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Episode 683:In this episode, we dive into the fascinating book of Ezra, exploring the remarkable story of how a pagan king, Cyrus of Persia, fulfills God's prophecy by allowing the Jewish exiles to return to Jerusalem. This sets the stage for a series of discussions about God's sovereignty and His ability to use anyone, regardless of their background, to accomplish His purposes.
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You're listening to the Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun in practical ways. Well, good morning, good morning. We talked all night through good morning, good morning to you and you and you. So today we're kicking off a Brandon Thank you Chris by the way, I forgot this. This makes my day. You almost didn't acknowledge them. Oh well I was. I was, thank you. I was so excited, right, so excited. Our people are so excited. But today we're kicking off a brand new book, the Book of Ezra. Yes, and there's a little twist to the Book of Ezra, and that is that a pagan king does exactly what God says he's gonna do. Yes, which means God's gonna use people regardless. Yeah, so it's gonna be cool. We're gonna have fun with this one. And uh there's we're gonna kind of twist and turn through several different books during this next yeah, couple days. Yeah, it's gonna be fun. Wait to get it started. Just for fun, Desiree has put together a segment that I always feel pressure on. Uh, it's a movie buff quiz. Let's see if Chris can guess the movie based on three word clues. Oh yeah, so this is a good one right here. Yeah, And I always get nervous, not that I care about movies. I think you're going to get these. Yeah, you're gonna be like Bible trivia. I'd beat more nervous. It's it's it's the thing you spend the most time on, and so you don't want to sail it. Stuff. Hey, by the way, I do the same thing. Did I ever tell you the story of I get a good friend named Mike, and he knows every stat of every football card, every rookie football card, and he's like, he's like, nim player, name a player, and I name it and he tells me all the stats on the rookie card and I go, dude, I go. Study a Bible verse. What's wrong with you? Right? It's what you're saying now. It's funny how how different things stick in your head. Yes, it is right. You can put in way more hour. You spend way more hours per week engaging in ministry and serving people writing. But something everything stick in your head, especially hobby kind of things, for whatever reason. You just have a knack for the reason why they become your hobbies. Is because you discover you have a knack for things. Yes, right, and that's what happens. So anyways, no judgment. It just tickles. It just tickles me. That's okay. Here we go three words and you have to choose. The pressure's on, and I don't see any commonality between these five. Okay, so just random movies. Ready, here we go, women, women. Car, women in car. Holy could be anything. Cliff Louis. There you go. So it took all three to get you there? Okay, Time time okay, loop time, loop looper? Uh, back to the future. Day day, oh, ground on day, yes, Monday, over and over. It can also be that modern take on it with a what's his name? Oh, come on, what's his name? He played in Wedding Crushers. I don't know, Vince Vaughan he was. He was in like a serial killer. It was the same Groundhog Day kind of thing. I forget the name of it, but that was it was a crazy movie. Here we go, ready, yep, physician, physician, animals. Animals talk? Oh uh, Dady Murphy. Doctor do that? Yes, our fans were screaming that when you know that? Right? I took on Chris, I took too long. Here we go. But you know what, I didn't love that movie, but it was cute, you know. So it's hard to remember the names if you. Don't love him. Okay, ready, Austria, Austria. That's that's arm Swortslinger Nunnery. Oh come on, sound of music. There you go, thank governess. Yep. When Bonnie and I were in Austria last year, we went to several of the the places where they shot. Oh really, yeah, I get I said. I can't believe, I said, Arnold Schwartzsaker because in all his movies he's not from Ostria. Right right, right right, he is from Austria. Yep. Yeah, here we go. Ready. Sharks, Oh, sharks, shark shark tail, jets, jets, dancing, dancing. Oh yeah, people screaming this it's in dancing. Dude, This is in your wheelhouse on so many levels, so many levels. I have no. I don't want to waste all the kinds of theaters you go to. So it's a it's a musical. Uh, sharks and jets and dancing. I don't know, I don't I don't know this story. I've never seen it. What I've never seen it. What I know you've seen, Harris Brain. You've never seen West Side Story. No, oh my goodness, I've never seen it. I think I think we take I think we should take a theater