Thank you all for subscribing to our daily walk through post-exilic scriptures so far. We sincerely hope you are being blessed and that G-d is moving in you, stirring you and your leadership to rebuild your temple after Covid-exile.

Why are you getting this extra blog when we are only about a quarter of the way through? Well…to start…it’s free!

In music, an intermezzo is a short connecting instrumental movement in an opera or other larger musical work. In this case, we are about 1/4^th of the way through this study of rebuilding after exile. It’s good to pause and take an inventory and measurements.

We can’t improve a thing without measuring a thing. Please be encouraged to reach out to me with your critique! We would benefit here from a deep dive into methodologies in the book, “4 Disciplines of Execution,” namely the difference between lead measurements and lag measurement. Church outreach and growth programs too often rely on lag measurements like church attendance and don’t even measure lead measurements like number of contacts we make each week against a goal. Keeping our Wildly Important Goals to less than 3 will create our best chance for success.

What are your Spiritual Gifts?

As we rebuild our temple after Covid Exile, it’s deeply important, now more than ever, for us to all know our spiritual gifts. There are many tools online to help you discover yours, but nothing works better than reading scriptures and praying that the Ruach HaKodesh reveal them to you. A good place to start is 1Cor 12 and read through chapter 14.

Here’s one online tool that is pretty good and doesn’t require you to enter any personal data. Spiritual Gifts Assessment

Big Take-Away from Season 1

This is a list of all the Big Take-Aways from all the sections we’ve covered, in order. How did they track with what you were experiencing in your daily life as you read them? Where they pretty much in the correct order? G-d’s word has an amazing ability to provide just the right remedy at just the right time. Do they equip you and your temple to be about the work before us?

1. Pray for our leader/patron that they, whoever they are, would be granted favor and ALL the material needs to make rebuilding possible. G-d doesn’t do anything halfway. G-d, Himself, will go before leveling the mountains, breaking down gates of bronze and cutting through bars of iron.
2. We need to take an inventory of everything we lost during our exile. I believe we already have: we have an MIA list – people that have not returned to our church after Covid exile, as well as the growth we were experiencing before, which hasn’t returned.
3. Pray for our Cyrus. G-d already knows who that is. Pray that the Lord stirs up his/her spirit.
4. Set up a framework for both the workers and supporters – so that it’s easy for people to be one or the other, but make sure they know there is no 3^rd option here. We all have to be dedicated to rebuilding.
5. In order for us to have our inventory returned to us, and acknowledging that some people have moved away and can’t easily move back, perhaps we should consider a homecoming of sorts – an event to return all the inventory to the temple? Perhaps to coincide with the end of our initial outreach effort? Perhaps the Feast of Trumpets? What works best for your church?
6. Pray for new lay ministers
7. Pray for wisdom on offering an opportunity for an offering to outreach
8. Start at the altar, recognize G-d’s sacrifice for us to be here and so dedicated to this effort.
9. Hold festivals and feasts, making a goal of each to rebuild through outreach – inviting others.
10. Pay money, out of outreach offerings, to craftspeople to help us: messaging, materials, food, etc.
11. Pray that our leadership unites in vision and goal.
12. Ask our leadership to plan milestones and celebrations.
13. The enemy will surely come against us. If he doesn’t then we aren’t doing our job right. Pray that G-d rebuke’s the devourer, and that our fruit will not wither on the vine (Mal 3:10-12).
14. Pray for wisdom, and for those of us with the spiritual gift of discernment to discern our friends from our enemies. Just because someone is offering to help you doesn’t make them your friend. We need wisdom and discernment now more than ever.
15. When circumstances bring about a “death to the vision,” rely on your past experiences where the Lord was faithful. Set your mind to growing your faith.
16. Do a sanity check on your efforts. Is your leadership united on outreach? Are the people? Are any of your other efforts stagnating? If so, teach others why this is happening by sharing this chapter from Haggai 1!
17. Call on your leadership and your people to obey G-d and show reverence. He will be faithful and stand with you and stir your spirits.
18. When trials come, realize we are not done yet, take courage, repent first and then get back to work. He will be with you.
19. Pray we are the generation that can still return to the Lord and that we haven’t become the fathers who didn’t listen or pay attention to G-d.
20. Plead with the Lord to frighten away the things that are keeping our people scattered.
21. Pray and ask G-d to reveal the scope cap perimeters to our efforts.
22. Take a moment to be still, silent before the Lord to contemplate how awesome it is that He has joined us in this effort.
23. Pray for G-d to rebuke Satan and pray for our pastor.
24. Let’s encourage our entire fellowship to walk in His ways and perform His service, and that every one of us would overwhelmingly desire to invite our neighbors.
25. Pray that the Lord shows us the incomplete areas of our foundation work.
26. Pray for the wisdom to understand what sacrifices need to be made and the courage to make them.
27. Our pastors need to warn our congregation against getting swept up in the moment and making oaths to give and support rebuilding our temple that they either don’t intend to keep, and once made, they need to properly guard their hearts against failing to carry it through to its completion.
28. In our outreach, we need to pray for the robust and good whom G-d knows to make a Rebuilding offering, and we need to consider how much of that to provide our pastorate so that they can remind us before and long after, that it is Yeshua who restores us.
29. We need to pray for unity between those who lead us as executives and those who lead us pastorally, that Yeshua will be the Branch, the counsel of peace between the two offices.
30. We need to know our own spiritual gifts, not just personally, but we need to know who in the body we can rely on for various needs. Who are our prophets today? In times of trouble, we need to listen to them.
31. G-d will use all events to work together for the good for those who are called according to His purpose.
32. In the death to a vision moment, we need to just keep doing our best, pray that it’s blessed, and He’ll take care of the rest.

