WWUTT 704 Introduction to Ezra?

The people of Judah and Israel rebelled greatly against the Lord and they deserved to be punished, but they were not punished to the degree that they deserved. The same is true for us as well and praise God for that, when we understand the text.

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Here's our host, Pastor Gabe.

The Start of Ezra and Its Place After Chronicles

Thank you, Becky. Well, having finished up our study in 1st and 2nd Chronicles, we are beginning a brand new Old Testament book today, and that is the book of Ezra. It's kind of funny to say, a brand new Old Testament book, a new study in a different book as we just continue in order here.

We get to the book of Ezra. So I want to start by reading the text first. Always good to open up with the Word of God. We're going to go through all of chapter 1 today, and then we'll go back and talk about the background behind this book, the reason for writing it, who Ezra is, the relationship of Ezra with 1st and 2nd Chronicles, and also Nehemiah, which comes after it.

What are some of the themes that we're looking for in this book? What ultimately do we hope to glean from it in this study, which probably won't be a very long study? It's 10 rather short chapters, may take us the month of June, a little bit into July.

We'll skip most of chapter 2 because it reads a lot like some of those chapters in 1st and 2nd Chronicles that we skipped over, a bunch of names and numbers and things like that. So anyway, let's get to chapter 1, and then we'll talk about this book at the conclusion of the chapter.

Chapter 1. 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 and let each survivor in whatever place he sojourns be assisted by the men of his place with silver and gold, with goods and with beasts, besides freewill offerings for the house of God that is in Jerusalem.

Then rose up the heads of the fathers' houses of Judah and Benjamin and the priests and the Levites, everyone whose spirit God had stirred to go up to rebuild the house of the Lord that is in Jerusalem.

And all who were about them aided with them the vessels of silver, with gold, with goods, with beasts and with costly wares, besides all that was freely offered. Cyrus the king also brought out the vessels of the house of the Lord that Nebuchadnezzar had carried away from Jerusalem and placed in the house, the house of his gods.

Cyrus king of Persia brought these out in the charge of Mithridat, the treasurer who counted them out to Shesh Bazar, the prince of Judah. And this was the number of them, 30 basins of gold, 1 ,000 basins of silver, 29 censers, 30 bowls of gold, 410 bowls of silver and 1 ,000 other vessels.

All the vessels of gold and of silver were 5 ,400. All these did Shesh Bazar bring up when the exiles were brought up from Babylonia to Jerusalem. Now the beginning of the book of Ezra there probably sounded a little familiar to you.

Ezra 1, 1 in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled. What did we read at the end of second Chronicles chapter 36, beginning in verse 22.

Now 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.

It's pretty much the same thing that we saw at the end of the book of second Chronicles. So this is meant to show that Ezra is supposed to succeed first and second Chronicles in chronological order, no pun intended.

And it's likely that whoever wrote first and second Chronicles also wrote a majority of Ezra, not all of it, but certainly a great deal of it. The events that we read about in the book of Ezra cover nearly a century.

So Ezra would not have been the only writer of this book. He did write a portion of it in the center, that which is called the Ezra memoir. And we know that was written by Ezra because it's written in the first person.

It starts in the latter portion of chapter seven and goes to the end of chapter nine. But the final author of this book, again, isn't known. Many scholars believe that it was probably the same person who wrote first and second Chronicles, simply because of that conclusion that we have at the end of second Chronicles that is so much like the beginning of Ezra.

So there is your relationship between those two books. We have the exile at the end of second Chronicles, well, at least before the Cyrus proclamation. And then we've got the Cyrus proclamation that is restated at the beginning of Ezra, which bridges a gap of about 70 something years that would have been the time of the exile.

Now, most of the time we refer to that Babylonian exile as a 70 year period, but that's likely a round number. It wouldn't have been exactly 70 years. But you notice that we had mentioned there in chapter one also that when Cyrus had issued that edict for the Jews to be able to return to Jerusalem, he brought out the stuff that Nebuchadnezzar had carried away when he first seized Jerusalem.

So Cyrus is the king of Persia, Nebuchadnezzar was the king of Babylon, and Cyrus overthrew the Babylonian king. It wasn't Nebuchadnezzar, it would have been Nabonidus, and that happened in about 539.

So it was in 586 BC that Nebuchadnezzar had taken the Jews into exile. It was in 539 that Persia overthrew the Babylonian king and took control of all of that Babylonian empire, including the territory of the former kingdoms of Israel and Judah, the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom.

And he also seized those things that had formerly belonged to the king of Babylon, those things that he had seized from his conquests and the cities that he had besieged. And it was very gracious of Cyrus to release those items back to the Jews and also to encourage people to give them other things that would aid them in their journey back to Jerusalem and the rebuilding effort that they would have to do once they got there.

