40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Ezra 1:1-11 (Episode 352)

Episode Date: March 15, 2023

Chad and Daniel begin the book of Ezra in this episode. King Cyrus is a different kind of conqueror and God uses him to fulfill the words of Jerimiah. Cyrus knows the difference between being loved and being feared. And some of the people of God are headed home to rebuild the House of the Lord. Have a listen! 1517 Podcast Network Donate HWSS Regional Conference 1517 YouTube

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If you enjoy this podcast, there is no doubt lots of other things that you'll enjoy, including other podcasts that I'm sure that you would like. Chad, we're on a little bit of a hiatus. People don't know this. We had back-recorded a bunch of stuff because we knew that I was going to have to be on a break for a little while because me and the wife had a new baby, so that's pretty exciting stuff. It's been 14 years since I had a baby in the house, and now we have a baby in the house again. Relearning a few things, yeah?

Yeah, I don't remember anything, I'll be honest with you. Nor did you probably have any of the stuff. None of the stuff. That's why you had baby showers. I didn't own as much as a pacifier, I assure you. It was all new things we're having to be getting. But here's the thing, when you're old, you know, as I am, everyone gets real excited about, you know, this geriatric couple having a child. So people just came out of the woodwork getting us stuff.

So we actually were really blessed. I mean, everybody was super excited. I think what happened with my first kid, everyone around me was having kids. Like everyone I knew was having kids. It was like no big deal, babies everywhere. now there's no babies you know like in my family or friend groups or anything like that no one's having kids and they haven't had kids in a while and then here comes this baby and everyone got real excited so you know just pro tip uh if you want to get a lot of uh you know baby shower gifts

and just have stuff just constantly showing up your house uh and in fedex trucks what you got to do is you just have to have a baby way after everybody else has a baby, and everyone you know will get real excited about it. That's the pro tip. Pretty good strategy. It worked out. I mean, you have to be a senior citizen at a high school graduation, but that's the price tag

on doing it that way. But it's going great. We recorded episodes in advance and have released those, but I am back. The wife is good. The baby's good. And we are getting to start a new book. It kind of worked out great. We kind of

finished up second kings you know i took a couple weeks off and you had the baby and now we're back and we are jumping into and i know we alluded to this but not into first and second chronicles we're gonna do those eventually but we didn't want to do the same thing over again which is what that would have been we thought you guys got the idea and so we'll revisit that at a later time and instead are moving on to the book of Ezra. So, Chad, you have to give us a little overview of what the book of Ezra is, who Ezra is, what's going on, what is happening, and what the story we just heard, what portion of that are we talking about

that Ezra's writing to, and educate the people. Yeah, yeah. The real reason—you didn't say this, Dan— but the real reason that we skipped 1 and 2 Chronicles and jumped to Ezra is because we just knew that all of our listeners were just biting at the bit for us to get to Ezra because it's everybody's favorite Old Testament book. It's kind of, I mean, you have a continuity,

but then you definitely begin to pick up on some changes that are taking place. And we're going to see that right away with some of the language that's used here. And even the way the story is told, there's going to be the inclusion of royal edicts and there's going to be some like memoirs and some other stuff that we haven't seen before.

wars. And of course, it's definitely a new phase of Israel's history. Everything that we've been covering for the last however long we were in 1 and 2 Kings and 1 and 2 Samuel, all that was leading up to the desolation and destruction of the Babylonian exile. And as we'll see in just a second, this is on the other side of that. So it's really, it's a new phase of Israel's history, and it's going to be the history that really paves the way for what we're going to see in full flower in the first century in the New Testament itself. So just kind of pick up with where we left off and where we are now. We have skipped some years. So when we left off at the end of 2 Kings, what was happening? Well, the Babylonian destruction and exile, temple's

destruction, all that kind of stuff was going on. So you have the last king who's hauled off in chains to Babylon. You have Nebuchadnezzar coming in with his armies and they're laying siege and they're destroying the city and they're hauling all these people off to Babylon. And you got Jeremiah who was active at that time. And he'd been warning the people for decades that this was coming, so he himself ends up in exile in Egypt, of all places, but Jeremiah had warned them that this was coming as well. And thus begins the 70 years of exile in Babylon. Yeah, that's one of the things that's interesting about books like Ezra is it name-drops people you haven't heard of yet, right? So like right at the beginning of this, you get Jeremiah name-dropped. Now,

we haven't really talked about Jeremiah at all, right? But, like, it says his name like we know who this is, right? So you would have to go and read Jeremiah to know. It's like, yeah, he'd been doing work for a long time. It just says, oh, yeah, you know, Jeremiah did some stuff, and that was fulfilled. And you're like, wait, what stuff? What stuff did he say?