Ezra 5

Darius 2nd Year

Who are our prophets today? Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 12:5, there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord. And in Ephesians 4:11 we see some are prophets. Do we know our own spiritual gifts? Did they know more about spiritual gifts in Ezra’s time than we do today?

What we can glean from this chapter is that the prophets prophesied, and the leaders rose up and started rebuilding. They did this in the face of a hostile government that had ordered them to stop by force with a military presence. In their determination, and rather than taking matters into their own hands, they used faith first to overcome their death to a vision.

Of course, Satan had another go at trying to stop them. Another letter was written to the king, but this time there was something different. G-d was at work, His eye on the elders of the Jews, faithful to the faith shown Him by the temple leaders.

When they asked accusatory leading questions, the leaders of the temple calmly answered. This had to be difficult to do, requiring remarkable faith—to be in the presence of those hostile to you and stand your ground with calm reason. This time in their letter to the king, instead of misleading statements about taxation and kingdoms meant to stir up the king’s anger, as was the case in the first letter (Ezra 4), they actually wrote a factual and historically accurate account. Possibly in an overconfident moment, likely with sarcasm, as if to say, “Can you believe this hooey they told us?” they chronicled all the events leading up to this moment as told by the Jews, including mention of the former King Cyrus’s command and permit for the temple to be rebuilt. They asked for Darius to proclaim a new ruling on the matter.

What are your Spiritual Gifts?

As we rebuild our temple after Covid Exile, it’s deeply important, now more than ever, for us to all know our spiritual gifts. There are many tools online to help you discover yours, but nothing works better than reading scriptures and praying that the Ruach HaKodesh reveal them to you. A good place to start is 1Cor 12 and read through chapter 14.

Here’s one online tool that is pretty good and doesn’t require you to enter any personal data. Spiritual Gifts Assessment

Big Take-Away from Ezra 5

30) We need to know our own spiritual gifts, not just personally, but we need to know who in the body we can rely on for various needs. Who are our prophets today? In times of trouble, we need to listen to them.
31) G-d will use all events to work together for the good for those who are called according to His purpose.
32) In the death to a vision moment, we need to just keep doing our best, pray that it’s blessed, and He’ll take care of the rest.

Zechariah 6

Darius 2nd Year

This passage reminds me of the ghostly message Ray Kinsella heard at the beginning of, Field of Dreams, “If you build it, he will come.”

Commentaries can overthink things sometimes, and this chapter is no small exception. In full context, Zechariah is still firmly discussing rebuilding the temple. That’s the subject.

In his vision, the 4 horses have color and much conflicting commentary is made about what that could mean. But what is not in dispute is their origin point, direction, and results.

The origin point was directly from standing before the Lord of all the earth. The directions the prophet gave were from his vantage point, the temple.

And what were the directions they went? Two teams rode north, one rode south. The strong ones were eager to go out to all the world.