But this is God providentially working through all means to bring about the fulfillment of those things that had been prophesied. And as was mentioned here at the end of 2 Chronicles and also the start of Ezra, it was what was spoken by the mouth of Jeremiah, that these things might be fulfilled.

One of the other themes that's shared between Ezra and 1st and 2nd Chronicles is the emphasis on Jerusalem and the temple. So in 1st and 2nd Kings, as I said, we bounce back and forth between the kings of Judah and the kings of Israel, 1st and 2nd Chronicles narrowed that focus just to the throne of David.

And one of those themes that became central to 1st and 2nd Chronicles was the temple. Well, there's a lot of emphasis on the temple in Ezra and in Nehemiah as well. So the specificity of what's happening in Jerusalem and rebuilding that city, rebuilding the walls, which is what we get to in the book of Nehemiah, and also the reconstruction of the temple and proper temple worship.

Those are going to be themes that will come up in Ezra. But while 1st and 2nd Chronicles had more of a focus on the priesthood and the priestly duties in the temple, Ezra is going to have more of a focus on the law itself and imposing upon the people an exhortation that they keep and follow the law of God as a display of their obedience, that their change of heart, that they've truly repented.

They come back to follow the law of God and that there would be joy in their worship. They don't just do this halfheartedly or acknowledge God with their lips, but their hearts are far from him, which was exactly the state that Judah and Israel were in at the time of their exile.

But rather that their joy in the Lord would be genuine. The expression of their worship would be in the joy of God who has delivered them. One of the things that we will see come about through Ezra and Nehemiah is that God's mercy is so much greater than his anger.

He abounds in mercy more than he abounds in anger against his people who had rebelled against him so that he would allow his people to come back to this land and rebuild their territory and even be blessed by Cyrus to do so.

An edict that was sent out by the king of their captors wasn't those that had exactly taken them away into exile. They were exiled by the Babylonians and then the Persians conquered the Babylonians. But still, they're under the rule of the Persians.

And yet Cyrus, again, by the providence of God, would be so gracious to them to let them go back to their land and be able to rebuild what had been taken from them. And we'll even see here through some of the like the census record or the head count, I guess you could call it since it wasn't exactly a census, exactly how many people came back from exile to Jerusalem to do the work that needed to be done there.

Another relationship that Ezra has with First and Second Chronicles, and I take this back, this might be a relationship between Nehemiah and Chronicles. But again, it's another argument for how all four of these books go together, or three of these books, if you want to look at First and Second Chronicles as one book.

At the end of Nehemiah, there is a mention of Solomon's sin and the reason why he fell out of favor with God and the kingdoms were split and everything went in the direction that they did, ultimately leading up to their exile is Nehemiah is making an appeal.

Let us not be in the same kind of immorality that Solomon was in, but let us obey God. We did not have a mention of Solomon's sin in Second Chronicles. After the story of Solomon and his reign concluded, it didn't say anything about the sin that he committed against God with all of his pagan wives.

And he sympathized with his wives and the worship of their false gods. And so he built temples to those gods. And because he had betrayed the covenant with God in this way, the Lord tore the kingdom in two.

He didn't take it from Solomon in his lifetime, but the kingdom split into the northern and the southern kingdom. We had that mentioned in First and Second Kings, but we didn't have that mentioned in First and Second Chronicles.

Well, it comes up at the end of Nehemiah. So it's possible that this is all the same writer, the chronicler, who is putting all of this together. Again, it's not that his hand wrote everything, but there could have been multiple records and it was just the chronicler that compiled it all together, including what Ezra wrote in the middle portion of the book of Ezra.

And then Nehemiah would have been part of that as well. So at the end of Nehemiah, you have a reference to Solomon's sin, whereas there was not previously any reference to his sin in Second Chronicles.

So that could be an indication that all of this is interconnected. The chronicler was saving that for the end of for the end of Nehemiah. I'm trying to put Jeremiah and Nehemiah, those two names together.

Anyway, that could have been the reason why it wasn't mentioned there in Second Chronicles. Again, the focus there in Chronicles was more on the Davidic covenant and God being faithful to the covenant that he made with David, saying that upon your throne, I am going to establish my kingdom forever.

I will raise somebody up who is going to deliver my people. And there's still a an anticipation of that that exists even in Ezra and in Nehemiah. Before we started out on our study of Chronicles, I had mentioned that this was written after their return to Jerusalem and being able to rebuild the walls and the temple and that sort of thing.

And so this this kind of would have been Judah looking back on all of the things that they did wrong and realizing we shouldn't make these mistakes, but also a sense of anticipation of this promised king who is going to come and establish his kingdom on the throne of David.