What stuff was fulfilled? That's sort of, you'd almost need that, what's that? you know you can get like that chronological bible uh that oh yeah yes right right yeah read it and read in order yeah it'll just like read it and that that's worth doing once uh if you've never done it is it is you know another thing you could do uh there is a podcast called uh a field guide to the bible that's true led by yours truly and you dan and our good friend eric where uh yeah It's a good time to kind of remind people of that. If you are one of those people that, like a lot of us,

have kind of a hard time kind of seeing the big picture, okay, what's the overall contours of the entire biblical story? Well, then, yeah, check out that. I don't remember how many podcasts that episode was. I believe it was 28. 28 episodes. And that's the whole Bible. That's Old Testament and New Testament.

So if you are kind of scratching your head and being like, who's cyrus and jeremiah where does he fit into the story you're like doesn't that book come doesn't that book come later isn't jeremiah jeremiah around yet why is he why is he talking about him he doesn't come till later yeah i mean that is one of the things that uh is is a good thing to remind people of that don't expect if you're going to read through the bible in one year for instance don't expect that if you start with genesis and you keep going this is all going to be just one long historical sequence. It's not the way it works. Yes, from Genesis to where we just finished, the end of 2 Kings, then yeah, I mean, it is pretty much just in chronological

order. But then when you get past that point, at least in the order of English Bibles, once you get past that point, everything is just kind of out of sequence. So a lot of the prophets that we're going to cover in years to come have already ministered by the time we get to where we are now in the in the history so all that being said we're going to be coming back frequently when we talk about isaiah we talk about jeremiah we talk about daniel we're going to be kind of coming back and forth to to the history itself yeah so um historically ezra picks up the the book of Ezra picks up at the end of the Babylonian exile. So this was the exile that all the rebellions of almost all of the kings of the south were leaning toward. You had this idolatry, idolatry,

idolatry. God sends prophet after prophet after prophet, warning them, threatening them. There's a few good kings. Most of the kings don't listen. In fact, some of the kings are just all gung-ho for idolatry and fill Jerusalem with it, eventually leading then to when Nebuchadnezzar comes. So Israel is taken into the southern kingdom, especially the tribe of Judah, the tribe of Benjamin, the tribe of Levi. Most of them then in the south are in exile, so they go to Babylon. But the Babylonians don't stay as the dominant world power very long before along comes a guy by the name of cyrus and cyrus the persian marches triumphantly victoriously into the city of babylon in october of 539 bc and so no longer are the babylonians the uh the big superpower of

the day now it's going to be the persians under the leadership of cyrus and and you know as as frequently happens throughout history you have different kind of overall approaches to how you deal with the peoples who are under your under your control the assyrians who were the world power before the babylonians were infamous for just their their cruelty and their tyranny the babylonians were a little bit better but they still haul people off into exile now when the persians come along under the leadership of cyrus things begin to change and there's more of a i don't know lenient is the right word to use or not but there is a there's a different approach to the basic issue is okay you got a lot of people who are under your control you got a lot of nations

small nations big nations people groups all over the place who are under your dominion so how are you going to number one benefit from them because of course you're going to want some sort of return you're going to want some sort of money coming from them because they are a client kingdom after all so you want some sort of money for them and also in conjunction with that how are you going to control them so is your best policy to control by threat and tyranny kind of the way the assyrians did it or is your best approach going to be to kind of let them to an extent live their lives yes let them actually live in their own place and maybe worship their own gods and at least have you know some kind of semi-independence because if you do that well then maybe they'll

actually be easier to manage and won't rebel as much yeah i think i think so cyrus um who is uh cyrus the great uh is called cyrus the great uh for a good reason uh he didn't he didn't just like come up they didn't just he didn't call himself that but he actually was not great and was just a kind of a you know right average dude uh he he's a guy it's weird because you you'll see at this point in in world history there's been lots of superpowers that have risen up and taken lots of territory and and cyrus seems that he has learned from the mistakes of others how what happens when you when you end up crossing the threshold of i've got a lot of territory How can I possibly keep all of this in check?

