Ezra: Jesus Is Our Faithful Scribe
IF YOU WOULD LIKE YOUR OWN COPY OF THE SERMON NOTES, PLEASE CLICK ON THE FOLLOWING LINK TO DOWNLOAD A COPY: SERMON NOTES
PREACHING CHRIST THROUGH THE BIBLE |
EZRA: JESUS IS OUR FAITHFUL SCRIBE
Ezra 7:6-10 (ESV)
6 this Ezra went up from Babylonia. He was a scribe skilled in the Law of Moses that the Lord, the God of Israel, had given, and the king granted him all that he asked, for the hand of the Lord his God was on him.7 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. 8 And Ezra came to Jerusalem in the fifth month, which was in the seventh year of the king. 9 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. 10 For Ezra had set his heart to study the Law of the Lord, and to do it and to teach his statutes and rules in Israel.
Have you ever misplaced or lost anything for a certain amount of time and eventually you find that item or it’s been returned to you? My wife and I tend to somehow find a way to misplace a lot of items in our small one-bedroom apartment. In a matter of minutes of being handed something we will misplace it and forget where we last had it. All of a sudden, we panic and frantically retrace our steps trying to find our keys, phones, wallets, and much more. It is a good thing there’s built in trackers to alert us where things are. Hopefully, that isn’t you but put yourself in that situation. If that object is special, whether holding sentimental or expensive value, doesn’t that just make you feel so satisfied or relieved once that thing is back in your possession?
Today we have the opportunity to look at the book of Ezra seeing how God, even in those times, faithfully returned His people back home as well as using Ezra to lead the same people back towards living for Him.
The context and background for the book of Ezra records two separate time periods directly following the seventy years of Babylonian captivity. Last Sunday, Pastor Jerry’s message covered Kings and Chronicles talking about how the two Kingdoms were captured by the Assyrians and the Babylonians. Here we have them returning back to their land in two waves:
Ezra 1-6: covers the first return of the Jews from captivity, led by Zerubbabel (a period of twenty-three years beginning with a decree from King Cyrus of Persia, allowing the Jews to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple that had been destroyed by the Babylonians.
Ezra 7-10: picks up the story about sixty years later, when Ezra himself led the second group of exiles back to Israel. If you read Ezra, and I urge you to do, it reveals God as the power behind earthly events, continuously faithful throughout everything.
The book of Ezra in particular highlights God’s redemptive plan. The opening verse declares that God initiates these events that He Himself decreed through his prophets. God’s hand is then evident throughout: sovereignly directing the kings and peoples who aim to have a hand in the initial return and rebuilding of the temple, and personally clearing the path for Ezra’s later return to teach the law. The whole book unfolds God’s plan, according to his Word. In studying this book of the Bible, His covenant promises are gloriously on display as His struggling people return to Jerusalem after the exile. Let’s take a look at how the Lord was continuously faithful to the people of Israel.
I. God Restoring His People
God’s redemptive plan focuses on His people. Ezra makes clear who these people are: they are Abraham’s seed, those whom God promised to make a great nation in whom all the nations would be blessed.
12 Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. 2 And I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Genesis 12:1–3 ESV)
20 In that day the remnant of Israel and the survivors of the house of Jacob will no more lean on him who struck them, but will lean on the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, in truth. 21 A remnant will return, the remnant of Jacob, to the mighty God. 22 For though your people Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will return. Destruction is decreed, overflowing with righteousness. (Isa. 10:20–22 ESV)
In the book of Ezra, this blessed “remnant” is reassembled and numbered carefully by tribe and genealogy. The Lord allowed the discipline of His people through captivity, but He did not abandon them. Let’s look at how God graciously preserved His people.
A. God Fulfilled His Promises
Imagine this: Israel is exiled in Babylon, and they have been there for seven decades. Seven decades of waiting and wondering. Seven decades for any hopes of deliverance. Seven decades asking whether God would rescue them from exile, or not. Seven decades of desperately crying out to God, only to hear nothing in return. Two generations have come and gone, but Israel is still in Babylon, filled by years of disappointment.
