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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Hey, this is Shelby. I'm here with cj. We're walking through the Bible in a year, and today we start the Book of Ezra. But quick shout out, if you're following along with us but you aren't using the studies we recommend that you do, you're going to gain so much more depth and clarity through those studies. You can also follow along without. But we highly recommend those. There's a link in the show notes where you can check those out. Okay, cj, we're starting the Book of Ezra. We're going to go through Ezra for about three days here, and then we're going to go through Nehemiah. And these are really closely linked together. So can you just kind of give us an idea first, kind of where we are in the biblical plot? And then I would also just love background information about Ezra and Nehemiah.
- [00:49]
B
Sure. So Paul and Scott just walked us through Kings and Chronicles. Kings ended with exile because Israel failed to remain faithful to God according to the stipulations given in the book of Deuteronomy. And then Chronicles ends with Cyrus the king of Persia, who, after defeating Babylon, he ends up conquering that land of Israel and then the land where the Jews were sent in Babylon. And he seems like kind of a nice guy, so he allows the people to return to their homeland if they want. And that's where we're at in Ezra and Nehemiah. After exile or during exile, I should say. And then after King Cyrus says people can return to their ancestral lands if they so choose.
- [01:28]
A
Yeah, great. Okay. So Ezra and Nehemiah, specifically, what do we need to keep in mind as we read these books?
- [01:32]
B
Yeah, so in Jewish tradition, Ezra and Nehemiah are actually considered one book because, as we'll see, they have a lot of, you know, similar characters and interwoven themes. It won't really make a ton of difference for us to know that, but I guess we'll kind of treat them as one. So Ezra 1 through 6, just to kind of give a lay of the land, it. Ezra 1 through 6 describes a remnant of Jews returning to the land of Israel who want to rebuild the temple. So Ezra 1 through 6 focuses on temple. Ezra 7 through 10 focuses on the religious reforms of Ezra, a wise priest. Nehemiah 1:7 revolves around the city of Jerusalem and the city's walls. Nehemiah 8:12. Those chapters are all about covenant renewal and the people recommitting themselves to God. And then Nehemiah 13, maybe, as we've come to expect in the Bible, Is again, end with a little bit of sadness and tragedy and we'll get there as we go.
- [02:27]
A
Yeah, okay. That's a great high level view though, as we get started. So today's chapters are Ezra1 3. Can you walk us through those?
- [02:33]
B
Yep. So Ezra1 through 3, like I just mentioned, fall within Ezra1 through 6, which is all focused on the temple. And some of these Jews return to Jerusalem and they put forth a lot of effort to rebuild the temple. That's their hope. And in these chapters we see King Cyrus again declaring that all of his conquered peoples can return. And in fact, he even bankrolls the reconstruction of this temple. And the text itself in Ezra says the gods stirred up Cyrus to rebuild the temple of God. So we're accustomed maybe in like the Book of Ruth or the Book of Judges where God is concerned with these local sort of regional issues and the people of Israel maybe on a small scale, or Ruth, you know, a single woman giving birth to a single child. Here we see God concerned about world events and how God worked through this really powerful man to bring about his will. So just something to keep in mind. And they return. That is, these group of Jews return and they build the altar of God under the leadership of a man named Zerubbabel. He's of the line of David and under Joshua, who's from the line of Levi. So we have a king and we have a priest sort of leading these efforts to rebuild the altar in the temple.
- [03:43]
A
Yeah, that's great. So where do we see God in these passages? What do we take away from the chapters that we're reading today?
- [03:50]
B
Yeah, so as we, as we said before, the book of Deuteronomy sort of anticipates the exile and the situation that Ezra and Nehemiah are in. And here we see God also being faithful to his promises that he gave in Deuteronomy. At the end of Deuteronomy, it says, you will be sent in exile because you're just not going to listen to me, but I will bring you back. And here we see the beginning of God's promise where he is bringing people back and restoring his people. So we see the Lord there. And I think more specifically we can say that the Lord is faithful to his promises, but they point both backwards and forwards. So backwards in Deuteronomy and even further backwards to the garden where all of humanity suffered exile and all of humanity is estranged from God. And here by God showing how faithful he is to bring his people back to the land, he's also demonstrating his faithfulness in terms of bringing all people back to himself, which of course is where the biblical story's headed.
- [04:46]
A
Yeah, absolutely. And just to piggyback off that a little bit, I loved the quote that was in today's study content. And so here we begin to see the people coming back to God, and we even see a king who's like supporting this, you know, this move back, and that points us towards the kingship of Jesus, that points us toward the lordship of Jesus. And so the quote I love was that under Jesus's lordship we can flourish as the people God always created us to be. And so we start to see just like a glimpse of that here. But okay, I'm really excited to walk through the rest of Ezra. Two more days in this book and then we'll go into Nehemiah.
- [05:28]
B
Awesome.
- [05:29]
C
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