How thin can you be spread, no matter how powerful your kingdom is? I mean, there's got to be a line somewhere. And Cyrus seems to be the first guy to kind of understand, well, what if you just made people kind of not want to leave? Like, maybe just scaring them to death is not the way. Maybe you, hey, we want to give you back your stuff and, like, have you go over here and stuff. And, you know, if anyone tries to mess with you, of course, we're going to come to your aid because this is really, you know, ultimately our land.

But, you know, we're going to be more like a kind of like a republic. I mean, you don't really get a vote necessarily, but you can kind of do what you want and you can have your own customs and religious practices and all this stuff. And you'll see then that other kingdoms write very favorably about them. In some ways, Cyrus comes along and he's not a deliverer, but he's treated like one because he's giving people a life that's so much better than, in some cases, than they've ever known. depending on how long you know people that were young when they were in the captivity or were born in captivity or whatever uh like he's the man if that's you he's given you a much better situation than you could have possibly dreamed of and and he's uh he's clever in that way yeah and and he really sets a precedent that's gonna be picked up by later people too i mean

alexander the great uh does the same thing you know he's uh he's gonna allow the peoples that he conquers or liberates or however you want to, however you want to view it, uh, a measure of freedom. And he, you know, he's also going to adopt some of their customs. He's going to leave some of his troops behind, encourage them to, to marry, uh, in, in the local population. So they kind of become part of that community. So what, what Cyrus did is, uh, it's a sea change, you know, it's, it's a different way of governing a vast empire. And of course the Romans are going to follow suit as as well so anyway that's who Cyrus is um let me say just a couple things about just in general about uh the book of Ezra and we have to include here also uh Nehemiah too which

is the book that follows follows Ezra so um Ezra is actually named the book of Ezra and the book of Nehemiah for that as far as that goes are both named after uh some of their the principal uh characters but we're not not going to meet ezra right away it's going to be it's going to be a while before we we meet him in fact some have argued that the name itself by naming the book ezra or by naming nehemiah nehemiah it's kind of detracts from the real focus of the book that you know this is even though that it's a main character that to title it that is to kind of partially misleading because you're thinking okay well this is a book is about ezra where's he at you know we're still waiting waiting waiting for him to come along yeah you start reading ezra and you

get through a little bit and you're like wait is this named after the guy that wrote it or is there a guy named ezra that's gonna appear at some point yeah yes you're gonna show up well he does show up but uh it's gonna take a while and another thing and this was actually uh maybe i learned this years and years ago and just forgot but uh this was uh relatively uh new information to me And that is that really the longest standing tradition about these two books, Ezra and Nehemiah, is that they are considered to be one book. So we divide them. We have the book of Ezra, we have the book of Nehemiah, and we study these in tandem. But we really study them as like you might study Matthew and Mark, you know, two different authors, two different books. But dating all the way back to really the time of the first century, Ezra and Nehemiah were treated as one book with two parts.

In fact, if you look at Josephus, for instance, a late first century Jewish historian, he refers to them as the work of one person. So kind of volume one and volume two. And the earliest manuscripts of the Greek translation, the Septuagint, consider them to be one book. In fact, I think it was not until sometime in the medieval period that Hebrew manuscripts actually divided them into like two different works. And there's evidence in the Hebrew itself that they were considered to be just one continuous book with two different parts to it. So what would happen? You had the professional Hebrew scribes called Masoretes who would count how many words were in a book. And then at the midpoint, they would note that.

Well, the midpoint for Ezra and Nehemiah is in Nehemiah, meaning that they consider these to be one book. and located at the midpoint in about Nehemiah chapter 2 or something like that. So I say all that, just as kind of a good thing to keep in mind, that when you're thinking about Ezra and Nehemiah, it's probably best to think about them kind of as a Luke-Acts parallel, if you will. Same author, two different volumes. Well, you have this sort of thing. We just did a ton of this. 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings.