card away from you. Now. I do know that it was made in the sixties and then Steven Spielberg just remade it, like with the with the snow white chick. What's your name? I don't know, Rachel Rachel. I can't believe I said chick. Sorry, you're gonna get I know, I know. But you know what I mean. I know, I know, I know. But the snow white girl, Rachel whatever her name is, she just did the remake Steven Spielberg in like four or five years. So the Sharks and the Jets are the two different gangs that are facing against each other in West Side Story, and they have you. They have a dance off. If you had said the Greasers and the Soshas got outsiders. So I knew this one. Yeah, I've never seen what said. Story sophisticated to be honest with yousication, So I know, Bernstein, I don't know. You know the reason why I never saw it, because because you're uncultured, people have told. Me it's terrible. Oh okay, is it bad? Well it's only one of the most famous Broadway shows ever, but yeah, but did you like it? It's interesting. I'm not into big dance offs, but it's huh, it's good musically, okay, all right? Yeah, so all right, Well there you go, Chris. You were four for five yes, and you lingered on three. So number three, yeah, and number three one of them on one of them number three? Yes, yes, people, I people were. Screaming apologize for not knowing West Side Story. I feel guilty. I'm gonna go home and watch it. There's no doubt. Okay, and sorry I said the word check. Yeah. I don't know that you're gonna love it, but. Well yeah I was. That's why I avoided it, because I was told it wasn't you might like it. I think probably live would be better than the movie. Yeah, it's gonna feel like a burden. I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna burden myself. I don't want to spend two hundred bucks to go watch it live. Oh, I could probably get on a streaming service. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. It's going to be better live than on a screen. Is it still in Broadway? It's all time, it's being done? No way, Sure, No, it's not sure. I'm sure it is somewhere. I bet there's a touring version of West Side Story somewhere. That is hard to believe. I'll bet you. Yeah. Okay, So here's what we have. We have. Do you remember the King Cyrus? I do. He's the one that came after Darius. And Daniel served him. Yes, right, so this is amazing. This is maybe one of the most amazing things. Uh. Well, we didn't do a transition. We don't want to talk about it. We didn't do a Terrible Trains terrible transition. Do you have one? Yes? So I almost got everything right on that game, and you know who almost get everything right as well? Daniel. We're not even talking about we're not talking about Daniel Ezra. Yeah. Oh, by the way, we should clear something up. I think yesterday we said. Oh, yeah, that Daniel only had nine chapters. Yeah, but what I should have said was. Nine chapters is where we're gonna stop reading. That's where we were because it was actually twelve chapters in Daniel. So, but we were not going to read the other three chapters. So just had to make sure to clarify that for all of our Bible scholars, yes, who were at home saying. Here, so we were done. We were done with Daniel yesterday. There's a few more chapters. They're prophetic, they're very interesting. We're not saying it's not important, it's just not in the scope of what this. Yeah, because we're doing we're doing highlights. We're not going verse by verse. Right, So if you during this same time then five thirties, you've got a couple of other key people in the Bible, and then you get into like the four seventy five somewhere in there. So what you have is you have Ezra is during this time, Nehemiah is during this time, Esther is during this time. There's some really amazing stories that are happening among the exiled people of Israel, God's people. Right, And so we'll read, we'll flip back and forth. There's a couple of the prophets that are talking during this time. And chronologically it also coincides with second chronicles. Yes, so here's what it says. Ezra Chapter one says, in the first year of King Cyrus of Persia, the Lord fulfilled the prophecy he had given through Jeremiah. He stirred the heart of Cyrus to put this proclamation in writing and send it throughout his kingdom. Remember Daniel had been reading Jeremiah and remember that God it says seventy years. Yes, and you know you're reading Seton Chronicles right now right? Nope, I'm reading Ezra chapter one, verse eleven right next to it. See it. Wait? Wait, did you know that these are the same words? Isn't that great? In certain chronicles? Yeah? So you read the first verse and it's word for word the same exact wording in Seton Chronicles thirty six, verse twenty two. They didn't have copyright loss back then. No, I know, but that was