Ezra: The Big Ideas

When I was in High School, my youth pastor walked me through the book of Ezra in a one-on-one discipleship setting. (It occurs to me now, after a seminary degree and a 6-year tenure as a youth pastor myself, that I haven't yet come across any youth ministry "big whig" thinkers exactly promoting a strategy that emphasizes the post-exilic literature, but i'll leave that aside.) In God's providence, the idea of exploring a part of the Bible that seemed hazy appealed to me and helped me fill in the gaps of God's grand plan in history to redeem a people to himself. Now, as an adult with young kids, I want to be able to communicate the deep riches of Ezra and books like it. I have read through Ezra once more in the last week and decided to sketch out some of the big ideas as I see them.

Big Idea #1: God is Sovereign Over Nations

While reading through Daniel, one gets a picture of what it looks like to follow God in the face of outright persecution: Daniel was, after all, forced to eat foods against his conscience and thrown into both the lion's den and the furnace for disobeying. In Ezra, however, one gets the sense that the tone is different. First, the overthrow of the Babylonians by the Persians represents the very event that allows restrictions on the people to be relaxed. Indeed, the book of Ezra opens with the provision of a new governmental structure facilitating the return and rebuilding of God's temple by

a) providing financial help and

b) restoring some of the plunder from the temple that had been seized by the Babylonians.

Big Idea #2: God is Sovereign Over Human Hearts

The First idea doesn't make sense without this one. Yes, God is sovereign over nations, but he expresses this power through directing individual hearts. Listen to how the very opening words of the book set the stage:

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 the 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” (1:1-3).

Notice a few things:

1) It is clear that God's purpose was being fulfilled through Cyrus: "that the word of the Lord...might be fulfilled."

2) God has power over the king's heart: "the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus...so that he made a proclamation."

3) While God allowed the rebuilding work to stop during the time of Artaxerxes, he caused King Darius to not only allow it to resume, but also to fund the work (6:6-12).

Yet not only did God make the new king willing to aid the people, He also made the people willing to obey Himself: "Then rose up the heads of the fathers' houses of Judah and Benjamin, and the priests and the Levites, everyone whose spirits God had stirred to go up to rebuild the house of the Lord that is in Jerusalem" (1:5).

It seems that God provides not only the circumstances necessary to carry out his plan, but he also creates the willingness in human hearts to bring it to pass.

Big Idea #3: It's All Prologue

In his play, The Tempest, Shakespeare has the character Antonio speke the line "What's past is prologue." This simply means that history is preparation for what is happening now. This idea looms large when one notices that Ezra, the man after whom the book is titled, doesn't appear until chapter 7 of 10.

From the opening of Ezra to chapter 7, some 80 years had past. The people had begun the work and then had the work shut down by the government, only to be permitted again to resume. The ruling authorities had been both for and against the rebuilding work. But in the economy of God, everything that was past was simply prologue: it was all preparation for the renewal God was to bring. Indeed, God knew that the greatest need of the people was not to have renovated structures, but renovated hearts. And how does God cause renewal in the human heart? Through his own Word:

"And there went up also to Jerusalem, in the seventh year of Artaxerxes the king, some of the people of Israel, and some of the priests and Levites, the singers and gatekeepers, and the temple servants. And Ezra came to Jerusalem in the fifth month, which was in the seventh year of the king. For on the first day of the first month he began to go up from Babylonia, and on the first day of the fifth month he came to Jerusalem, for the good hand of his God was on him. For Ezra had set his heart to study the Law of theLord, and to do it and to teach his statutes and rules in Israel." (7:7-10).

What was the result of this renewed ministry of the Word? Repentance over the sins of the people and a return to the Lord:

"O my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift my face to you, my God, for our iniquities have risen higher than our heads, and our guilt has mounted up to the heavens. From the days of our fathers to this day we have been in great guilt. And for our iniquities we, our kings, and our priests have been given into the hand of the kings of the lands, to the sword, to captivity, to plundering,and to utter shame, as it is today. But now for a brief moment favor has been shown by the Lord our God, to leave us a remnant and to give us a secure hold within his holy place, that our God may brighten our eyes and grant us a little reviving in our slavery" (9:6-8).