Ezra: The Lord HelpsSample

A few months back, I needed to go into Christ Church Fulwood early in the morning before heading off to catch a train. I thought the building would be empty and shrouded in darkness. But when I arrived, I saw a couple of lights on, then met a member of the church family cleaning the toilets. It turns out she does that every week. It’s a wonderful thing to see people ready to do the most menial tasks in order to serve the Lord and His people. 

In verses 36–39, we saw the huge number of priests who went to Jerusalem: 4,289 of them. In verse 40, we meet the Levites, who are the priests’ assistants. There are just 74 Levites who return to Jerusalem. Do the math and it works out at a ratio of one Levite to every 58 priests. With so few of them, they know there’ll be tons to do, but these 74 are still willing to work. Here are servant-hearted people, ready to do all manner of jobs behind the scenes. 

We can see that same servant-heartedness again and again as we look at the lists of temple servants (vv. 43–54) and the servants of Solomon (vv. 55–57). Verse 58 tells us there are 392 of them. The temple servants assist the Levites (as we know from Ezra 8:20), doing the most menial tasks around the temple. 

In my book, it is the Levites – who serve the priests – and the temple servants – who assist the Levites – that are the unsung heroes of this chapter. We don’t know their names – just the families they came from. Everything they did was out of public view. They were prepared to do the most ordinary tasks, behind the scenes. They weren’t after status or recognition. They weren’t out to promote themselves or push themselves forward. They were just happy to serve – even by cleaning the toilets! 

The church needs people like that if she is to be reformed how she should. Indeed, it’s such people who model what everyone in the church should be like. This includes church leaders because the leader of the church, the Lord Jesus, is a servant. He came to serve us by dying on the cross. In following Him we too should be willing to be servant-hearted in the building up of the church.

Reflection

Reflect on how the Lord Jesus served us by dying on a cross. Ask the Lord to give you a servant-heartedness that will see you ready to do the most menial tasks to build up His church. Ask yourself how exactly you can serve others to do that.