That's crazy. I didn't know that that was the case. That's really cool. So here's the proclamation. Cyrus writes. This is what King Cyrus of Persia says. The Lord, the God of Heaven has given me all all the kingdoms of earth. He has appointed me to build him a temple at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Any of you who are his people, may go to Jerusalem and Judah to rebuild this temple of the Lord, the God of Israel who lives in Jerusalem, And may your God be with you wherever this Jewish remnant is found. Let their neighbors contribute toward their expenses by giving them silver and gold, supplies for the journey and livestock, as well as a voluntary offering for the Temple of God in Jerusalem. Then God stirred the hearts of the priests and Levites and the leaders of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin to go to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple of the Lord. And all their neighbors assisted by giving them articles of silver and gold, and supplies for the journey in livestock. They give them many valuable gifts in addition to all the voluntary offerings. King Cyrus himself brought out the articles that King Nebukenezer had taken from the Lord's Temple in Jerusalem and had placed them in the temple of his own gods. Cyrus directed Mithridath sure okay Job, the treasurer of Persia, to count these items to present them to Shesh Bazaar, the leader of the exiles returning to Judah. And this is a list of the items that returned. Gold basins, thirty silver basins, a thousand silver incense burners, twenty nine gold bowls, thirty silver bowls, four hundred and ten other items A thousand and all, there were fifty four hundred articles of gold and silver, and Sheesh Bazaar brought all of these along with the exiles when the exiles went from Babylon back to Jerusalem. And then it gives long lists of all the people who went, Yes, Drusalem. I don't know that we need to read no. Three hundred names for certain we do not, yes, but I mean, let's just say. I can't tell you. The total was forty two, three hundred and sixty people returned to Judah, in addition to seven three hundred and thirty seven servants and two hundred singers. Wow, And they took seven hundred and thirty six horses, two hundred and forty five mules, four hundred and thirty five camels, and six thousand, seven hundred And. You know, remember we talked about the Bible exact, Yeah, right with numbers, and so. Seven hundred and thirty six horses, not seven hundred thirty horses, right, seven hundred and thirty six horses. And isn't these are the kind of numbers that that just amazed me. The fact that it is so. Hard like meticulous. Yeah, like why would we ever need to know that? But it is. It is an exact count in history. It just keeps us rooted in the fact that this is actual history, right right, the precision of it as opposed to the generality of you know, how you and I would just say, and you know, a bunch of people went right, roughly forty thousand people went right, God said, Actually it was forty two, three hundred and sixty along. With and by the way, not only does it five hundred and thirty seven more, not only. Does it list all those people, but it tells you exactly how many people from each tribe and city in area, right, like the people of Bethlam. There's one hundred and twenty three from Bethlehem. Right, they went back, They went back. So this is this This is a really profound thing in that uh, one of my you know, I love archaeology. I love this stuff so much, and it's one of the reason why I love going to the Middle East. It's not always pretty, but there's so many amazing things. To walk the Roman streets or to walk the Egyptian streets to be you know, I'll be there again here soon. And here's what it is. There's a note you got to get yourself a life application study Bible. They've got a picture of this clay cylinder. Yes, that was found and it's called the Cyrus cylinder, and it was found in an excavation in Babylon and it's nine inches long and it's a baked clay barrel inscribed in qneiform. You know that was their hand their writing. They would use these little sticks and they would make lines with it, different shapes. And it says the inscription was written by Cyrus the Great as an effort to describe and justify his policies. The largely intact tech is about one thousand words in translation and dates to about five hundred and thirty six PC. Guess when this happened, ding ding ding r. Five thirty six PC roughly five thirty eight BC. And it says one section of the inscription relates to the Jews and is a significant part of biblical history. Cyrus decided to reverse the deportation policy of the Babylonians in the Assyrians before him, and he permitted all the captive peoples who had been uprooted to return to their ancestral homes. He