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:

“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.”

Then rose up the heads of the fathers’ houses of Judah and Benjamin, and the priests and the Levites, everyone whose spirit God had stirred to go up to rebuild the house of the LORD that is in Jerusalem. And all who were about them aided them with vessels of silver, with gold, with goods, with beasts, and with costly wares, besides all that was freely offered. 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. Cyrus king of Persia brought these out in the charge of Mithredath the treasurer, who counted them out to Sheshbazzar the prince of Judah. And this was the number of them: 30 basins of gold, 1,000 basins of silver, 29 censers, 30 bowls of gold, 410 bowls of silver, and 1,000 other vessels; all the vessels of gold and of silver were 5,400. All these did Sheshbazzar bring up, when the exiles were brought up from Babylonia to Jerusalem.
Ezra 1:1-11, ESV

Let’s pray. God, Father, we praise and thank you that you’ve given us your word. You’ve chosen to speak to us through your word that was delivered so many centuries ago and yet your spirit continues to use in the hearts of your believers even today. So maybe be strengthened, may we be be encouraged, may we be be challenged and sanctified by your Holy and precious word this morning. Pray this in Christ’s name, amen.

Well it is delight and a pleasure and a privilege to be with you this morning to open God’s word. This morning we’ve had the first chapter of Ezra read to us. And Ezra is an important part of the story of God’s people and the Old Testament.

In in the course of the history of God’s people, there are many times when we saw the same pattern emerge again, the And this was the Lord bringing his people back into the land that he had given them. From the very first chapters of Genesis, Adam and Eve, mankind were driven out of the garden of Eden. And we know that the entire story of Scripture is the Lord bringing his people back into His presence again, and we see that finally fulfilled in the book of Revelation.

Or Israel, in the book of Exodus brought out of the land of Egypt brought out of slavery to the land that the Lord had promised them. Or even David, the life of David David, many times had to flee Jerusalem, but the Lord was always faithful to bring him back to his throne. Even our Lord Jesus Christ, driven into the desert to be tempted, but was successful and again returned to his people to lead them to salvation through his sacrifice and our behalf.

Or perhaps the biggest story and the in the scriptures of the Lord’s people being brought back into their lane was when they were exiled because of their sin. You may remember that in 586, the people of Babylon came to Jerusalem and destroyed the city of Jerusalem. And the Lord made it clear through his prophets such as Isaiah and Zephaniah and other prophets that this destruction was because they had turned against their Lord and God. They had served other gods they had bowed down to false idols. They had disobeyed the Lord’s law. And so King Nebuchadnezzar Babylon came and exile the people. Not only did he destroy the city of Jerusalem, the temple he took the people out of the kingdom of Judah, and brought them back to Babylon.

But the book of Ezra tells us that despite this rebellion of God’s people, despite their sin, despite the refining judgment the Lord put them through, he was not finished with his people. So now as Ezra begins to narrate the return and the restoration of God’s people back into their land. And so by doing, Ezra foreshadows all of our return to the presence of God, into the eternal Promised Land, not not the, not the small strip of land known as Israel, but our eventual return to the new heavens and the new earth into the very presence of God.

And so we’ll see this in three ways this morning. And the first two verses of Ezra one will see God’s Anointed person. And then the verses three to five will see God’s Anointed purpose. And then the verses six to 11, will see God’s Anointed place.

God’s Annointed Person

We begin in verses one and two with God’s Anointed person. And anytime you start a new chapter in a new book of the Bible, you have to kind of get your bearings have to know who are all these characters that are first introduced, what’s going on? Why are they named? We saw the name of Cyrus which you may not know why is Cyrus mentioned. Why are they in Persia? I thought you said Babylon exiled God’s people. As Jeremiah mentioned in the very first verse, And why is the first point of the sermon God’s Anointed person anyway? What does that have to do with anything?

Well, Cyrus, how the chapter begins the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, Cyrus was a great king of Persia, actually conquered the Babylonian Empire, and ushered in his own dynasty of the Persian Empire. And so he was a mighty king. And we see in this chapter that he sets out to restore the people of God to the promised land. And the text says this was according to the word of the Lord, by the mouth of Jeremiah.

