Day 340: Ezra 4-6 | Read The Bible In A Year | Bible Study with Commentary by Dr. Manny Arango

Welcome to the Bible Department podcast powered by Arma. We are walking through the entire Bible in a year. You can go to the description or thebaldapartment.com to download a reading plan and join the journey. (upbeat music) - Hey Bible nerds, welcome to day 340. Today we are in Ezra chapters four, five, and six. Three short chapters of the Bible to read. If you haven't done the reading, how about you go ahead and stop this video, pause the audio, go get the reading done. Ezra is an awesome book. I mean, tons of narrative, we're kind of back to story. I know for a long time on the plan, we've been in the thick of poetry. We've been in a lot of wisdom literature, but now we're back into narrative history. I'm loving it, it's a good story. So to pick up from yesterday, okay? Ezra has been, well, not Ezra, sorry. Ezra chapter one has started and so rubble has been commissioned by Cyrus based on a prophetic word in Isaiah chapters 44 and 45 to go back to Jerusalem to rebuild the walls. Yesterday we established that this is a second exodus, okay? In the same way that the people of Israel left captivity in Egypt to go to the promised land, they are now leaving captivity in Persia, aka Babylon, and they are going to the promised land,

but not to conquer it, but to resettle it. Three Rs that I want us to focus on, that is return, rebuild, and repent, okay? The people need to return to the land. Number two, they've got to rebuild. They have a massive project ahead of them, okay? The walls of Jerusalem are completely broken. The temple is in complete disrepair and what happens when they get back to Jerusalem, they first start to build an altar and they complete the altar and then they lay the foundation for the temple. Once they lay the foundation for the temple, I mean, they're off to a great start, but then opposition happens. So I want to add a fourth R, okay? Return and then rebuilding and then repentance, but in the middle of rebuilding, they're going to hit resistance. And man, I know it's not time for our Thomas truth today, I haven't even given you our context flu for the day, but can I just encourage you? Every time you're in a season of rebuilding, there's going to be resistance and that's life. I can't count how many ministry leaders I've met that it's like post COVID, they were faced with the reality that needed to rebuild their church or rebuild teams or rebuild ministries. And we're in a season of rebuilding and COVID, not the only thing, a pandemic,

not the only thing that could cause rebuilding. I remember being a really, really, really young kind of young adult in ministry when like the 2008 financial crisis hit and the church that I was a part of took a massive dip in terms of times and offerings just because people were getting their homes foreclosed on the tough time. And what happened? The church had to rebuild. So rebuilding is a normal part of life. And it could be really discouraging to be in a season where you're just picking up the rubble and ruins of your life and rebuilding. And it could be really, really discouraging. It could feel like I've taken steps forward, now I'm taking steps back. Let me encourage anybody today who's in a process of rebuilding. It's kind of like rebuilding is already hard enough. And here it is, there are people that are resisting me. And you can go ahead and just buckle up. Okay, life is full of cycles of rebuilding. You're gonna build and rebuild, build and rebuild, build and rebuild. And rebuilding always comes with resistance. So let's jump into chapter four, okay? They've laid the foundation for the temple. They've been commissioned by Cyrus. And now we open up chapter four

and we've got resistance, okay? It says this. When the enemies of Judah and Benjamin heard that the exiles were building a temple for the Lord, the God of Israel, they came to Zerubbabel. And the heads of the families and said, let us help you build, because like you, we seek your God and have been sacrificing to him since the time of Asah Hardin, king of Assyria, who brought us here. All right, so I wanna give context for those opening lines in Ezra chapter four. The context is actually found in second Kings chapter 17. We can actually go there. I'll grab it in logos, second Kings chapter 17. You may read these verses and go, why would they refuse help? Like, that's crazy. They're in Jerusalem. Why would you refuse help? These seem like nice people, right? They heard that the exiles were building a temple for the Lord, and so they came to the rubble. They're like, "Let us help you build." But we're gonna learn a valuable lesson that not everyone who wants to help you build is called to actually help you build. I'm gonna season right now where I'm building a church and not everyone who says that they wanna help me build have good intentions.

And part of what it means to be a good leader is discerning. Are there people who wanna help me build because they need me to owe them one in the future? Are there people who want to help me build because they see an opportunity to get a job at some point? Are there people who are here to help me build out of pure motives or impure motives? And so I actually shout out to Zorubba in the crew for hearing, sometimes you could be so desperate for help. You'll take help from anybody. And they are encountering people who wanna help, but they have enough discernment to know, no, no, no, no, no. These people do not have the same heart to actually put their hand to the plow as we do. And so what's the context? This context that they have that we may not have in that context is 2nd Kings chapter 17. 2nd Kings chapter 17 says this, "In the 12th year of King Ahaz of Judah, "Hosea son of Ila began a reign in Samaria over Israel. "They reign nine years. "And then we're gonna skip, skip, skip, skip, skip." Okay, so then we're gonna skip all the way down to verse 23, okay? And it says this in verse 23, the end of verse 23. So Israel was exiled from their own land to Assyria to this day. Now remember, Judah, the southern kingdom of Judah is gonna get exiled in 586 BC to Babylon.

