Ezra 1:1

The Bible says in Ezra 1:1, “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, and put it also in writing, saying,” We are at the point in the history of Israel where they had already been conquered by the kingdom of Babylon. Three things happened to the Jewish people: some were killed, some were taken captive to Babylon, and some were scattered to other cities in other countries. Part of the great destruction by the Babylonians was that the temple of Solomon in Jerusalem was totally destroyed. Man can be so very destructive. But God is stronger than man. What man tears down, God can build again. We know that the same thing happens in the lives of many who have no faith and their souls were being destroyed, but Jesus came to them and changed all that. The temple was destroyed and years went by. Even Babylon was conquered by the Persians, but God was at work. You will never read this in a history book, but it appears that one of the reasons that God allowed the Persians to defeat the Babylonians was so that King Cyrus would come to power and God would use this king to start the rebuilding of the temple and of Jerusalem. Whatever happens in any nation, God is still at work: directing, controlling, and using all that happens because God has a plan. Not surprisingly, these events were prophesied by Jeremiah many years earlier, seventy to be exact, before they happened: Jeremiah 25:12, Jeremiah 29:10, and Jeremiah 33:7-13. For example, it says in Jeremiah 25:12, “And it shall come to pass, when seventy years are accomplished, that I will punish the king of Babylon, and that nation, saith the LORD, for their iniquity, and the land of the Chaldeans, and will make it perpetual desolations.” It says in Jeremiah 29:10-14, “For thus saith the LORD, That after seventy years be accomplished at Babylon I will visit you, and perform my good word toward you, in causing you to return to this place.[11] For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.[12] Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you.[13] And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.[14] And I will be found of you, saith the LORD: and I will turn away your captivity, and I will gather you from all the nations, and from all the places whither I have driven you, saith the LORD; and I will bring you again into the place whence I caused you to be carried away captive.”

The Bible says in Ezra 1:2-4, “Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia, The LORD God of heaven hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth; and he hath charged me to build him an house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah.[3] Who is there among you of all his people? his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the house of the LORD God of Israel, (he is the God,) which is in Jerusalem.[4] And whosoever remaineth in any place where he sojourneth, let the men of his place help him with silver, and with gold, and with goods, and with beasts, beside the freewill offering for the house of God that is in Jerusalem.” Cyrus the Great of Persia was one of the great rulers of all human history. He was from what is today known as Iran. His empire was the largest in history up to that date, stretching from Western Europe through the Middle East and then much further east to the Indus Valley. The proclamation of Cyrus king of Persia that is recorded here in the Bible shows us that Cyrus was a believer because Cyrus spoke of the “LORD God of heaven.” Cyrus expressed that he knew that God had given the great Persian empire to Cyrus. Cyrus also knew that God wanted Cyrus “to build him an house at Jerusalem.” God can do anything. God can reveal Himself to a heathen king, give that king success, let that king know that his success is from God, and put on that king’s heart the most important work that the king would do: make sure that the temple in Jerusalem was rebuilt. The king called on the people of God to do the work, and then the king commanded that others help those people with “silver, and with gold, and with goods, and with beasts, beside the freewill offering for the house of God that is in Jerusalem.” When God wants to do something, He gets it done, and God uses leaders as well as the individuals who do the actual work. It is a marvelous thing to see God at work through people.

The Bible says in Ezra 1:5-11, “Then rose up the chief of the fathers of Judah and Benjamin, and the priests, and the Levites, with all them whose spirit God had raised, to go up to build the house of the LORD which is in Jerusalem.[6] And all they that were about them strengthened their hands with vessels of silver, with gold, with goods, and with beasts, and with precious things, beside all that was willingly offered.[7] Also Cyrus the king brought forth the vessels of the house of the LORD, which Nebuchadnezzar had brought forth out of Jerusalem, and had put them in the house of his gods;[8] Even those did Cyrus king of Persia bring forth by the hand of Mithredath the treasurer, and numbered them unto Sheshbazzar, the prince of Judah.[9] And this is the number of them: thirty chargers of gold, a thousand chargers of silver, nine and twenty knives,[10] Thirty basons of gold, silver basons of a second sort four hundred and ten, and other vessels a thousand.[11] All the vessels of gold and of silver were five thousand and four hundred. All these did Sheshbazzar bring up with them of the captivity that were brought up from Babylon unto Jerusalem.” These verses show that when God does a work, He provides the financial needs for that work. That is the practical side of doing something for God. Notice that God provided the financial need before the actual work of building the temple began. God is able to provide money before the work begins. First the money and then the work. In our modern world because of the accessibility of loans and bank financing, some will start a work of constructing a building before they have the money to do it. Yes, that can work out if the money to make the payments keeps coming in. But perhaps some are so excited about their own ideas of doing something that costs a lot of money, they forget the possibility of running out of money. If you want to reduce the chance of failure due to financial needs, then reduce your dependency upon constantly having money coming in. One practical way of doing this is to find ways of reducing expenses where possible. Another practical way of doing this is to follow the example of the rebuilding of the temple as seen here in the book of Ezra: do not start an expensive project until the Lord gives the money ahead of time. If God does not do that, then maybe He does not want the project to be done. God wanted the temple to be rebuilt, and so He provided the money before they started rebuilding it.

