Ezra 3:6

It is interesting that the returned remnant did not first build houses for themselves. They did not build a big city wall. They did not even rebuild the temple. Their very first priority was to rebuild the altar (v. 2). Building the altar speaks of the recovery of worship. How empty their lives must have been in Babylon, without altar, without sacrifices for their God, and without worship. Again, this is a feature of revival. God wants to restore it today to anyone who has lost the privilege of worship.

They are quick to raise an altar to the God of Israel. They need not build their Temple first. An altar will do for burnt offerings and for the Feast of Tabernacles. They are a revived people, a people who know they are standing on holy ground again. So on that symbolic day, the first day of the seventh month, they raise their altar and begin their worship.

The feast of the new moon began with the blowing of trumpets. It took place on the first day of this seventh month. The day suited the state of the people who had come back from captivity, and the grace God had shown them. Israel had lost God's blessing through their own fault. The people should have reflected the light of the glory of the Lord, just as the moon reflects the sun, but that light had disappeared. Now the new moon, a picture of the restored people, had begun to reappear. The full brightness of this light was not yet visible. But this first quarter moon pointed forward to the coming display of the glory of the people of God.

Thus, you see, there was progress there. No remnant that was ever called out by grace arrived all at once at the truth that God is going to give them. It is a matter of growth as a whole, not only individual growth. But they did not yet come to understand His mind and His word. At the beginning they cannot do what they may understand, and have power for, on a later day.

The sixth verse almost seems to show some decline in spiritual energy at the very start. That has happened in every new movement of the Spirit of God. At least, the statement is very significant: But the foundation of the temple of the LORD was not yet laid.

The record of the start of the burnt offerings on the first day of the seventh month carries clear delight. It pleased the heart of God to see His people come back to Himself, owning His claims and the only ground on which He accepted them. It shows us how closely He watches what His own people do, and that He takes pleasure when they draw near and worship. Producing these fruits by His grace in their hearts, with the same grace He puts them to their account.

As in Ezra 3, the heavenly position of God's people could come back to light only by building the altar — that is, by the practice of worship. Where there is worship, the heavenly position of the Church must be understood. Believers do not have an earthly religion, like the Jewish people. Worship brings them into heaven. That stays true when everything around them is in ruin, and the Church, like the temple at the start of Ezra, is no more than a heap of rubble.