Through the Bible - Ezra

Thus saith Cyrus, he is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure: even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built; and to the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid. (Isaiah 44:28) > > 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, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom... (Ezra 1:1)

When God names a king 150 years before his birth, you can trust that every word He has spoken over your life will come to pass.

A Prophecy Given by Name

With a finger in the book of Ezra, turn back to Isaiah 44. Written around the late 700s B.C., this is one of the most important prophecies of the Old Testament. In verse 28 God says of Cyrus, "He is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure." In chapter 45 He continues, calling Cyrus His "anointed," whose right hand He has held to subdue nations before him.

We saw the historical outworking last week at the end of 2 Chronicles 36, which takes place in 538 B.C. The same words open the book of Ezra. What is so remarkable is that Isaiah wrote these words over 150 years before Cyrus was even born—before the Persian Empire was a great empire. At that point the leading power in the world was Assyria. Later would come the Babylonians, who carried Judah into captivity and destroyed Jerusalem and the temple in 586 B.C.

Yet 150 years before Cyrus existed, God spoke his name and said, "Cyrus is my servant." Even though he was a pagan king, God declared, "I'm going to use him for my work. He will give a decree to lay the foundations of the temple and rebuild Jerusalem."

God Fulfills His Word

The city had lain in waste, but the prophet Jeremiah had said in Jeremiah 25:12 that after seventy years were accomplished, God would punish the king of Babylon and bring His people back. So when Ezra 1 says "that the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled," we are watching God's word come to pass exactly as He spoke it.

This is one of the beautiful things about the prophetic passages of Scripture. Before you can really grasp the prophetic books—Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel—you have to go through the historical books: 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Esther, Nehemiah. Many of these prophets lived during this very time and spoke of things that quickly came to pass. Their early prophecies were fulfilled to prove that their latter prophecies will be fulfilled as well.

God told His people through Moses in Deuteronomy that if they departed from Him, the land would spit them out. And it happened. But He also promised that if they humbled themselves and called on Him, He would heal their land and bring them back. He kept both words—even the painful one. God fulfills His word.

The Scroll Brought to Cyrus

We can be certain that someone high up in the household of these pagan kings knew the Scriptures and showed Cyrus the prophecy. The Jewish historian Josephus says an individual brought the king the scroll of Isaiah and said, "Look, your name is in here. God has called you for a purpose." Imagine Cyrus reading that a Hebrew prophet wrote about him by name 150 years before his birth.

I believe that man may well have been Daniel, whom we will meet later in his own book. When Judah was carried away, Daniel refused to defile himself with the king's delicacies, and God established him in the household of Nebuchadnezzar, Darius, Cyrus, and others. He was the one looked to for deciphering dreams and mysteries—very likely the one who brought God's word to Cyrus.

When Cyrus heard it, his spirit was lifted up and he made a decree. Remember the position of the Jews—they were slaves. Yet this king said, "All you slaves can go free." Contrast that with Pharaoh, whose hard heart had to be told a dozen times, "Let my people go." Cyrus's heart was pliable in the hands of the Lord. He needed no one to plead with him; he simply said, "Whoever wants to go back and rebuild, you may go." And he sent silver, gold, spices, and linens, and invited their neighbors to give freewill offerings.

The Road to Restoration and Reformation

The book of Ezra could be titled "The Road to Restoration and Reformation." Notice how it starts: "the LORD stirred up the spirit of Cyrus." It always starts with God. He is the initiator—just as in Genesis 3, when God walked into the garden calling, "Adam, where are you?" Then in verse 5, "the chief of the fathers of Judah and Benjamin... whose spirit God had raised" rose up. God had to stir the king's heart and the people's hearts.

Remember the long genealogy in 1 Chronicles—a great funnel narrowing from Adam down to two tribes, Judah and Levi: Judah the kingly line and Levi the priesthood. Ezra continues this pattern. The first division, chapters 1–6, deals with restoration under a man from the kingly line, Zerubbabel. The second division, chapters 7–10, deals with reformation under Ezra, who was a Levite, a priest. The king brings restoration; the priest brings reformation.

This pictures the gospel. You and I, the temple, were broken in Genesis 3 and led away captive under sin. We need someone to restore the temple. Who brings restoration? Jesus, the Lion of the tribe of Judah. It is always one from Judah who restores. He restores our lives and our relationship with God, for man cannot have a relationship with God apart from Christ. And He gives us the Holy Spirit, who reforms our lives from the inside out, producing the fruit of the Spirit. The King restores; the Spirit reforms.