10 “For thus says the Lord: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. (Jeremiah 29:10 ESV)
This verse was every Israelite’s hope to look forward to. This promise God made to His people before being captured and stolen away to Babylon. The promise made by the prophet Jeremiah that the exile would only be 70 years, then the people of God would return to the Promised Land. Eventually the Persians would conquer Babylon and God’s workings will come into display. The new Persian king, Cyrus, has no reason to offer the Israelites any favors, and keeping them in exile seems like a perfectly reasonable option. However, he decrees that the people of Israel be set free to return to their homeland after God stirs up his spirit (Ezra 1:1-4). Not only that, he amply supplies them to return and rebuild the temple in Jerusalem, even returning the wealth that was first plundered by Babylon (1:4; 6:5). God has answered His promise. He has not forsaken His people, they have been in His mind all along.
We serve a God who always keeps His promises. He is unwavering, steadfast, and absolute. The Israelites had plenty of reasons to assume God had abandoned them, but He was always working to bring about their deliverance.
When the people of Israel arrived in Jerusalem, their first job was to build the altar and offer sacrifices on it (Ezra 3:1-3). This was the first step in rebuilding the temple. Ezra describes several efforts to stop the construction (Ezra 4:1-23). These were successful for a while, stopping the temple project for about two decades. This goes for us even today, we too need to expect opposition from Satan in different areas of attack. We can keep seeing God’s people being met with opposition in the rebuilding of the temple but he doesn’t stop there. Eventually the temple gets completed, thanks to the fact that God had “turned the heart of the king of Assyria to them” so that “he aided (the Jews) in the work on the house of God” (Ezra 6:22).
The Jews did the work of rebuilding the temple. Yet their labors were successful because of help from two pagan kings, one who inaugurated the project and the other who paid for its completion. Behind these human efforts loomed the overarching work of God, who moved in the hearts of the kings and encouraged his people through the prophets. As we have seen, God is at work far beyond what meets the eye of his people.
B. God Facilitated Their Needs
God works in a systematic and orderly way. Through the great Persian king, Cyrus, He fulfilled His promise that the Jews could return to their homeland after 70 years in captivity. Next, God provided Zerubbabel to rebuild the literal temple. Finally God set His hand to begin to restore the spiritual temple, a remnant of Judah. He used Ezra to accomplish this. Yet this was a result of God’s work within him, advancing God’s own purposes. We see God always providing for His people through the rebuilding of His temple. Let’s go back to our main passage and see how the Lord facilitated His people’s needs.
6 this Ezra went up from Babylonia. He was a scribe skilled in the Law of Moses that the Lord, the God of Israel, had given, and the king granted him all that he asked, for the hand of the Lord his God was on him. (Ezra 7:6)
We are finally introduced to Ezra at the beginning of chapter 7. There we read that he came from a long lineage of priests, going all the way back to Aaron himself, the first high priest.
Ezra receives special permission to return to Jerusalem. By the authority of the king of Persia Artaxerxes himself, Ezra was sent back to the holy city of God. It even says the king granted him all that he asked and why is that? Because the hand of God was upon him. It was God’s power at work in and around Ezra that allowed him to receive this blessing. He was a man who experienced what it meant to have the “hand of the Lord his God upon him”. What is the “hand of God”? It is another way of talking about the power of God. It is how God accomplishes His work done in our lives. We see how Ezra was given courage because the hand of God was on him.
27 Blessed be the Lord, the God of our fathers, who put such a thing as this into the heart of the king, to beautify the house of the Lord that is in Jerusalem, 28 and who extended to me his steadfast love before the king and his counselors, and before all the king's mighty officers. I took courage, for the hand of the Lord my God was on me, and I gathered leading men from Israel to go up with me. (Ezra 7:27-28)
If we keep reading, we learn that he did not go back empty-handed, but bearing treasures of silver and gold, sacred items for worship supplied from the king’s own treasury. Ezra and his people were given everything they needed to re-establish temple worship in Jerusalem, including sacrifices of atonement. All of Ezra’s needs were provided for according to God’s will.
Ezra leads the return from Babylon 50 years after the completion of the temple. Artaxerxes allowed Ezra to lead his people (about 2000) back to Israel with authority, wealth, and blessings. Scholars believe that between the 50 year gap between Ezra 6&7, the story of Esther fits in where God’s grace and mercy abound for the Jewish people as well as The Hand of God being upon them. There are so many things throughout the book of Ezra that are attributed to the “hand of God”.