Now, in Jeremiah chapter 25, the Lord had promised or warned his people that because of their sin, they would be exiled. But Jeremiah 25 also says that this exile would only be for a certain amount of time, that after 70 years when that time was fulfilled, that the Lord would bring his people back to the land from which they’re being driven. So Ezra tells us that the Lord has been faithful to His promise, he told them only 70 years, some of the 70 years I’ve finished, I’ll begin to bring you back to the land and I have promised you.

We may wonder, okay, so the 70 years are clearly up. So how will the Lord how the Lord do this? They are the people are in many miles away from their homeland or an empire that is far more powerful than they. They have no rights, they have no status, they have no standing, how will the Lord fulfill his promise to after 70 years to bring these people back into the land that He has given them? Well clearly this text has something to do with this man Cyrus, and in fact, this was prophesied by the Lord many years ago, two centuries before this text, the Lord spoke to the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 45:4:

The Lord says to anointed Cyrus, “I will go before you… I will give you the treasures of darkness… that you may know that it is I, the LORD, the God of Israel who called you by your name. For the sake of my servant, Jacob and Israel my chosen, I call you by your name. …I name you though you do not know me.”

Isaiah 45:2-4, ESV (selections)

Before Cyrus was ever born, the Lord for the prophet Isaiah spoke to him, knowing that one day the Lord would stir up the king of Persia, to bring about his purposes. And you may wonder, why does Isaiah call Cyrus his anointed one? Why does Isaiah call Cyrus this pagan king who he is who he admits does not know the Lord does not know the name of the Lord? Why does he call Cyrus his Messiah? Is he call Cyrus is anointed one. I mean, we understand why why David in the Old Testament had this title or Solomon or Joe Astra other kings in the Old Testament, but why Cyrus? This is a man who laid waste on Empire after Empire who conquered hundreds of people groups. How could this this man who does not know the Lord and is in many ways a violent and conquering man, how could he be part of the Lord’s plan so much so the Lord calls him his anointed one, his one chosen for this purpose. You know, brothers and sisters, we have similar questions that our own lives, don’t we? We see the things that the Lord brings into our daily lives we see, we see the struggles that we face, we see that we see the evils that this world brings against us. And we may wonder, are these are these things really a part of God’s plan? Are these really the Lord’s anointed purposes for our lives when friends at school, belittle us when attorneys mishandle our parents estate, when Our spouse mistreats us. Just really part of what the Lord’s good plan for my life, can I really be sure that he is in control. And sometimes we just act like the Lord uses these evils. The Eagles are out there in the Lord’s kind of like a janitor who’s walking down the hallway and sees a mess and thinks, oh boy, I better clean this up before the school board comes to visit today. We sometimes treat God that way. But the Lord comes across evil and in my life and says, Oh boy, how am I going to make this turn out for well, and then then he gets to work. But in fact, Scripture tells us that God is not merely one who reacts what others are doing. The text tells us here that the Lord stirred up the heart of Cyrus. The Lord, anointed this man he put him here for this purpose. Scripture tells us that the Lord for ordains whatsoever comes to pass. I may wonder how could the Lord use Man like Cyrus, but a Scripture tells us that the Lord’s motives are good, the Lord oil since things into our lives, who are our ultimate good and for His glory, and at the Lord’s purposes always come to pass, then we know that he is trustworthy. We know that we can trust that whatever obstacles in our lives that we have to face, that yes, may be caused from a worldly perspective by sinful men and women. Cyrus was not off the hook for the things that he had done in his life. But we can also know that the Lord is good. We see a wonderful example of this in the life of Joseph. I mentioned earlier the Lord’s people in in Egypt. And in the end of Joseph’s life and chapter 50 of Genesis, he looks at his brothers and says, you know, brothers, you met evil against me, you sent me down here, because you wanted to convince our father that I was dead. Because you hated me, Joseph says you meant evil against you. The Lord intended it, the Lord meant it for good to bring about the salvation of many souls. So even if it wasn’t out of the kindness of Cyrus’s heart that he was sending God’s people back to Israel, it was out of God’s goodness. And we can apply this to our own lives. We have a, we have a cheating business partner. We have an elderly relative who’s sick. We have a teacher who’s unfair. These people are responsible for their sins. Now we can trust that the Lord has purpose. These things are good just as the Lord purposed the greatest and most powerful man on the face of the earth, the emperor of Persia to bring these people into the land that he had promised us Perhaps we know this most of all to be true, because this was the experience of God Himself, and the person of Jesus Christ. on Christ, set aside his glory as the eternal Son of God and came to earth, to establish His church to die for his people, and to rise again for eternal life. He knew