The Bible says in Ezra 2:1-7, “Now these are the children of the province that went up out of the captivity, of those which had been carried away, whom Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon had carried away unto Babylon, and came again unto Jerusalem and Judah, every one unto his city;[2] Which came with Zerubbabel: Jeshua, Nehemiah, Seraiah, Reelaiah, Mordecai, Bilshan, Mispar, Bigvai, Rehum, Baanah. The number of the men of the people of Israel:[3] The children of Parosh, two thousand an hundred seventy and two.[4] The children of Shephatiah, three hundred seventy and two.[5] The children of Arah, seven hundred seventy and five.[6] The children of Pahath-moab, of the children of Jeshua and Joab, two thousand eight hundred and twelve.[7] The children of Elam, a thousand two hundred fifty and four…” This passage continues to list a number of individuals and those with them all the way to verse sixty. There are a couple of points that can be made here. The Bible goes into great detail whenever the Holy Spirit thought it necessary. If there were errors, then this kind of detail would have made it easy for those living close to the time of the writing to identify the errors and reject the writing. That is one of the reasons that some writings were rejected long ago from being a part of the Bible. Some people say that there were other writings such as the apocrypha, and they say that the other writings should be included. No, let’s not do that. Those writings were rejected for good reasons. When God gave the writings, He used people to do it. When God preserved the scriptures, He used people to do it. When God brought the various writings together to form the Bible, God used people to do that too. It says in Second Timothy 3:16, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” Jesus said in Matthew 24:35, “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” There are no errors in the Bible because God inspired the writing of it. We still have the Bible in exactly the form that God wants us to have it because He preserved it. God used people to do these things. There are sixty-six books of the Bible. God used people to recognize these books as being inspired of God and to pull them together into one great book that we call the Bible. The Bible is a miraculous book. It comes from the mind of God. God probably performed thousands of miracles and used thousands of people including the original writers and the scribes over centuries to initially inspire the writings and then to preserve the writings. Love the Book. Devour the book. It is God’s Word. It tells us about Jesus.

Thousands and thousands of people came to help in the rebuilding of the temple. It was a big job. It would take a lot of believers working together to get it done. We do not even know the names of most of those who helped to rebuild the temple, but they were all important. God knows what each person did, and each person was important to God. Find out what the Lord wants you to do, and do it. It may seem like nothing to the rest of the world, but God knows. Jesus said that even a cup of cold water given in His name shall not lose its reward.

Notice that it took a large number of believers working together to get the job done. Why do some Christian churches stay small? One reason is because not enough Christians in the community join in to do their part. Jesus established the church. Jesus loves the church. Jesus died for the church. But there are Christians who sit at home and say, “I do not need the church.” The church needs them. The community needs them. The work of Christ needs them. These sit-at-home Christians will lose a lot of rewards when they stand before Jesus and He shows them what would have been accomplished had they joined in the work.

The Bible says in Ezra 2:61-70, “And of the children of the priests: the children of Habaiah, the children of Koz, the children of Barzillai; which took a wife of the daughters of Barzillai the Gileadite, and was called after their name:[62] These sought their register among those that were reckoned by genealogy, but they were not found: therefore were they, as polluted, put from the priesthood.[63] And the Tirshatha said unto them, that they should not eat of the most holy things, till there stood up a priest with Urim and with Thummim.[64] The whole congregation together was forty and two thousand three hundred and threescore,[65] Beside their servants and their maids, of whom there were seven thousand three hundred thirty and seven: and there were among them two hundred singing men and singing women.[66] Their horses were seven hundred thirty and six; their mules, two hundred forty and five;[67] Their camels, four hundred thirty and five; their asses, six thousand seven hundred and twenty.[68] And some of the chief of the fathers, when they came to the house of the LORD which is at Jerusalem, offered freely for the house of God to set it up in his place:[69] They gave after their ability unto the treasure of the work threescore and one thousand drams of gold, and five thousand pound of silver, and one hundred priests' garments.[70] So the priests, and the Levites, and some of the people, and the singers, and the porters, and the Nethinims, dwelt in their cities, and all Israel in their cities.” The Israelites had been in captivity seventy years, and there were some negative results. The captivity in Babylon was a punishment from God, and so there were going to be extra difficulties in their lives that otherwise they would not have had to deal with. Stay close to the Lord Jesus. If you do not, you will suffer for it in some ways. Some of the priests could not be priests any longer because the lineage had been corrupted. It is interesting that verse sixty-five says that among those who returned to Jerusalem for the rebuilding of the temple, “there were among them two hundred singing men and singing women.” As all spiritual people do, they recognized the importance of singing while doing God’s work. Singing is one of the core activities of a church congregation along with preaching/teaching the Word, prayer, and Christian fellowship.

___________________________________________________