God’s Word for You

Ezra 3:1-3 The altar, fear, and trust

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Thursday, July 3, 2025

3:1 When the seventh month came, and the Israelites were settled in the towns, the people gathered as one man to Jerusalem. 2 Then Jeshua the son of Jozadak, with his fellow priests, and Zerubbabel the son of Shealtiel with his colleagues, rose up and built the altar of the God of Israel, in order to offer burnt offerings upon it, as it is written in the law of Moses the man of God. 3 They set the altar in its place, even though they were terrified of the peoples of the lands. They offered burnt offerings upon it to the LORD, burnt offerings in the morning and in the evening.

There were two calendars in Israel, a sacred and a secular. We know from verse 4 that this was the seventh month in the sacred calendar, corresponding to September and early October (their months were lunar, from new moon to new moon). In 538 BC, the new moon beginning the seventh month happened on our September 14th.

This event began the rebuilding of the temple. When Moses built the tabernacle, no offerings were made until the entire structure had been completed and consecrated, and the priests were ordained (Exodus 29). When Solomon built the temple, the same procedure was followed. Now they seemed to be following a similar process. First the altar was set up, and then the temple foundation was laid (Ezra 3:8-13). Then work on the temple was to continue until it was completed. There would be a pause in that labor, but more about that later.

So why did the exiles begin in this way, with the altar? In one sense, they were not beginning new, as Moses had, or as Solomon had. Their idea had been to repair. With the houses and with the city and with the walls, repair was the correct word. But with the temple, the House of God, repair or restoration was not possible. They were beginning all over again.

In 1881, a massive tornado, estimated today to have been the largest sort, an F5 (but long before that scale was created), destroyed hundreds of homes, shops, stores, warehouses, and businesses in our little city. Our church was wrecked, too. The steeple and the roof were gone, and the brick and board walls were severely damaged. My predecessor and his people built a new church across the street from the old one (where it still stands now). But for the people of Israel, the structure was not going to move. They built the altar exactly in the spot where the old one had stood. The Hebrew word is maconah, which can be something’s “proper abode” (Zechariah 5:11), or its “foundation” (Psalm 104:5), or the “undercarriage” of the portable bronze water cauldrons of the temple (1 Kings 7:27). Here it certainly means the place where the old altar had stood, and it was surely obvious due to the ruins that had never been cleared away.

In a sense, they were doing what Abraham had done (Genesis 22:9). They built an altar to worship the one true God because there was nothing else, nowhere else, to do so. It was what Isaac had done (Genesis 26:25), and Jacob (Genesis 35:7), and for that matter it is what Noah had done long before any of them (Genesis 8:20). Also, Ezra reports that they did this out of fear (verse 3). They were afraid, truly afraid, of the nations that surrounded them.

We share this with them. We have fears all around. We fear the enemies of our souls more than Saul was afraid of the Philistine army (1 Samuel 28:5). The devil employs or bullies many into being our enemies. In the visible world there are people everywhere who scoff at God, and sneer at the idea of the Creator and who are offended by the idea that they need a Savior. In the unseen world, the world of demons and Satan’s legions (Daniel 10:13) are more powerful than we can imagine, but God’s angels are more powerful still. They surround us and fight unseen battles for us. Just beyond the air all around us, on the other side of the dust in the sunlight, silent swords clash against one another, robes and angelic leather jerkins are torn, helmets are beaten and shields are broken while we go about our ordinary tasks. Unseen cannon fire erupts without the slightest disturbance to our ears, and words are hurled back and forth with more power than any gunpowder or nuclear fission can approach. The curses of Satan are beaten down by the almighty and omnipotent power of God’s declarations and commands. And in the visible world, our world, that same word grows in power as we, his children, use it in his service (Acts 19:20). Its power comes from the Lord himself and makes us powerful (Joel 2:11). He made all things by his word and he sustains all things by his powerful word (Hebrews 1:3), and with it he arms us, strengthens us, and is with us in everything we do.

Praise him. Hold up the words of the Psalm as your banner: “In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I will not be afraid. What can mortal man do to me? By this I know that God is for me” (Psalm 56:4,9).

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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