. This symbolized total consecration. It was the worshiper saying, "All that I am and all that I have, I surrender to you. I lay it all on the altar." It is an act of complete dedication. This is what Paul is talking about when he urges us to present our bodies as a "living sacrifice" (Rom. 12:1). The exiles are rededicating themselves, all of themselves, to Yahweh and His purposes.
But before you can consecrate, you must be cleansed. That is why they also offer "12 male goats for a sin offering." Again, notice the number: 12. This is a corporate confession of sin on behalf of all the tribes. The sin offering dealt with the guilt and pollution of sin. It was a recognition that their sin had caused the breach with God, that their sin had sent them into exile, and that they could not approach a holy God without an atoning sacrifice. First comes the confession and atonement (the sin offering), and then comes the consecration (the burnt offering). This is the biblical pattern. You cannot dedicate a dirty vessel to a holy God. You must be cleansed first.
Of course, all of this is a magnificent picture, a shadow pointing to the substance, who is Jesus Christ. He is our great sin offering. His blood cleanses us from all guilt (Heb. 9:14). And He is our great burnt offering. He is the one who perfectly consecrated Himself to the Father's will, whose entire life ascended as a pleasing aroma to God. Because we are united to Him by faith, His atonement is our atonement, and His consecration is our consecration. This is why we, in our worship, first confess our sins, and then, having been cleansed, we consecrate ourselves to God's service. The exiles were acting out the gospel in blood and fire.
Dealing with the Satraps (v. 36)
After the worship, they attend to their civil duties. The order is crucial.
"Then they gave the king’s edicts to the king’s satraps and to the governors in the provinces beyond the River, and they supported the people and the house of God." (Ezra 8:36)
Having rendered to God the things that are God's, they now render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's. They take the official paperwork from King Artaxerxes and deliver it to the local Persian authorities. This is a textbook example of what we call sphere sovereignty. The people of God recognize the legitimate, God-ordained authority of the civil magistrate. They are not anarchists or rebels. They operate within the structures of the pagan government under which God has placed them.
But notice the relationship. They do not go to the satraps to ask for permission to worship. They worship first. Their ultimate allegiance has already been declared at the altar. They go to the satraps simply to inform them of the king's decree, a decree which God, in His sovereignty, had put into the king's heart to make. They are not servants of the state; they are servants of God who live peaceably within the state. The church is not a department of the government, and it does not derive its authority to worship from the government.
And what is the result of this God-honoring, orderly conduct? The pagan governors "supported the people and the house of God." This is a beautiful illustration of Proverbs 21:1, "The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of Yahweh; He turns it wherever He will." God is so sovereign that He can make even pagan bureaucrats serve His redemptive purposes. He can cause them to "support" the very work they might otherwise be inclined to crush. This is not because the exiles were brilliant political negotiators. It is because they put first things first. They honored God with their worship, and God honored them by turning the hearts of their rulers.
This is a lesson our own age desperately needs to learn. Many Christians believe we must gain political influence before we can be faithful, that we must win the culture war before we can build the church. Ezra teaches the opposite. We must build the church through faithful, robust, biblical worship, and as we do, God will grant us the cultural and political influence that pleases Him. The power is not in the governor's office; the power is at the altar. The world is changed not by lobbying, but by liturgy.
Conclusion: The Logic of a Godly Kingdom
So what do we take away from this? We see the logic of a godly restoration. It begins with a people who know they are redeemed. That redeemed people understands that their first and highest duty is worship. That worship is both atoning and consecrating; it deals with the guilt of the past and dedicates the whole of the future to God. It is corporate, it is lavish, and it is orderly.
Only after this vertical alignment with God is re-established do they deal with the horizontal relationships with the surrounding world. They honor the civil authorities without idolizing them. They submit to the king's legitimate authority, all while knowing that Yahweh is the King of kings. And the result is that God's kingdom is advanced, the house of God is supported, and the people of God are established in the land.
This is the pattern for us. Our central task as the church is not to fix Washington D.C. Our central task is to be the church. It is to gather each Lord's Day and offer up the sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving. It is to confess our sins, to hear the word of cleansing, and to consecrate ourselves afresh to the Lord's service. It is to present ourselves as living burnt offerings. As we do this, as our worship becomes more biblically robust, more joyful, more reverent, more costly, we will find that God Himself will begin to reorder the world around us. He will deal with the satraps and governors. Our job is to tend the altar. When the fire is burning brightly there, its light and its heat will be felt everywhere.