Psalm 33:18 Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love
Even when we are opposed, he is faithful to us. The covenant community would resume covenant worship of their covenant God in the covenant city.
II. Israel Returning to God
Now it’s time to see His people return to God spiritually. We also read that Ezra was living among the exiles in Babylon and that he “was a scribe skilled in the Law of Moses” (Ezra 7:6). Ezra was knowledgeable of the Word of God. Towards the end in the book, Ezra’s passion to keep God’s people holy and separate reflects a concern to honor the Lord who had redeemed them, reflecting his holiness through their own. Due to this, Ezra sought to bring Israel to demonstrate trust in the Lord by obeying his law.
Why did they need to return to the Lord? Well even though the temple was rebuilt the Israelites still weren’t fully committed in following God righteously. When Ezra returned to Jerusalem, he was prepared to confront issues of sin among the people, not by his own strength, but by the strength of the living God. Sin had gone unchecked, and many of the people, even priests and Levites, had married idolatrous, foreign women, violating God’s commandments. Ezra faced this head-on by grieving, fasting and praying for the people.
Ezra’s life is critical for Israel. He’s instrumental in being used by the Lord to restore the religious life of Israel. He’s the example of how they could be restored to worshipping God like they once did before. Let us see a few things on how Ezra sets the example for his people returning to the Lord.
Ezra 7:10
10 For Ezra had set his heart to study the Law of the LORD, and to do it and to teach his statutes and rules in Israel. (ESV)
10 For Ezra had devoted himself to the study and observance of the Law of the LORD, and to teaching its decrees and laws in Israel. (NIV)
A. Return to God through studying:
Ezra did not just “study” like how our children “study”. He devoted himself to studying; he was zealous and relentless in his study of God’s word. Nothing took priority over Ezra’s study time. He digested it into his heart and then it changed him so much that he then became devoted to observing what he learned. He learned and then he put it into practice in his own life. Ezra was a devoted student of the Lord, always wanting to learn as much as he could about Him! Before we can do what God wants us to do, or teach anyone else what God wants them to do, we need to KNOW what God wants us to do, and that means studying God’s Word.
“But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night” Psalm 1:2
Since he was raised in a family of priests, he had studied the Scriptures from his earliest childhood. He undoubtedly spent hours each day reading, pondering its meaning, and discussing its implications with other students and scholars. In those days, a scribe of Ezra’s stature would have committed large portions of Scripture to memory. The unrelenting ambition of his life was to know the Word of God. What’s stopping you today?
B. Return to God through application:
Yet Ezra didn’t just study, he applied what he studied and was zealous enough to make sure he did what the Lord instructed him to do. He did not want to just learn the Bible; he wanted to live it out. The Scripture says that he set his heart to do the law that he had studied.
This meant loving the Lord his God with all his strength and loving his neighbor as himself.
It meant keeping the Ten Commandments.
It meant following all the regulations for priestly holiness and public worship.
It meant doing everything he could to live by God’s law.
Ezra understood that the only true theology is applied theology. For us pastors and preachers of God's Word in our hearts when we’re told “That was a great sermon” our hope is that you know it is lived out in our lives personally and urged for all of you to do so as well. We stand accountable to what we teach. This was Ezra’s approach exactly. What good is it to study the Bible, unless we also live by it?
James 1:22 ESV But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.
C. Return to God through teaching:
Then there’s a third part to this passage about Ezra: teaching God’s statutes and rules in Israel. Ezra would probably have an issue with Nike’s “Just Do It!” slogan. You can’t just do it. If you want to learn how to do it, you have to study it first. Then if it’s worth doing, you’ll be compelled to teach other people how to do it, too. Ezra wanted to teach God’s law “in Israel.” He wanted to reach his entire nation with the Word of God. He saw that he had a responsibility to his community. It was his calling and privilege to spend so much time studying God’s Word.
But this wasn’t for Ezra’s benefit alone; it was for the edification of the people of God. Eventually God granted Ezra his heart’s desire. When he read the Book of the Law to all the people in Jerusalem, he was teaching God’s statutes and rules in Israel. He was the Bible teacher for the kingdom. But all of that came later eventually.