The results? G-d’s wrath was appeased, and an offering was taken from Heldai, which means robust, Tobijah, which means G-d’s goodness, and Jedaiah, which means G-d knows. That’s either 3 specific people or 3 distinct kinds of people. Some of the offering was taken to provide for and ordain the pastoral leadership.

The pastorate (son of Zephaniah), along with those who give and their gifts, will remind everyone that it is Yeshua, Himself! who will rebuild our temple and bring a counsel of peace between the executive and pastoral leadership of the temple, and they will continue to remind us of this after He accomplishes it. Amen, and amen.

And the Field of Dreams part? All of this will take place if we completely obey the Lord our G-d.

Big Take-Away from Zechariah 6

28) In our outreach, we need to pray for the robust and good whom G-d knows to make a Rebuilding offering, and we need to consider how much of that to provide our pastorate so that they can remind us before and long after, that it is Yeshua who restores us.
29) We need to pray for unity between those who lead us as executives and those who lead us pastorally, that Yeshua will be the Branch, the counsel of peace between the two offices.

Zechariah 5

Darius 2nd Year

Today’s scripture has baffled many upon first reading—particularly if they start here and just read this chapter. But for us, this is a piece of cake because we understand the full context and the previous 10 chapters of chronology.

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The flying scroll is about 30 feet by 15 feet, which are the measurements of many of the items in the temple. The message of the scroll was regarding judgement against false oaths and stealing. How many of G-d’s people make promises to support the work of rebuilding the temple, yet withhold the delivery of that promise?

Are they steeling from G-d?

In the vision, these broken oaths and theft are promised to be punished severely and swiftly. Remember Ananias and his wife Sapphira? Acts 5:1-10.

Now is a good time for our pastors to warn the congregation. Many may have made such a commitment when we began our rebuilding work.

The ephah can be easy to understand within the context of everything we have read so far. It’s related. Don’t try to make it its own episode, but a continuation of the story we have been reading. If the oath breakers and thieves go unpunished, their sin will spread to others rapidly as if it has wings and will multiply as if the one woman became two in the ephah. Eventually, many will abandon our temple altogether and create temples of their own. Has this already happened in our church today?

Big Take-Away from Zechariah 5

27) Our pastors need to warn our congregations against getting swept up in the moment and making oaths to give and support rebuilding our temple that they either don’t intend to keep, and once made, they need to properly guard their hearts against failing to carry it through to its completion.

Zechariah 4

Darius 2nd Year

We shift from our last focus on the pastorate (Joshua son of Jehozadak) to the executive leadership (Zerubbabel). The imagery can remind us of that used by John in the book of Revelations. The lampstand and 7 lamps are likely the visible temple, being fed oil automatically from two olive trees directly through pipes. The two trees likely represent the “anointed ones”, most directly the executive and pastoral leadership.

It’s an interesting passage set apart for executive leadership, “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit”.

This is an extraordinarily important distinction to more fully understand at this juncture in rebuilding our temple: the difference between power and authority, and it’s a subject that has come up again and again in recent weeks.

If we asked Max Scheller, the German sociologist, what the difference is, he might say, “power is the ability to coerce by withholding love, one from another – ‘if you do what I tell you to do, because you have to, then I will love you.’ But authority derives from sacrifice—whoever sacrifices for you the most has the most authority over you.” 

If authority is derived from sacrifice, guess who has the most authority in human history… Yeshua. Philippians 2:5-11.

If you obey because you have to, then there is power at work. If you obey because you want to, that’s authority.

To drive this lesson home, the messenger uses a common task that would have been the responsibility of the leadership – maintaining the lamps in the temple. It was a constant and arduous task to keep the light burning, requiring oil ceremonies, daily cleaning, and setup. The leaders were likely caught up in the daily needs of the temple and may have been more focused on the routine than on the mission to rebuild. But that’s not sacrifice. That’s just the chores that need to be done.

When we start to sacrifice, our faith is strengthened, and we can move mountains. But what was the sacrifice G-d was calling the executive leadership to take on? That their hands finish the work they began laying the foundation. You see, they had likely finished enough of it to start working on the daily chores, the “day of small things,” like maintaining the lamps, but they had left the foundation unfinished.

