Ezra 3:1 And when the seventh month was come, and the children of Israel were in the cities, the people gathered themselves together as one man to Jerusalem
Have you ever felt like you have been uprooted from everything that told you who you were and where you were going? Your family name, your home town, your traditions, or everything that told you who you were and gave you some sense of your standing in the world, seemed to be gone. Maybe you felt this as a freshman in college, a freshman in a law firm or some other place, or maybe it has been after you lost a loved one or a home. You feel like everything that gave you some sense of your place in the world was uprooted.
Well, Ezra writes of people who knew exactly what that was like. They were the children of Israel who were gathered together and went back to Jerusalem after years of captivity. Ezra 3:1 says, “And when the seventh month was come, and the children of Israel were in the cities, the people gathered themselves together as one man to Jerusalem.” So, what do you do when you are uprooted? All of us have felt that way at times. Ezra gives us some good illustrations of what one should do when uprooted.
These people were without a place. They went back to Jerusalem, but Jerusalem had not personally been their home. It had been their ancestral home, but they had been without a place. They gathered together in Jerusalem, but Jerusalem was just as foreign to them as London would be to me. Whatever their ancestry may have been, they did not personally know Jerusalem.
The people were different; they were not the same people who had left Jerusalem years before. They had been uprooted from their people. The Bible says, “Then stood up Jeshua.” This was the grandson of the high priest who had been murdered by Nebuchadnezzar when the people were taken into captivity years before.
Their place was different, their people were gone, and also their traditions were changed. Verse 4 says, “They kept also the feast of tabernacles, as it is written.” So, before they even had a temple, the old one had been destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar. They again started their traditions. When they returned to Jerusalem, they had to begin a new life.
So, what did they do? What do you do when you are uprooted? First, they found an authority. Verse 2 says that they “builded the altar of the God of Israel…as is written in the law of Moses…” Verse 4 says, “They kept also the feast of tabernacles, as it is written.” Again, verse 10 says that they praised the Lord “after the ordinance of David king of Israel.” How did they even know what to do? All that they had been accustomed to that could have informed them, their place, their people, and their traditions, were gone. But, they had something that was timeless, that could not be touched, and was unchanging. That is God’s Word; what God had said. It tells us a number of times that they built again as it was written. They had God’s authority on their life.
Second, they built a foundation. Throughout this chapter, the Bible explains how the foundation of the temple was not yet laid, but they began to do that. They constructed this altar before there was even a house of God, and they did this as close as they could tell on the foundation of the altar that had been there a generation or two before. So, they built a foundation. Start where you are. Maybe you aren’t where you wish you were financially, intellectually, socially, or with what is familiar. So, just start where you are; build a foundation. It doesn’t matter how big or small the building may be, you can’t build until you build a foundation.
So, they found an authority, built a foundation, and then they looked ahead. When the work was begun, there was weeping and shouting for joy. The old men who had known the original temple cried because they remembered what was in the past and thought there was no way this new temple would be as good as the old temple. The young men shouted for joy because having not seen the past, all they could do was look to the future, and they rejoiced for where they were right then.
Wherever you may find yourself in life, all of us at times feel uprooted from our place, our people, or our traditions. When these people found themselves in that place, they found an authority, built a foundation, and looked forward. We can do no less, and we can do no more.