We didn't do 1 and 2 Chronicles, but you could tell that this is not a, it's not an uncommon thing to do right so those are all two volumes uh they're not totally different books i mean you read first and second kings i would say that that's it's two books but it's i mean if you don't read second kings i mean you have not finished what you need to finish right yeah or if you read second kings without reading first kings you're like wait what's you know what's the what's the pre i'm missing something here right i missed the first few episodes of this yeah so uh yeah as many of my are are kind of like that kind of like that as well all right so uh we'll just kind of let the the story lead us uh lead us from here uh this

is going to pick up as i mentioned with 539 538 so 539 has been cyrus becomes cyrus the great becomes uh the conqueror the liberator probably the edict that we're going to hear about in just minute was issued in 538. So if he is victorious in the fall in October, then chances are this famous edict, which we'll talk more about in just a second, was issued that subsequent year, 538. But that's the way the book starts out, 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, 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. So like a lot of the biblical books, first thing it does is kind of situate us

in history. Luke starts out, you know, talking about when certain things happened and other biblical books that do the same thing. Typically it will root to the history that it's about to narrate in terms of who's king right so when such and such a guy was king or in the in the blank year of such and such a guy's reign so that's uh i mean keep in mind that at this point in history no one's numbering the years yeah no one is no one is saying y'all oh yeah this is they're they're starting their their diary and they're putting out january 1st uh 538 bc nobody numbered years because you didn't have anything by which to number it. The numbering of our years is focused, of course, upon the Incarnation.

So you have B.C., you have A.D. There's no way that they can—they weren't numbering it like Jews do today from the traditional beginning of the world. They're just numbering it according to the regnal year of such and such a king. And that's why you find a thing, an event, a person, whatever, and then you can number it that way. So that way, the only kind of time you hear sort of numbering of years, it would be like, in the fourth year of the reign of such and such, okay, now we've placed ourself in history. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, the equivalent would be something like, you know, in the second year of President Jimmy Carter, so-and-so was born. And I'm reaching way back there, I know, because I was born. In the second year of Jimmy Carter? Well, he's the first president that I remember. There you go. Yeah, yeah. Getting back to my youth. Speaking of geriatric, early in the conversation, dating myself here.

Yeah, you have to find a person that everyone knows, right? And then you can date it that way. You can start this by saying, hey, in the first year of Cyrus, King of Persia, well, everybody knows when that was. Yeah. Or some of the prophets will date it by any event that everybody knows, like an earthquake. So in the year that the earthquake happened, or that year. Everybody remembers that year. So Cyrus is king, and so that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled.

Now we're not told specifically which word, because there's a number of prophecies of Jeremiah that would fit this. Maybe he's talking about the 70 years of captivity. Maybe it's the verse that is frequently quoted about God having plans for you. Well, the context of when Jeremiah talks about the Lord has a future and he has plans for you is in the context of a return from exile. So God's going to bring you back from Babylon. So maybe that's what they're referring to. Jeremiah also prophesies that God is going to raise up a deliverer. That deliverer is Cyrus.

So maybe actually that is what's being talked about. But whatever it is, there's a whole list of passages that we could actually point to that came from Jeremiah's mouth. Yeah, I like the all of the above option. I don't know, Jeremiah is saying a lot of things, and I think that Cyrus fulfills more than one of those things, right? So he's the fulfillment of a lot of those things, which is such an interesting thing. because you take this king, and this is the guy that God is putting words in the mouth of his prophets about. And the plans I have for you, the stuff, I mean, this is given to Jeremiah in the Babylonian captivity, and he's telling him, hey, I got plans coming, and he uses this guy to deliver you.

know out of out of this captivity yeah it's it's uh that's picked up of course that's echoed by luke too when he's talking about uh you know well you know in the when the when when he's caesar and when he's governor and when all these things are going on well that's exactly when you have joseph and mary going to bethlehem so uh god has a long history of in in surprising and for the participants unseen sorts of ways of using their own political decisions or military conquest or whatever it might be in order to make sure that his will is accomplished which is which is just phenomenal because you you think if someone was living back then and you know you're watching these things happen with cyrus and all you know his his greatness and everything happening

no one would have been looking at this and and except for except for the israelites and pointing to him and saying you know you know why cyrus was able to to to beat the babylonians and to and to do all these great things well it's because that way he could issue an edict that the israelites could return home and build the temple yeah cyrus is really trying to get this stuff done yeah no i mean i think that you could even if you ask cyrus hey uh do you remember when the the lord stirred up your spirit to make that proclamation he would say no i just i just thought was a good idea yeah yeah you do have this language by the way i'm glad you you uh reminded me of that so the hebrew verb for for stir up is used actually quite a bit in the in the prophets