Is outreach our unfinished foundation work in rebuilding our temple after Covid exile? G-d has a solution in mind – He will give us the inexhaustible Spirit, the necessary olive oil, to perpetually feed the daily needs if we will first set aside power, start to truly sacrifice, and finish the foundation. What is more, our leadership will gain authority for the perpetual daily work going forward. Our church will rejoice when they see the plumb line in the hands of our executive leadership.

Big Take-Away from Zechariah 4

25) Pray that the Lord shows us the incomplete areas of our foundation work.
26) Pray for the wisdom to understand what sacrifices need to be made and the courage to make them.

Zechariah 3

Darius 2nd Year

There’s a metaphor I like called the “magical pair of glasses” that allow people to see what is really going on all around them in spiritual warfare—like angels and demons. When you don’t have them on, you only see what the humans around you are doing. But in passages like 2 Kings 6:17, where Elisha prays for G-d to open the eyes of his servant…as if putting on a magical pair of glasses, the servant suddenly sees the larger war going on.

In Zechariah 3, the prophet gives you and me those glasses, and we get to see what is going on around Joshua the son of Jehozadak. We see him standing before the angel of the Lord, and with Satan on Joshua’s right-hand side casting accusations like a District Attorney in court.

Now, in this passage there’s no mention of Zerubbabel, the executive leadership, as there has been in other passages we’ve read about this rebuilding effort. This message seems to be focused on the pastorate.

Is that going on right now for our pastor? You can bet those that are leading us to outreach face this kind of spiritual warfare every single day.

What is the log that was snatched out of the fire? Was it Joshua, or was it the entire community? Well, right before it, G-d refers to Himself as “the Lord who has chosen Jerusalem,” so it might well mean all who have chosen to rebuild.

By making outreach a priority after our exile, are we now also a log snatched out of the fire? One thing is certain, filthy garments being swapped out for festival robes is what G-d wants for us. Once more, we are being admonished to walk in His ways and perform His service. If we do this, then G-d promises to “bring in My servant the Branch,” and our guilt will be removed. Can you imagine that? What if our entire congregation walked in His ways; performed His service and the Branch Himself was brought in? And then here’s the really amazing part where G-d specifically mentions outreach… “every one of you will invite his neighbor.”

Big Take-Away from Zechariah 3

23) Pray for G-d to rebuke Satan and pray for our pastor.
24) Let’s encourage our entire fellowship to walk in His ways and perform His service, and that every one of us would overwhelmingly desire to invite our neighbors.

Zechariah 2

Darius 2nd Year

G-d has a way of cramming chapters of meaning into a single verse like verse 2. If the project was to rebuild the temple, and the goal was to minister to the entire country of Israel, why would the angel be measuring Jerusalem? It may initially seem odd because its perimeter lies between the project and the goal.

In business, a risk to any project plan is a thing called “scope creep”. As a big project evolves, it’s easy for people to add one great idea after another to the plan. The temptation is to say, “yes” to all of them. And the enemy to your success wants you to say yes because he knows you will fail at the whole shoot-and-match if the plan gets too big.

As they were rebuilding the temple, of course the ideas of further helping those to the north and the south would come up. Of course, they would want to do it. But the Lord was interested in measuring an intermediate barrier between “not enough” and “too much” scope. With total compassion and while not turning a blind eye to the suffering beyond this intermediate barrier, He cried, “Flee and escape!” from where they were to Jerusalem.

So, the measurement was a wise limit to their scope, and the angel was prudent to measure it to make sure it would meet the needs of the multitude of people and cattle.

It’s good for us in the light of this prudent scope cap to reflect on Haggai 1, “ambitious plans fail” because G-d Himself blows them away if His house remains desolate while yours is fine. It’s also good to consider Ezra 3, where we need to eat a large elephant one bite at a time, celebrating each victory along the way. The discipline of limiting scope to ensure a successful plan was followed with the amazing promise that G-d will dwell in the midst of our temple and many nations will come. We should be silent before Him and consider what is to result from this essential, disciplined step in a plan for success.

Big Take-Away from Zechariah 2

21) Pray and ask G-d to reveal the scope cap perimeters to our efforts.
22) Take a moment to be still, silent before the Lord to contemplate how awesome it is that He has joined us in this effort.

