Ezra 3:4

As we begin to read the third chapter, we see a fourth feature of true revival: obedience to the Word of God. In verse 2, and again in verse 4, we find the words, "as it is written". Their first recorded action, when back in their land, was to approach their God in the way He had laid down at the first. Their humble circumstances now stood in very great contrast with the past. Back then God gave the law and the tabernacle went up under Moses, and later, in fine days, Solomon built the first temple. Yet they recognised that what God lays down at the start of His dealings stands unchanged to the finish.

Notice the striking feature of everything they did: they now ordered it all according to the word of God (vv. 2, 4). Whatever they may have practised in Babylon, whatever their traditional rites and customs, they left it all behind in the place of their captivity. Now, delivered and brought back, nothing could satisfy them short of the authority of the written Word.

They did not try innovations that suited their own ideas of what might be fitting. They simply went back to God's original Word. They began with the burnt offering, which lay at the base of all God's dealings with them. And when the seventh month came, they kept the feast of tabernacles, which fell at that time. They did this even though no one had yet laid the foundation of the temple. The burnt offerings rightly came before the "house".

This fell on the fifteenth day of the seventh month and continued seven days, with a holy gathering on the eighth day. Israel lived in booths during the feast, in memory of having lived in tents when brought out of Egypt. Lev. 23:34; Num. 29:12; Deut. 16:13; 2 Chr. 8:13; Ezra 3:4; John 7:2. It came at the end of their harvest and grape gathering, when they enjoyed the fruits of God's goodness. The feast pictures the millennium, when the people will enter into full blessing. The eighth day, the great day, pictures the communion of the heavenly and the earthly. Zech. 14:16.

The feast of tabernacles was a figure of millennial joy (Lev. 23:40). Israel was to rejoice before the Lord their God seven days. Their condition was desolate. To human eyes, a joyful feast kept by these poor returned captives might have seemed a mockery. But faith is "the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." So it brings the future into the present. The burnt offering pictures this too. Once the soul stands before God in all the acceptance of Christ, it already has the certainty of every promised blessing secured in Him.

They kept the feast as it is written, and after the daily offerings by number came the continual burnt offering. So there was no weariness of it. It was no passing act. There was the daily offering. This is a very important thing.

This feast was to take place when they entered Canaan, after deliverance from Egypt and after the wilderness journey… the rest of the promised land had come. The fresh leaves of the beautiful trees of this good land now formed the shelters. Under them a joyful people recalled the ups and downs of former days. Here in Ezra, with the feast of tabernacles, we see a recovered Canaan, while they waited for the promised Messiah to appear. It was as if the people had never entered the promised land before.