Weeping For Sorrow/Joy

After many years walking away from God, Yahweh disciplined Israel by taking them into captivity to Babylon. Jerusalem was destroyed, along with the Temple. The people stayed in Babylon for seventy long years.

The discipline worked. When Persian King Cyrus declared that the Temple could be rebuilt and Judah and Benjamin returned to the land, Israel never again fell into idolatry.

Today I wanted to focus on a little verse tucked away in the book that details the rebuilding of the Temple: Ezra. The people returned and laid the foundation of the Temple. In celebration all the people gathered and praised the Lord with loud shouts.

But among them were some priests and Levites who remembered the original Temple. When they saw the new foundation they "wept with a loud voice" (Ezra 3:12). No doubt they cried remembering the bitterness in which they left, the people who died, and the loss of their country.

So now read what happened next:

(Ezra 3:13) "... though many shouted aloud for joy, 13 so that the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people's weeping, for the people shouted with a great shout, and the sound was heard far away."

The reason I think this is significant is that we are not that much different. As we see God build a new life in us through the foundation of the Lord Jesus Christ, we too remember how we were before. We remember the sin that destroyed us and the rebellion that pulled us away from the Lord. We weep with sorrow and with joy at the same time.

We are joyful for the new life and sorrowful for all that we have done against the Lord. And you know what? That's okay. We know that one day, God will wipe away all those tears and all that will be left is the joy of knowing that we will be with Him for all of eternity.

Pastor Tom