Sermon Title: Hardships can be opportunity.
Scripture Text: Ezra 2: 64-69
Daniel 9
In the Bible, the Prophecy of Seventy Weeks is a prophecy given to Daniel by the angel Gabriel in response to Daniel's prayer for God to act on behalf of his people and Jerusalem. The angel informs him that seventy "weeks" have been decreed for them, and then gives a detailed but cryptic description of those weeks.
The prophecy has proved notoriously difficult for readers and theologians, despite it having been the subject of "intense exegetical activity" since the Second Temple period.
Ezra 2: 64-69
64 So a total of 42,360 people returned to Judah, 65 in addition to 7,337 servants and 200 singers, both men and women. 66 They took with them 736 horses, 245 mules, 67 435 camels, and 6,720 donkeys.
68 When they arrived at the Temple of the Lord in Jerusalem, some of the family leaders made voluntary offerings toward the rebuilding of God’s Temple on its original site, 69 and each leader gave as much as he could. The total of their gifts came to 61,000 gold coins, 6,250 pounds of silver, and 100 robes for the priests.
With all that ordeal of being carried off to foreign lands the Nation of Israel was later born in the same place as they returned. As the 70 Weeks proceeded the Word of God came true in detail as many see it. The Anointed one of God came to earth and died for us and in His death offered us a way to the Father. His Death opened the door for us to receive salvation and a life in Heaven.
Our Nation was born because men and women that believed in this salvation and wanted to worship God and His Son in a way that they felt was True. They came to a difficult land and through hardships and struggles we have today the United States of America.
William Bradford a weaver by trade was one of the most instrumental people that offered a way to have the freedom of religion. It was a difficult road for them to travel but they traveled it with their God. Their God offered a way for them in all their problem, many deaths, starvation and misery.
Through the words of William Bradford I want us to look at what these folks believed in and how they lived their lives. How these words shows us where their strength came and how they passed it on to us.
“Nevertheless, to keep a good conscience, and walk in such a way as God has prescribed in his word, is a thing which I must prefer before you all, and above life itself.”
? William Bradford
“Thus out of small beginnings greater things have been produced by His hand that made all things of nothing, and gives being to all things that are; and, as one small candle may light a thousand, so the light here kindled hath shone unto many...”
? William Bradford, Bradford: Of Plymouth Plantation
My question is this: Are we walking with God as prescribed in his word? Is our candle lighting other candles for people to know and understand the one True God and His Son?