also returned the images of their gods to their former sanctuaries and helped the various groups to rebuild their temples of their gods. Thus, it is clear that Cyrus's decree permitting the Jews to return to Palestine was part of this new policy. This piece of archaeology is a remarkable confirmation and illumination of scription. And isn't that the best? Isn'tsble? It's incredible because here we have again recorded an incredible detail exactly what had happened. And then we find in our it doesn't say in our lifetime, but assuming. The last hundred and fiftyears, the. Last hundred and fifty years, they went ahead and found a thousand words that literally describe what was written. Ready for this three thousand years ago? Right? Right? So? Or almost three twenty five hundred years a hundre years ago. Yah, so, twenty five hundred years ago. This was written and has been around to get this, It's been around and it's been known. So one hundred and fifty years ago, you and I we have we have knowledge that there's a cylinder backing this up. But before one hundred and fifty years ago, for thousands of years, people were taking God's word, you know, to be true. Right, And all of a sudden, imagine that, right, So somebody just stumbles across the cylinder, they read it and they go, oh, my goodness, this is a part of history written by the king that backs up everything that we read in God's word. Isn't that cool? It's fabulous, It's it's awesome. So these things. Now, what Cyrus is deciding to do is allow the people to go back. And you know, when you read his letter, he says, the Lord God of Heaven has given me all the kingdoms. He's the point you're thinking, ooh, did Cyrus become a Christian? But he also did it for all the other peoples and all their gods too. Right. What he was doing was he was currying favor, and instead of having them all always only being away from home, he's sending them back home. His goal is I need you guys go home and be prosperous, so I keep collecting taxes. That's that's what he's doing, right. But he says nice words and they're happy about it. They get to go home, and then he gives them back all the stuff that Nebukanezer stole. So remember when Belshazzar or Belta Shazzar, no Belshazzar was drinking out of the cups from the temple all that, Yes, remember that. Yeah. So Syrus gives it all back. Yes, God was done with him. Yeah. And so God God makes sure that Cyrus gives it all back. And then they begin heading back towards Jerusalem. All the people are very excited about it. So this said, there's another note. It says the Book of Azer opens in five thirty eight BC. We know that this writing that was found was five thirty six PCs, so it was written two years after the beginning of the Book of Ezra, which is great, that's pretty amazing. And forty eight years after Nebucken Azer destroyed Jerusalem and defeated the Southern Kingdom and carried the Jews away to Babylon as captives. Kenezer died in five point sixty two, and because the successors were not strong, Babylon was overthrown by Persia in five point thirty nine. Just prior to the events recorded in this book. Both the Babylonians and the Persians had a relaxed policy toward their captives, allowing them to own land and homes and to take ordinary jobs. Many Jews, such as Daniel and Mordecai and Esther who will read about soon rose to prominent positions within the nation, and King Cyrus of Persia went a step further. He allowed many groups of exiles, including the Jews, to return to their homelands, and by doing this, he hoped to win their loyalty and thus provide buffer zones around the borders of his empire. For the Jews, this was a day of hope and beginning. This was at the end of that seventy year window that Jeremiah said, and you're going to be under judgment for seventy years. But then God says, I'm not going to forget you. I'm going to give grace to you, get give mercy back to you, and you're going to be able to go home. And so that's what happens. Do you think that maybe Cyrus also had a you know, like another administration comes in and they sort of undo what the previous administration had done because they don't necessarily agree with it, and so and so, yeah, I mean, I think what you said is probably true. Hey, go home, pay taxes, so I could be prosperous. He's creating a buffer zone around the center part of his because they're all allies now, yes, oh good, let us go. But there's also probably another part of him that recognizes the cry of the people, the injustices that have been done. You know, he's probably thinking, hey, this great empire has been built off of a lot of pain in history, and now that we're so large and we're so prosperous, let me, let me let me right some wrongs that have been done. Because it's one thing to say go back, it's another thing to say and take all