that he would be murder. He knew that evil men would rise up against him. He knew that one of his disciples would betray him. He knew that the Romans and the end the Jewish leaders would conspire to have him crucified. And yet, this was not a surprise to him. This was not an accident. This is not something that he decided to turn into a good for you and me, but this was his intention all along. For the salvation of you. anticipation of all who looked at him and faith. On the day of Pentecost, Peter looked at those gathered there. And speaking of Jesus, he said this he was delivered up according to the definite plan and for knowledge of God, yet crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. Well, this is true with Cyrus and this is true with Kai fez. And this is true of Caesar. This is true with these great men of history. And if God is powerful enough to work through those events, then surely whatever you and I faced in our lives, are not outside his grasp, or not outside his good intention of perfecting us for holiness, for an eternity and his ultimate Promised Land. Well, if that’s God’s Anointed person, if that’s God’s Anointed Cyrus to bring about the return of his people to his Promised Land, that Course heads up a second point this morning, guys anointed purpose. We saw this already in verse two it was to go up to Jerusalem. Well, we’ll look at their task upon arrival in a minute. But I want to really focus on the Jews role in all this. Look at verse five. The text tells us then rose up the heads of the father’s houses of Judah and Benjamin and the priests and the lights, everyone whose spirit God has stirred to go up. Three, build the house of the Lord, that is in Jerusalem. We’ve already considered how the Lord stirred up, Cyrus now here we see the Lord stirring up his people. And this is important put yourself in their shoes. The prophet Jeremiah had encouraged him to put down roots in Babylon he had said, you know, plant vineyards and build homes and seek the peace and the prosperity of the city. And so they were they were settled there in Babylon and it would have been easy for the be comfortable. Just Just read the book of Revelation it describes again, and again, the or of the world which it describes as Babylon. And the world can be comfortable and they would have been, he would have been settled there. If after 70 years and perhaps the generation that remembered the glories of the temple, many of them had died. Many of us would be a next generation who didn’t know what it was like to live in land flowing with milk and honey. And so they would when they’re in Babylon, the, you know, literally the center of the world that the most powerful capital on the entire planet. But they have one to go back where they have wanted to go back to a lady that had been destroyed to a study that was desolate. And yet, we can’t really blame them because how comfortable do we get in this world? How comfortable do we get with our amenities? With our lives Made Easy, we we say we long for the things of God, but we’re happy right here many times. Thank you very much. I think The Israelites as they left Egypt. And they encountered opposition What did they say oh, if we could just go back to Egypt, the cucumbers and the leeks and all the all the food we had and they, they struggled to obey the Lord because they wanted that comfort. For the Lord, the text tells us stirred up God’s people. The Lord spirit worked upon them, to remind them of the promises that he had given them. How How else would the Lord have stirred enough them up? But by by reminding them of the Lord’s promises that he had told him that he would we store them to their land zekiel 20th a promise that they would be returned to the land of promise. Isaiah 43 Lord says Fear not for I have redeemed you have called you my name your mind. And Isaiah goes on to predict the return. So surely the Lord through His Spirit reminded the people these great promises that Hidden made to them and brought them out of Babylon and faithful obedience to His call upon them. I pray that Lord would stir us up similarly, many times we are consumed by the pursuit of the things of this world, whether it be our career, whether it be getting our children, just the right college and we start planning from the day they turn you know for that we’re going to get them the perfect college one day and sometimes it goes right and sometimes it goes wrong or, you know, we we are glad to worship the Lord and as long as we get our leisure time as well we have the things of the world that we cling to. Scripture calls them idols, because they compete for our hearts. They seek to crowd out our devotion to the Lord. We may we likewise, remember the promises of the Lord, that this this world is Not our home that he is, he is gathering us up and he is purifying us and he is placing his name upon us as His exiles be brought into the eternal kingdom of God. Again, not on a small strip of land in the Middle East, but in the new heavens and the new earth where the things of this world that are antagonistic or against the Lord, our idolatrous will be, no more will be destroyed. Those idols will be totally driven out of our hearts. Beyond stirring up of the Spirit beyond merely reflecting on the Lord’s promises that people actually had to obey, they actually had to get up and go and that’s what verse five tells us then rose up the heads of the houses to lead their families back. They didn’t really sit there and think about it, they didn’t really sit there and contemplate the Lord’s promises which is necessary and important. They