Ezra did not begin as a scribe, he became one. Sometimes people feel called to pursue a teaching ministry, and they get right into teaching before they have done the hard work of really diving deeper and understanding the Bible. Then all they have to offer is their own spiritual experience; they can’t share the deepest riches of God’s Word. Or sometimes they go right from studying to teaching without having the Word of God really transform their lives. It goes from the mind to the mouth without ever passing through the heart.
Like Ezra, you are called to be a student of God’s Word. We are all called to study God’s Word and when presented the opportunity, to teach it to others. This means spending time reading the Bible every day not in an academic way, but in a devotional way, nurturing our love relationship with Jesus Christ. He has always been faithful to us, showing us His love, despite us being unworthy, dying in our place so that we could be with Him eternally. That alone should be the reason for us to be meditating on Scripture, memorizing it, devoting our very best to learning what God has said in his Word. It also means paying special attention to new areas of personal obedience. We want to do more than study the Bible; we want to live by it.
Through all of this what is God saying to you today that you need put into practice in your life? Please don’t just be content with what you have already attained but strive to grow in godliness. Experience the power of the Word of God. Then once you start living the truth, then and only then can you be trusted to teach it to others. Don’t forget that you do not study God’s Word just for your own benefit, but for the sake of others. The knowledge you gain is a sacred trust that God has given you in order that you would share it. Just as God has been faithful, faithfully set your heart to study the Word of God, to live by it, and to teach it wherever God calls you.
Ezra has beautifully set the right prioritization of duties: first study, then practice, and then teach it to others. The book of Ezra also reminds us that he respected the forward-looking nature of God’s plan. In other words, the Scriptures look forward to another place, another time, and especially another man.
12 “Artaxerxes, king of kings, to Ezra the priest, the scribe of the Law of the God of heaven. Peace. And now 13 I make a decree that anyone of the people of Israel or their priests or Levites in my kingdom, who freely offers to go to Jerusalem, may go with you. (Ezra 7:12-13 ESV)
This letter to Ezra from the King concerns the house or dwelling of God which is in Jerusalem. Here is the desire for pure and effective worship among the Jewish people over and against the worship of foreign gods. There is a return to the religion of old; but there is something more. For example, holiness is no longer restricted to some special place such as the temple; rather, holiness is expanded and extends beyond the temple itself. This anticipates something greater to come. A close reading of the text demonstrates that Ezra does not simply look back to the glory of Solomon’s kingdom but also points forward. Yet for all his good virtues, Ezra was but a man and in our nature, sinful. Thanks be to God that Ezra points to another teacher.
Ezra’s life directs our gaze to Christ. He is what we would call a type of Christ. As we’ve been going through our series “Preaching Christ through the Bible” there are these types in Scripture demonstrating that Old Testament events, individuals, and institutions often looked beyond themselves for their ultimate fulfillment and interpretation through them. In other words, the Old Testament types prefigured in shadowy form things to come. Our example for today, Ezra is a type. His teachings pointed forward to the ultimate teacher of God’s people: Jesus Christ.
The fact is that we know Ezra was only a man, a sinful man. Yet, there was another man, but not just a mere man, that Ezra’s life and theology ultimately point forward to. He is Jesus Christ. This Christ is a man unlike the Pharisees. This is one, who when he taught, caused the people to marvel at his teaching and say, “Here is one who teaches with authority, not like the other Scribes and Pharisees.” He’s a teacher who practiced what he preached. Surely He is a preacher who never laid an untimely spoken word upon people’s conscience. He is a teacher who spoke only truth and never, ever, did a false word issue forth from his lips. He is a teacher who never failed to practice everything perfectly which he had steeled himself to study in Holy Scripture.
Who else is faithfully sufficient for all things? Definitely not us. Only Christ. We trust in and depend upon this Divine-human teacher, in all our shortcomings in our own study, practice, and teaching. Christ is our penalty payer and our probation keeper. Let’s continue to ask God to grant us the grace to constantly lay hold of that righteousness which alone can cover all of our deficits and shortcomings, which Ezra shadows and points forward to. We should take the example of Ezra, his teachings and diligence in leading his people to the Lord in repentance and emotional brokenness seriously in an age when biblical illiteracy is rampant in the Church. God’s Word is an anchor in a world. His Word holds us firm, directs us to Him, calms our hearts and shows us His will, and just as in the days of Ezra, He remains faithful to restore.
-Rev. Reuben Cabrera