the stolen things that we've took from your grandfathers or your or your father's right and and you know, the previous administration had had done this, and this would be probably what their grandfather's time, right, this would be like the third generation. Yeah, seventy years, Yeah, seventy years. So so yeah, there's still stories, there's there's still you know, there's a rich history of you know, people who are from that area who you know probably still talk about you know, going back, you know and being a part of it, our land, our our home that we were taken from and robbed and everything else. So he's sort of writing. Wrong, and then he's giving them a lot of gold. And by the way, there's a lot more gold that we're about to read that that's going to come up in the temple specifically. But still, I just think that there's a part of me that thinks that maybe he's doing it for favor and goodwill as well. One hundred percent I believe that, Yeah, totally, there's a It's kind of interesting as we're going through the the chronological order, there's a couple of psalms that are in the Jewish song book that are probably written during this time. You have someone twenty six, someone forty seven, and it's all about God does great things. He doesn't only release us from sims, sins, captive, captivity, but he also brings us back to him and there's so that's what someone twenty six and then one seven it's asking, you know what, what gives God joy? And then even though he created everything, his greatest joy comes from our genuine worship and trust, and those both seem to have been written by the people going back to Jerusalem. Yeah, right, so the joy you can imagine seventy years of relative oppression. Now, of all the kingdoms, Babylon was pretty good to their captives, right. You could own land, you could you know, run your businesses, you could keep your religion mostly except for thirty days when Daniel was allowed to pray, but for the most part. And bowing down to ye ninety feet gold statues. In that moment, what they wanted was insert theirs, but you could keep yours, right, That's kind of how it went. And so it was even then even in the judgment, the judgment was that they weren't at their home anymore. They were they were, you know, pilgrims in a new land, right, and they wanted to go home. That's what they want. They want to go back to their home. The story of the Jews to. Their temple, right, And so they're they're in this situation. And then God says, okay, I keep my promises. I said it was only gonna be seventy years. You can go. Daniel starts realizing that that's why he was reading that in Uh Daniel nine. And then Ezra is one of the guys. So what we'll see in the Book of Ezra and Nehemiah is there's there's a guy named the Rubba Bull that's going to come up. He's going to lead the first group, Ezra is going to lead the second group to Jerusalem, and then finally Nehemyah. And so it's it's kind of a cool thing to see how it doesn't just all of a suddenly happen all at once. There's a bunch of new learning, there's a bunch of work to be done, all these things, but the people are kind of rejoicing that. Hey, you know, God's heavy hand doesn't last forever. So even if you feel like you're in a difficult time today, Uh, those those chapters six and seven might be for you that you know, they're celebrating God is good even though we've had a tough time up to this point. God's good and he finds joy in restoring his people and giving them back. Yeah, which which which is a fact, well, which is a great indicator. Like sometimes we think about Daniel's prayer. Daniels said, hey, we deserve what we got, and then all of a sudden, you know, there's a there's a restoration that's happening, and uh, and God delights in it, right and so God wants to So. What does that mean. It means even when we mess up, you know, even even back in the Old Testament, before Jesus and before God's you know, graced through the blood of Christ. You know, God still is the same, yesterday, today, and forever, which means that God wants to receive his people back. He wants to forgive, and he's delighted to when when God's people return back to him. Right, his patience was shown over and over, He's demonstrated his patients. And yes he has judgment, and there are consequences to our rebellion. But yet God's nature is all he really wants for us, is what's best. And then even when it seems impossible, God uses the least likely people to bring about his solutions. And I mean Cyrus wasn't a follower of God, but right, and he was the captor of the people, and he went, why don't you guys go home? Right right? Oh, and here's all your stuff right right. It's pretty amazing. Yeah, that's really cool. Well, hey, that is our time, so hopefully we will see you tomorrow. As we pick up the story on the Bible, Gos