Zechariah 1:7-21

Darius 2nd Year, 11th Month, 24th Day (2.11.24)

Here comes one of Zechariah’s psychedelic moments! Even though the seed of revival, sewn through the tag-team duo of Zechariah and Haggai, had taken root in Jerusalem, it still hadn’t spread across the whole land, which was essential to G-d’s plan.

It’s also still essential to His plan for us today!

This would explain the next trippy vision of a heavenly patrol going throughout the land. What were they looking for? Maybe their goal was to determine who, if anyone, had actively rejoined the community worship, bringing their own households back to a life of spiritual fellowship. It would explain why the report of “all is still and quiet” might actually be a bad thing and would rile the Lord’s response up a little as He basically then said in seemingly frustrated resolve, “I have my problems with you…but your neighbors are worse. I will return to you.” G-d’s compassion and determination to see His house restored was so great that He sent another vision of craftsmen frightening away all the things causing people to stay home, so that they could return to Him.

Big Take-Away from Zechariah 1:7-21

20) Plead with the Lord to frighten away the things that are keeping our people scattered.

Zechariah 1:1-6

Darius 2^nd Year, 8^th Month, ??^st Day (2.8.??)

Definitely one of the “psychedelic prophets,” in between Zechariah’s wild visions of flying scrolls and still-popular sayings like, “the apple of my eye,” Zechariah has some remarkably immediate and lucid passages that are as clear and prescient today as they were then. The first half of Chapter 1 is just such a chapter.

We open with an assumed answer to the crystal-clear question that the writer doesn’t even ask to you, the reader, “To which generation do you see yourself belonging: the last generation that ignored the prophets and refused to return to the Lord, or the current generation that G-d is giving another chance to right now?” If the latter, He then says, “Return to me that I may return to you.”

Since they were already rebuilding the temple in that moment, does the word “return” mean more than mere repentance? Could it also mean, that during the time of exile, people got used to not going to a centralized place to worship?

People were returning to their own cities. Not everyone could go to Jerusalem every week for communal worship. All the way back before Babylonian exile, in Jeremiah 43-46, Jeremiah, himself, was swept away with a group that disobeyed G-d and fled to Egypt to avoid exile in Babylon. He prophesied against them, and most were captured anyway. But there’s evidence that some escaped to the island of Elephantine. These set up their own temple… a “remote” temple if you will.

Apparently, this notion of remote attendance of communal worship became an idea around that time, and as those “escapees” were eventually caught and moved to Babylon, the idea of remote attendance likely spread through the exiles. Maybe they had their own version of staying home in their PJ’s and worshipping with family, and now that they were back in Israel, were they slow to return to community worship and fellowship?

Haggai 2:10-23

Darius 2^nd Year, 9^th Month, 24^th Day (2.9.24)

There’s an iterative theme in this section. G-d covers it at least twice. See if it pops out to you as you read:

• G-d promises to be with us even though we are unclean
• Do consider this before you work, (call for repentance)
• Until we do, we will not be blessed in success
• He has a plan to shake things up
• He will stand by us

Can you see how these two prophets, proclaiming their message mere weeks apart, hit everyone with a loaded 1-2 punch? Return to me. Even when bad things happened you did not come back. Do it now and I will return to you. I am already waiting, and from this day on I will bless you! Revival takes seed here and flourishes—when His chosen who have committed to rebuilding, and in the middle of trials along the way, consider their own uncleanness, repent, and work. Then G-d shakes things up.

Big Take-Away from Zechariah 1 + Haggai 2

19) Pray we are the generation that can still return to the Lord and that we haven’t become the fathers who didn’t listen or pay attention to G-d.

At this point in the game, G-d knows what trials we have gone through, and more importantly, He knows the trials to come. In this moment, He asks us to compare our temple: the way it was before exile and the way it is now, and knowing all the trials we face He says, “Take courage and work!”

He says this to both our executives and to the pastorate, and to the lay people all as well. Is the Lord’s plan to globally “shake” things up as true today as it was in Haggai’s time? During that shake-up then, Yeshua was born, lived, died, and was resurrected. Before that shake-up, the Lord wanted the temple to be in even better shape for that event than it was before exile. Does He want the same for our temple today? Is He about to shake things up “once more” as He did then?

Big Take-Aways from Haggai 2:1-9

18) When trials come, realize we are not done yet, take courage, repent first and then get back to work. He will be with you.