jeremiah uses it isaiah uses it uh it's the idea of kind of exciting arousing agitating another good translation is uh awakening but you kind of get the idea so god is at work in this person whoever it might be, Cyrus in this case, to agitate him, to stir him up, to kind of wake him up to do certain things. In other words, he's an instrument in the hand of the Lord, whether he ever realizes it or not, or acknowledges it or not. And most of the time, no, it won't happen, but that's what God is doing. And then we're going to have that same kind of exact same kind of language used in verse five, where God is also going to to stir up the spirit of his own people

in order to actually heed the edict of Cyrus and go back to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple. So God is acting in great leaders. He's also acting in the lives of his individual people to awaken them, to stir them up in order that they might do his will. So he stirs up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, and he makes a proclamation,

probably through uh just messengers that he sends out i mean this is the way that things happen back then so you send out you have a decree you have a message and so what do you do well you send out messengers who orally wasn't like they put pamphlets around and uh so that people could read it they just sent out messengers and these messengers went from place to place and they made this kind of oral proclamation and it was also as the end of the verse says also put into writing so what did it say thus says cyrus king of persia the lord yahweh's name right here yahweh god of heaven has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and 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, just in case you don't know where the Jerusalem is. So twice we've been told where, 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 beast besides freewill offerings for the house of god that is in jerusalem so end of edict now now this is you might be like wait a minute so this guy is saying that the lord told him to do this now i think this is how you do that you tell me what you think about this chad uh cyrus not a believer in uh in yahweh this is not this is not his god

now two things can be true at once uh cyrus can be saying something because he thinks it's clever because he knows that the people he's speaking to he's know thy audience is what cyrus is doing here now so he's getting up so like he's like all right how am i gonna make all these people you know they're gonna like me when i tell them yahweh of heaven is has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and man i'll tell you what one thing he really wants me to do get you guys back over there jerusalem we got to get some temple construction going uh and people are like hmm that this guy is this is exactly right so he can say all that because this is all politics and and he's knows who his audience is

and he's going to give them this wonderful thing. And he can say it, not believe it, but it also be true. So is it true that Yahweh, the God of heaven, did give him all the kingdoms? Yeah. I mean, we know this from lots of passages of Scripture. You don't just get the kingdoms of the world because God wasn't involved. That's not how that works. Is that what Cyrus thinks?

No. But does Cyrus think that the people he's talking to think that? Yes. All of these things are going on at the same time. Yeah, I think probably what happened here is, first of all, keep in mind that it wasn't just the Israelites that were conquered by the Babylonians in the next cell. This would have happened a lot, right? So you have people groups from all over the place. So when the Persians come in under Cyrus and they're now in charge, then you're going to have a whole lot, not just the Jews, not just the people of Israel.

You've got a whole lot of people who are now allowed to have their own exodus. to return back to whatever place they were taken from. So you're going to have messengers who are probably then going to craft kind of the general proclamation of Cyrus to meet the specific needs of whatever group they're going to. And have probably been instructed to do so. The idea here is that Cyrus doesn't stand up in front of all the Israelites or whatever and say this.

So he's like, all right, take another people group with a different god, it's the same message, but he switches the gods around, right? That's how this goes. It's a fill-in-the-blank kind of situation. Yeah. So if you're talking to the Edomites, if you're talking to the Ammonites, if you're talking to whoever, well, then, yeah, it doesn't mean fill in the blank of their god's name and then say,

this god who made me the ruler of all the kingdoms of the world has given me now this command so that you can go home and rebuild your sanctuary. Yeah. So that, I suspect, is what's going on. And one of the reasons I say that is, so we have the Cyrus Cylinder, which is a baked clay cylinder that's written in cuneiform. And it includes on there basically what is being described here in the book of Ezra. You know, Cyrus comes in and he's given victory.

And so he's going to allow, I mean, it says a lot of things. one of the things it says this is going to allow the former captives to return to their homelands but when you look at the uh when you look at the cylinder and you see what of course this wasn't like cyrus you know did this himself but this was an official cylinder from his reign he attributes his victory of course not to yahweh he didn't believe in yahweh but to marduk the babylonian god so of course you know from his perspective it was this god that gave him victory now once he's in power and he wants to kind of craft this message so that it's going to make happy all the various people groups he's now going to allow to return to their homeland then

yeah it gets changed around it's not he's not going to go to the israelites and say hey marduk marduk made me uh the ruler of the kingdoms of the world and so marduk commanded me to let you go and build yahweh a temple in jerusalem and that doesn't make any sense and is one of the lessons he probably learned from those who came before him not to do. That doesn't work. Yeah, so let's not repeat the mistakes of the past. He's a good student of history.

