The Berlin Wall

In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and also put it in writing: “Thus says Cyrus king of Persia: The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever is among you of all his people, may his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and rebuild the house of the Lord, the God of Israel—he is the God who is in Jerusalem. (Ezra 1:1-3, ESV). I’m not sure what brought the Berlin Wall to mind today. Perhaps it’s the news from the Ukraine as Russia has taken the Crimea. The fall of the Berlin Wall provided some of the most dramatic images of the last half of the 20th Century. There are pictures of the barbed wire along the top of the wall, the armed guards, the people who risked everything to escape from behind the wall, and the people who died trying. I’m not sure anyone really believed it could ever come down. But go to Berlin today, the wall is gone. And it came down almost overnight. The wall we thought would always be there is gone. In fact, I have seen a piece of it on display at the George Bush Library in College Station, Texas! Perhaps there's a wall in your life that looks like it's always going to be there. It's hard to imagine how it would ever come down. But God doesn't know anything about unmovable walls. He's been tearing them down for a long, long time! In our reading this morning the Jewish people had been in captivity in another land for 70 years, living under the rule of the pagan King Cyrus. It was hard to imagine how they would ever get back home. But God had other ideas! This was about as likely humanly as the Berlin Wall coming down, but God moved the heart of the most powerful man on earth. And the wall between Persia and Israel came crashing down. This kind of miracle is reported all through scripture. God changed the hard heart of Pharaoh to let the Jews - his major labor force - just walk out of Egypt. Who would have figured? When Saul didn't want to be Israel's first king, the Bible says, "God changed Saul's heart." When God wanted Peter to take the Gospel to a Gentile military commander, Peter's strong Jewishness and his lifetime dislike of Gentiles was a major wall of prejudice. But with one vision, God tore down that wall, and Peter went willingly into Gentile territory for Jesus. When Saul of Tarsus was determined to stamp out Christianity before it spread, God changed the heart of the persecutor into the heart of a disciple of Jesus in a moment. Walls. Impossible walls. Things that look like they will never change. God specializes in these kinds of things. Perhaps you should call on the Lord for a wall in your life to come down. Whether it's a wall in a relationship, a person who seems like they will never come to Christ, maybe a son or daughter who looks like they will never leave their prodigal ways, people who are standing in the way of something God wants, or another wall that stands in the way of the will and the working of God. No matter how high the wall, no matter how long it's been there, it is not unmovable. If God wants it gone that wall is coming down! Trust Him!