A Small but Willing Remnant

Chapter 2 is filled with names and numbers, and when the tally is taken, only about 49,697 people rose up to return. Compared to the multitude exiled to Babylon, that is a small group. Why? Before the exile the Israelites were shepherds—an abomination to the Egyptians. But in Babylon they stopped being shepherds and became shopkeepers, merchants, and bankers, and they grew materialistic. They had houses and possessions, and when Cyrus said, "Go back," many figured, "Why? We're doing fine here."

So just under fifty thousand left for a difficult four-month journey through the wilderness, retracing almost the same route Abraham took when God first called him out of Ur of the Chaldees in Genesis 12.

Worship Before Foundation

Notice the first thing they did when they arrived in chapter 3. They did not start clearing rubble or surveying the temple mount. "They builded an altar of the God of Israel, to offer burnt offerings thereon, as it is written in the law of Moses." Just like Abraham, who built an altar when he came into the land, these people built an altar and worshiped the Lord, offering burnt offerings morning and evening, and keeping the Feast of Tabernacles.

But verse 6 says, "the foundation of the temple of the LORD was not yet laid." The foundation of their temple was worship, not just stones. Worship came first; then the foundation was laid.

When the foundation was laid, the priests praised the Lord with trumpets and the Levites with cymbals, singing, "for he is good, for his mercy endureth for ever toward Israel." Yet many of the older men who had seen the first temple "wept with a loud voice," while many shouted for joy—so that the people could not tell the shout of joy from the noise of weeping.

There was a mixture of joy and sorrow. The same happens in our lives. If we have backslidden and gone back into captivity, and the Lord brings us back and restores us, there is always that mixture: the sorrow over years lived in vain, the years the locusts have eaten, mingled with the joy of God doing a new work. I see your heads nodding—you remember your former life, and it fills you with both sorrow and joy.

Opposition: First a Friend, Then an Accuser

When restoration begins, what shows up next? Chapter 4:1: "Now when the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard..." This is always how it works. You start turning back to the Lord, worship is reestablished—and the adversary comes.

Notice they first came as friends: "Let us build with you; for we seek your God, as ye do." These were the Samaritans, the mixed people resettled by the Assyrian relocation program, who worshiped the true God in a corrupted, mixed-up way, on Mount Gerizim rather than Mount Zion. Zerubbabel and Jeshua answered, "Ye have nothing to do with us to build an house unto our God; but we ourselves together will build." We appreciate the sentiment, but this is the work our God called us to.

This is like Joshua and the Gibeonites, who came pretending to be from a far country to make a league. When you fail to seek the Lord's counsel, the opposition that comes to befriend you becomes a stumbling block. Had Zerubbabel agreed, these Samaritans would have insisted on their own corrupted ways and hung up the whole work.

So the enemy switched tactics. The people of the land "weakened the hands" of Judah, troubled them, and "hired counsellors against them, to frustrate their purpose." That is exactly what the enemy does when you begin to follow the Lord again. They sent a letter of accusation to the king, calling Jerusalem "the rebellious and the bad city," warning that if it were rebuilt the king would lose revenue, and urging him to search the records. The king searched, found it had indeed once been a rebellious city, and commanded the work to cease. The temple sat idle, half-built, for about fifteen years.

Haggai and Zechariah Stir the Work

Did the people sit idle in heart? Chapter 5:1 tells us the prophets Haggai and Zechariah prophesied to them. Turn to Haggai 1. In the second year of Darius, the people were saying, "The time is not come, the time that the LORD's house should be built."

Have you ever had that thought? God begins a work, things move forward, opposition comes, and you conclude, "Well, it must not be the Lord's timing." But remember Paul in 1 Corinthians 16: "a great door and effectual is opened unto me, and there are many adversaries." When the door opens, the enemy comes with opposition.

God answered through Haggai: "Is it time for you, O ye, to dwell in your cieled houses, and this house lie waste?" You say it's not time for God's house, but you've been building your own paneled houses. Then He says, "Consider your ways. Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough." If you do what God called you to do, all these other things will be taken care of—just as Jesus said in Matthew 6:33, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you."

God also spoke through Zechariah. In Zechariah 4, the prophet sees the golden candlestick and two olive trees, and the word comes: "This is the word of the LORD unto Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the LORD of hosts." Then: "The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house; his hands shall also finish it." It's not by your might or power, but by God's Spirit—so get to work.

The Work Resumes and Is Finished

So Ezra 5:2: "Then rose up Zerubbabel... and they began to build the house of God." Did they wait for permission from Persia? No. Did the adversaries let up? No. The word of the Lord came, and they obeyed, with the prophets of God helping them. Immediately Tatnai the governor came asking, "Who has commanded you to build this house?" Like the apostles told the rulers, "We ought to obey God rather than men," the people answered, "We are the servants of the God of heaven and earth." They recounted how God had given them into Nebuchadnezzar's hand for their sin, but that Cyrus had decreed the rebuilding and returned the temple vessels.

