Pray the Word with David Platt is a resource from Radical.net.

Ezra, chapter 3, verse 12. But many of the priests and Levites and heads of father's houses,

old men who had seen the first house wept with a loud voice when they saw the foundation of this

house being laid, though many shouted aloud for joy.

What a scene here in Ezra chapter 3 as the temple is being rebuilt in Jerusalem.

And people who had seen the first temple that was destroyed when the Babylonians came and took God's people into exile.

And they are weeping because they remember what the temple, this house, looked like before.

And they remember how God had moved in such power back in those days.

And they're weeping because they are remembering the sin that led God's people into exile.

So there's weeping here.

And at the same time, they're shouting for joy.

Many people shouted aloud for joy because of the restoration God was bringing about

that we were praying according to in Ezra chapter 2. And in this mixture of emotions,

I think we see a picture of really the Christian life of each of our lives.

There should be in our lives sadness over sin in our lives,

over the effects of sin in our lives, over the effects of sin in the world around us,

in ways that cause us to weep and ways that cause us to wish it was not so.

Like it's good to weep over sin and to hate it.

And at the same time, it's good to shout aloud for joy over God's grace and God's provision in the present, not to be so overwhelmed by

the effects of sin and grieving over sin in the past that we miss the grace of God in the

present and the joy that God has given us in his restoration and the joy that God gives us in forgiveness

of sin and fullness of life in Him.

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