But like you said, is it still true whether you believe it or not? Well, yeah, absolutely. This is Yahweh who is pulling the strings here. He has put Cyrus in office, just like he said he was going to do, well before this through a prophecy of Isaiah. We'll get to that eventually.

But Isaiah, by name, mentioned Cyrus. So now Cyrus is in office, he issues this edict, and he wants him to go back to Jerusalem and to rebuild the very house that was destroyed by the Babylonians, because God sent the Babylonians to destroy that house. So God issued his threat because of the rebellion of his people. He made good on that threat. The temple is destroyed, the city is destroyed, and now after this Sabbath rest that the land has these 70 years of a sabbath rest now it's time for god to turn around and say okay now i'm going to bring you home i'm going to bring you out of this new egypt which is babylon and uh you're going to have your new exodus and so you have you're going to have woven into the

book of ezra the kind of language it's lifted from the book of exodus itself because this is being portrayed as a second exodus. Once more, the people of God are leaving captivity and they're so, and they're, and they're, and they're journeying. And now they're going to go to the place that God has designated for them. And they're there to build the sanctuary. Okay. So verse five, this is right, this is after, after the edict is issued, we're going to find out what happens okay so everybody's free i mean you can go you can go home so uh are they all going to go home or most going to go home only if you're going to go home what's what's going to happen well verse five tells us that you got basically three different groups that uh rise up typical

biblical language then rose up who well first of all the heads of the father's houses of judah and Benjamin. So a father's house is kind of a, you know, different ways of designating groups in Israel. So this is sort of a, an in-between group to describe. So it's, it's not a tribe. It's not that big, but it's also not like your immediate family. So it's kind of a bigger part of your family. So these are the heads of the father's houses. Notice of Judah and Benjamin. So they're the only two tribes that are mentioned so far. So you got, these are basically what in today's language we refer to as the laity. So they're not Levites and they're not priests. They're just basically the heads of various bigger family groups within these two tribes of Judah and

Benjamin. So that's one group. The other group are the priests and the other group are the Levites. and in subsequent biblical literature these are kind of the three groups that you can hear a lot about you got the priest you got the levites you got the people so if you're not a priest or levite then you're part of the uh the the om which is the hebrew word for people the people of israel so these three groups rise up everyone whose spirit god had stirred that's that language that I referred to earlier. So God stirred up, he awakened, he aroused the spirit of Cyrus to do what he did. And now God is going to arouse, awaken, stir up the spirits of these people to do what? To go up to rebuild the house of the Lord that's in Jerusalem. And verse six says, all who

were about them, we might translate that as all of their neighbors. And I think this is referring to their Gentile neighbors. This isn't referring to their brothers and sisters, their fellow Israelites. I think this is referring to their Gentile neighbors. And this is one of these instances where the narrator is kind of winking at us

and he's saying, oh, you remember what happened in the first Exodus, where you had the despoiling of the Egyptians, where the neighbors of the Israelites were just like handing over all this stuff to the Israelites? Same thing's happening here. So those who are around them, their neighbors, their Babylonian Persian neighbors, they actually are going to

contribute as well. They're going to give them vessels of silver and gold and goods and beast and costly wares besides all the other things that were freely offered. So we got all these contributions kind of being gathered together. And verse 7 tells us that there's some more important items that are coming up too 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 of his gods so when they when they looted the temple they gathered all that stuff together you know the menorah and the table of showbread and all the things that the one thing that we are not the one item that we're not for sure they took may have may not have was the ark of the covenant

so i mean of course theories abound as to what happened to that was it was it taken out and hidden before the babylonians came in did the babylonians actually take it into exile uh and is it buried on the temple mount uh is in a warehouse in washington dc whatever there there is i will say this there's no evidence whatsoever but there's well there's evidence to the contrary in fact there's no evidence that that it ever came back from babylon so there was a big rock inside the holy of holies that worked as the substitute for the ark of the covenant in the temple in the first century so whatever happened to the ark of the covenant we don't know but all this this is a wild thing though you have all this