They then asked the king to search the records—the very same challenge the adversaries had used against them. Darius searched and found the scroll from Cyrus's first year confirming the decree. He not only commanded the work to continue but sent more money for it.

Chapter 6:14 says, "And the elders of the Jews builded, and they prospered through the prophesying of Haggai the prophet and Zechariah." When they put their hand to the work God called them to, they prospered. The house was finished, dedicated with joy and many offerings, and they kept the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread seven days—"for the LORD had made them joyful." Remember, Haggai had said they didn't have enough to eat; now, doing the work of the Lord, they all ate and rejoiced. So ends the first division: restoration under Zerubbabel.

Ezra the Ready Scribe

Between chapters 6 and 7 there is a sixty-year gap. Now in the reign of Artaxerxes, Ezra goes up. He "was a ready scribe in the law of Moses," and "the king granted him all his request... according to the hand of the LORD his God upon him." God's hand was upon him and prospered him even among pagan kings.

Why? Verse 10: "Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the law of the LORD, and to do it, and to teach in Israel statutes and judgments." His heart was given to the word of God, he was willing to do it, and he was ready to teach it.

About 1,700 people went with him—far fewer than the 49,000 before. At the river Ahava, surrounded by enemies, Ezra did not look for soldiers. He sent back to Babylon for more Levites and priests—the men who do the service of the Lord. He told the people they could not ask the king for soldiers, because they had already testified that the hand of God was upon them. If they trusted the Lord to keep them, they had to keep trusting Him. So the people were strengthened and came into the land.

Reformation: Cutting Off the Unclean

When Ezra arrived, the temple was built and some form of worship was going on, but in chapter 9 the leaders told him the people, priests, and Levites had not separated themselves from the surrounding nations but had taken their daughters as wives, so that "the holy seed have mingled themselves with the people of those lands." This was the very thing they had been forbidden when they first entered the land—the very thing that had emptied their worship in Isaiah's day.

Watch Ezra's response. He tore his garment, pulled hair from his head and beard, and sat astonished until the evening sacrifice. Then he fell on his knees, spread out his hands, and prayed, "O my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to thee." Notice he placed himself among the guilty: "our iniquities are increased over our head." He confessed that God had punished them "less than our iniquities deserve," and yet had extended mercy in the sight of the kings of Persia, leaving them a remnant and a "nail in his holy place." He asked, "Should we again break thy commandments?"

As Ezra prayed and wept and cast himself down, a very great congregation of men, women, and children gathered, "for the people wept very sore." One man's contrition moved the whole nation. They followed his example, bowed down, and said, "We have trespassed against our God... yet now there is hope in Israel concerning this thing." They covenanted to put away the strange wives, doing perhaps the most difficult thing imaginable—separating from wives and children they had taken in disobedience.

Now understand: this is not a prescription for us to abandon an unbelieving spouse. The principle is that we must be willing to cut off whatever unclean thing is attached to us, just as Jesus said that our love for the things of this world must look like hate compared to our love for Him. Chapter 10 lists the leaders and chiefs who had taken strange wives—and every one of them was willing to cut off what was unclean. Because of that, the land was reformed and God protected His people, even though the wall would not be built for another fifty years, as we will see in Nehemiah. They built the temple without protection because God Himself was their protection.

The Pattern of Restoration in Our Lives

The book of Ezra shows us the work of God in restoration so clearly. He brings His people out of captivity, just as He has taken us out of the captivity of the world and sin into a new life—with both sorrow and joy, the sorrow over years the locusts have eaten and the joy of seeing God do a new work.

And as we come into the land He has given us, the first thing He wants is to reestablish worship. If you want to see God work in your life—building you up, protecting you—you must worship and praise the Lord. It begins in the place of worship, just as it did with Abraham when he came out of Babylon. Why? Because in the attitude of worship and praise we recognize that God is greater than we are and deserves to be on the throne of our lives.

Closing Prayer

God, I do thank You for this book. I pray that You would help us to take away applications—things we can take to heart and be transformed by—as every one of us is in this place of restoration and reformation, where You are restoring our lives to the relationship You desire with us and reforming us so that we can be clean from the inside out. We thank You, Father, that as we, like Ezra, come before You confessing our sins, You are faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Help us to be like Jerusalem at this time—a city set on a hill, a city that didn't have a wall because You protected it, but that had the worship of the one true God. We thank You that You are our shield, our exceedingly great reward, and we ask that You would continue to renew and transform us. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.