So that same anticipation still would have existed in the book of Ezra, even though in the narrative it's not as prominent as it was in First and Second Chronicles. But that's not really the salvation story that we're looking for in the book of Ezra.

That was kind of more the salvation story in Chronicles, an anticipation of a king who was going to save his people. But in Ezra, the the salvation aspect is more in recognizing the mercy of God upon his people.

They do not deserve his mercy. They deserve to be destroyed in the place where they have been exiled. And yet God is merciful to them, showing that he is not done with this people, but he still has something ultimate he is going to accomplish through them.

So he is merciful to them to deliver them once again out of slavery, as he has done for them time and time again, that they might come back to this land and rebuild the temple of God, showing that God was with his people.

His blessing was upon them because he permitted them to be able to rebuild the temple, the symbol of God's dwelling with his people. The mercy of God is really more the central salvific theme, soteriological theme, if you want to put it that way, to the book of Ezra.

Mercy as the Central Theme of Ezra

Right now, we're doing our vacation Bible school at our church, and the passage that we are teaching to the kids this week is Ephesians chapter two, verses one through ten. And it's there where we read that we were all once dead in our trespasses and sins in which we once walked, following the course of the world, the prince of the power of the air, the spirit now at work and the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind and were by nature, children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

Then you get to verse four and it says, but God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace, you have been saved.

And it's unmerited favor. We did nothing to deserve that. What we deserve for our rebellion was to remain exiled. We deserve to to be destroyed in the judgment that God is going to pour out upon all of those who are sinful and in rebellion against him.

But he was merciful and gracious to us that he has called out for himself an elect that he has he has drawn out from the rest of the sinful people of this world, among whom we were all once part of you and I as followers of Jesus.

We once walked in the passions of our flesh. We're not any better than anyone else. We did not do anything great to merit our salvation since we deserve to be destroyed with the rest of them. But God is rich in mercy.

And as he called us out of darkness and into his light, so he is also here in the book of Ezra. He has called his people out from those to whom they had been exiled and and are called to once again be the people of God, be obedient to his word, obey his statutes and his commandments, rebuild the city that he had given to them, the temple that would be his dwelling place.

And all of this was possible for the people, for the Jews, because of God's mercy. His mercy exceeds his anger, as we'll read later on in Ezra 913. After all that has come upon us for our evil deeds and for our great guilt, seeing that you are God have punished us less than our iniquities deserved and have given us such a remnant as this.

What a great way that's put. God punished us less than our iniquities deserved. And so we certainly have received or we have reaped what we have sown in the sinfulness that we have committed while we are in these bodies.

Yet whatever we have reaped is not as bad as what we could. We it's not as bad as what we deserve if we had been left in that state of that continued rebellion against God. But he is rich in mercy and he has called us out of that sinful path, that road to destruction that we were on and instead has set us on the narrow road, focused on the narrow gate who is Christ Jesus and those who keep their focus upon him and enter through the narrow gate into the kingdom of God will be saved.

So we have those elements even here in the book of Ezra, the emphasis upon God's mercy to deliver his people out of darkness and into the light of his love and his grace. And I really believe that that's the central theme that we're going to see in the book of Ezra's understanding the mercy of God, even though there's going to be some chapters in there that won't be terribly fascinating, like Ezra chapter two, where, as I mentioned, we'll have a list of a lot of names and a lot of numbers.

And I'll talk a little bit about that next week, but I'm not going to go through that verse by verse. It would be rather tedious and uninteresting to you, especially if you're driving in the car. But we'll we'll capture the the main understanding of what we're meant to grab from that and then continue into the rebuilding of those things that had been torn down the altar of God, the temple of God, which we get to in chapter three.

And all of this, again, being a display of God's mercy, that he has delivered the people out of the hands of their enemies and back into the freedom to worship God. We previously were enslaved to our sin.

We have been set free to worship God with a new heart and mind washed by the Holy Spirit. Let us pray. Our great God, we thank you again for the mercy that you show us every day, as we read in the book of Lamentations, anticipating a deliverance from the hands of their enemies.

We read that your mercies are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. Though we are faithless, you are faithful to us. And so we praise you for that and pray that we would have hearts that would not take that for granted.

But each and every day we seek and desire to serve the Lord God who has saved us by the sacrifice of your son, Jesus Christ. Keep our our flesh unstained by the filthy sins that we would otherwise want to chase after and instead let the Spirit of God prevail in our hearts that we would desire to do what pleases you in body and spirit.

In the name of Christ we pray.

Amen. Gabriel Hughes is the pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas. Find out more online at www .utt .com.