stuff happening and imagine this scene where you're gonna get to go back and they're gonna to build this temple and then cyrus just winning hearts and minds all over the place comes out with like all the stuff man all the furniture all the things that that that were in the temple that nebuchadnezzar had carried away he's like i'm gonna i got all this stuff i'm gonna take it out of here and give it all back to you i mean you gotta think if you're if you were in 70 years of captivity you gotta think that this guy is the man yeah yeah he's not only giving you the ability the freedom to go back but he's also saying oh you know all the very important stuff for the temple i'm going to give that back to you nebuchadnezzar took it i'm going to give it back

so cyrus uh brought all these out well of course he sent his service his servants his officials to do this but brings all brings out these inch brings these out in the charge of a guy by the name of Mithridath, who was the treasurer, who counted them out to this fellow by the name of Sheshbazar. So we'll talk more about him in just a second. He's called the Prince of Judah. And then we have in the rest of the chapter, which is only about two or three verses, a listing of what these were. So you have basins of gold and basins of silver. You have censers, which is also sometimes translated as knives, kind of a strange Hebrew word there. Anyway, a bunch of bulls, other vessels, all of which added up to 5,400.

That doesn't match the numbers that are listed there, but probably only given a sample of some of the things that were actually listed, that were actually brought out. So all these Sheshbazar, all these did Sheshbazar bring up when the exiles were brought up from Babylon to Jerusalem. So this guy, Sheshbazar, is the one that we are introduced to here in chapter one. And then he just kind of disappears. So we'll talk more about this next week. But between chapter one and chapter two, a period of time transpires. So the first leader who's going to bring back, is going to lead some of these people home to Jerusalem, is this guy by the name of Sheshbazar. and he receives the temple vessels he leads the exiles back to jerusalem and then he just kind of

disappears we don't know we don't know what what happened to him now one thing i will add and then we're about out of time the evidence suggests that the people who made this initial trip back to jerusalem were uh very much a minority of those who were exiled to babylon A lot of decades had transpired. Most of the people who had actually lived in the Holy Land and experienced the destruction of Jerusalem were dead. I mean, if they were around, they were very old. So for most people, they grew up in Babylon and Babylon was their home. And so even though it might sound great to hear great grandpa talk about how awesome Jerusalem was, you know, for them, Babylon was was home. And so even though Cyrus comes in and says, hey, you can go home, they're like, well, this is my home. You know, this is the only place that I've ever known.

So the only ones who returned would have been those who were either, you know, very wealthy and able to afford this or those who were just extremely zealous and wanted to go back to to the promised land. So very much a minority under the leadership of Shesh Bazaar. And they have this stuff and they make the journey back. And we're not told exactly what happened when they got back, because the story is going to pick up with chapter two after some time has transpired. But at least the ball is moving and we're getting people making this return homeward. Yeah, you definitely get this idea that Cyrus is a different kind of guy. All these conquerors and stuff kind of before him, they come and invade you and take all your stuff. and trying to get rich off of looting and acquiring.

Cyrus is just on a different level where he's achieved so much at this point that he's like, I don't need this stuff. I don't need anyone's stuff. Let's give it back. If you look at these numbers, I'm going to give you all this stuff. And it cost him nothing. He doesn't care. He is wiser than those that were before him.

He knows, like, what the difference between having storehouses full of golden bowls and what, like, real power is. And so he's a little different than other people in that way. Yeah, and then used by God to pave the way for the fulfillment of prophecy and for the return of his people and just for the overall good of his people. So you can see how God handpicked him, a very different kind of conqueror and ruler, in order to ensure that kind of this next stage of salvation history could actually happen, so that he could return home and they could eventually begin to rebuild the temple. Yeah, and that's the big takeaway, is that God's commitment to His promises—we hear all the time, God will use a sinner, you know, He'll use David, or He'll use whoever. Sometimes He'll just use, like, a complete non-believer, and to play a huge role in redemptive history. Yeah, it doesn't have to be someone who is in the people of God, it just happens to be someone that God can use.

someone who may you know not know anything about him or deny him but either way god can stir up his spirit in order to be an instrument for the accomplishment of his will yeah that's right well all right well that is chapter one uh of ezra we'll be back next week uh with chapter two so chad i will see you then all right see you then Thank you for watching!