Stop and think about this. So [the people] come to Jerusalem and [the text] says,
Michael Voytekthey came to the house of the Lord.What else? There is a bunch of rocks; there is not even a foundation. There is nothing there. It has been levelled by Nebuchadnezzar forty, fifty, sixty years ago. And yet, what does our writer say?They came to the house of God,even though it did not exist. It physically did not exist. There was not one stone upon another. There was nothing there. They needed someone from seventy [years] earlier to say,well, here is where it used to be! I remember the day when this temple was there.And the writer says,they came to the temple.But there is no temple. Yes, there is. Yes, there will be. Did you notice that? Also notice in Ezra 2:70, the priests and the Levites and the people, the singers, the gatekeepers—gatekeepers? There are no gates! The singers who sing in the temple which does not exist are still called singers. These people's jobs have been non-existent for seventy years because the gates were non-existent and the temple was non-existent. And yet their identity is still there, as if the temple, the city, and the gates still existed, and they had a job. God speaks of things that do not exist as if they are, and he makes them become things that they should be.1
68 Some of the heads of families, when they came to the house of the LORD that is in Jerusalem, made freewill offerings for the house of God, to erect it on its site.