actually allow that work that that that were to seek into their their hearts so much so that they did rise up Obey and make that trek back to the promised land of Israel. And for what purpose specifically? We see this in the last paragraph of our text this morning God’s Anointed place. In fact, this has been woven up throughout the whole text has been Cyrus told the people that they were storing them up to go build the Lord a house, verse two, verse three to rebuild the house of y’all way verse four to offer free will offerings for the house of God, even receiving the riches of those around them for this purpose of verse five stirred up to build that rebuild the house of the Lord. And then we see in verse six, a description of all the riches that were gathered for this important purpose. Verse seven even reminds us of the original vessels that have been plowed over being restored, again emphasizing the restorative work of the Lord in his place of worship. First, he tells us that sheshe bizarre the prince of Judah is in charge leading his his people, the prince of Judah well in this purpose, and then verse nine through 11, the text you know, it slows down into account all these different vessels, you know, it’s just, it’s just a glorying, it’s the luxuriating and all the gold and the precious metals, all these vessels for use and the rebuilt temple, we have all the ones that are named and others that are added up to a grand total of 5400 vessels, but what why why are all these listed why are all these mentioned in such detail is to emphasize is to make clear the importance of the task, which all these things are gathered and counted and numbered and sent back to Jerusalem. Not just so that they can live there instead of here. But to actually enjoy the worship of the Lord and His very presence in his temple. That is the that is that is the bottom of the funnel. That’s where this entire chapter has been going. That’s why the Lord is gathering his people. That’s why the Lord is stirring up, Cyrus. That’s why the Lord is equipping them with all these vessels and restoring the original vessel stolen by nificant. ezer is for his worship. As for the glory of his name is for the lifting up of his magnificence among all the nations. That’s why the word helps appear so many times in this in this text, reminders that this is where the Lord has chosen to make his presence especially known here on this earth in the Old Testament. That’s why it’s a goal. That’s why it’s silver important. importance and value and highest worth to this one task to worship the Lord. Brothers and sisters, I hope that the parallels are obvious to you. That is why the Lord is working anointed purposes in your life. That is why that is why sometimes Life is difficult because the Lord is sanctifying is making us pure, making us more holy so that he will be more glorified, so that when we worship Him in the new heavens and the earth will perfectly bear his image as his redeemed sons and daughters, this is, this is even. This is even why Christ came. Yes, he came to die. Yes, he came to pay the price for our sins. Yes, he gave came to give us his righteousness. But why do we need our sins forgiven? Why do we need to have his righteousness? Why do we need to have him interceding for us in our behalf now before the throne of God so that we may be brought into His presence to worship Him, that we may be brought into His presence to glorify Him now in our lives on Earth, especially on the Lord’s day and throughout our daily lives, but especially for all eternity, and we may be holy and we may be watching They may come boldly before the presence of God bearing the righteous robes of Christ’s righteousness. We love to, we’d love to dream about heaven. We’d love to think about what it would be like to no longer be sick for longer longer have arguments with our spouse, to no longer have to have thorns and thistles in our work. But let us not let us not focus on all those, you know, side benefits of the ultimate benefit to be before the Lord and His temple to worship Him, not in a edifice on a hill in Jerusalem. But the New Jerusalem as the whole earth is filled with the presence of the Lord. roomie worship him there. So take heart Your things, as the Lord works in your lives many times in ways that we would not prefer many times, refining us with fire usually literally Usually not literally, usually figuratively, sometimes literally. Whether it be pain, sickness and heartache, and many good things too, but all coming down to this purpose, that he would have us to be his forever, and his presence and his glorious, eternal and four corners of the world temple, who may glorify and worship him there, with great joy with everlasting praise. Let’s close in prayer. Father, God, we thank you that through your Son, you have opened the way to you, as Hebrews tells us, Lord, that the temple the tabernacle, or just a mirror, just a scale model of the eternal throne in which you sit, and when we long for the day when faith will be made site on Christ will make us Holy, in, in reality just as we are in status that we will have your name and grave and upon our foreheads and on our palms that we will be yours, that we will fall down before you and praise, honor and glory and majesty of worship that your presence deserves and that your presence demands. Lord give us encouragement give us peace, give us comfort in our daily lives as we are on the road to Jerusalem. As we were marching onwards design, we were seeking your face now knowing that we will one day do so fully through Christ her son, we pray amen.