But in 722 BC, the northern kingdom of Israel gets exiled to Assyria, okay? So the context for Ezra chapter four is the Assyrian captivity of the northern kingdom of Israel. Says this in verse 24, the king of Assyria brought people from Babylon, Kutha, Ava, Hamath, and Sephifahim and placed them in the cities of Samaria in place of the people of Israel. They took possession of Samaria. If you go all the way down to verse 27, then the king of Assyria commanded. Send there one of the priests whom you carried away from there, let him go and live there and teach them the law of the God of the land, okay? And so one of the priests whom they had carried away from Samaria came and lived in Bethel. He taught them how they should worship the Lord, okay? But every nation still made gods of its own and put them in the shrines of the high places that the people of Samaria had made, every nation in the cities in which they lived. So these people who wanna help in Ezra chapter four, the context for them is Second Kings chapter 17. And what do we learn about these people in Second Kings chapter 17? They want to worship Yahweh and their idols. They wanna worship Yahweh and the gods of their own ancestors, which means what they're saying here isn't incorrect, but it isn't complete. It's the truth, but it's not the whole truth.

So what they, what Zerubbabel has context for is that these people are syncretists, syncretists. This is a form of ideology, you notice syncretism where you take God or Jesus or Yahweh and you mix in other things. This would be like going to church on a Sunday morning but then burning sage on Sunday night at your house. That would be syncretism. That would be like going to church on Sunday morning, but buying chakra stones from urban outfitters and laying those chakra stones on your chest so you can charge up. You know, that's syncretism. It's kind of like going to church on a Sunday, but then also having a dream catcher above your bed. And sometimes what can happen is we can be more loyal to our ethnicity or our race or our culture than we are to the God of scripture. And so we want to take on practices of our ancestors and we want to do things like smudge, like this is Native American, man. It's before the white man came and gave us Christianity. This is what we were doing. Yeah, okay, and going to hell. So I mean, sure, I mean, if you want to do what your ancestors are doing, that's fantastic. Or you can say, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not going to follow my ancestors. I'm going to follow like my spiritual ancestors. All these people at the Bible,

these are my ancestors, because I've been grafted in to the So my ancestors are actually people who have tried with all their heart. So mine is trying to worship the Lord God Almighty. So good jobs are rubable for not allowing syncretists to help with the building of God's house. Who knows what they would have done to sabotage the building? And guess what? Every leader needs to know this. Whenever you tell someone something they don't want to hear, it's a test. It reveals motives. And so that's exactly what happens. As a rubable says, no, you can't help us. And what do these people start doing? They start causing hell for the people of Israel and those who are building. Which means if they had had pure motives, then the no would not have deterred them. Kind of like right now in church building, you know, someone asked me, can we have like a flag ministry? And I was like, you can have a flag small group. How about you find everybody at the church who wants to wave flags and you go do that at your apartment? Now, that's a test. Two things get happened. Three people are going to be, you know, at Billy Bob's apartment waving flags around. Or 80 people are going to show up. And guess what? Now we got a flag ministry on our hands. Now we have no choice but to have a ministry because the person was faithful over little. So now you make them ruler over much. If you could get 80 people at your apartment to wave flags,

you deserve a flag ministry. Let's go. But it's a test. It's a test to see, did you just want a platform? Or did you want to disciple people using flags? Because if you just wanted a platform, hey, we're not going to use Sunday morning just because your church hurt and you didn't get a platform or an opportunity at your last church. That's what that's not what we're doing here. But if you actually care about discipling people and loving people, if the word gets out, oh my gosh, that flag group that meets at Billy Bob's apartment, oh my gosh, man, they pray for you, man, they love on you, man, they encourage you. People may not like flags, but they'll show up at Billy Bob's apartment because it's fruitful. So it's a test. It's always a test. If you want to test people's motives, you say things that they may not want to hear. And then you get to see, "Ah, was there heart in the right place?" And so it's a removable test, what's revealed? Gets revealed that they are now going to bribe officials to slow down the work of the ministry, which means the rubble was right all along. These people cannot be trusted, okay? That's enough context. Okay, let me give you seven nerdy nuggets. Golly, I got seven minutes left on the episode. I'm going to give you seven nerdy nuggets.

Okay, number one, the context for these adversaries can be found, a second, you can chat with 17. I already said that. Number two, who is a hashueros? A hashueros? That would be Xerxes. Now, here's something I need to make everybody aware of. The letters that we're going to get from all of the kings are not in order, okay? So let me actually give you the order of Persian kings, okay? The first Persian king is going to be when Cyrus overtakes Babylon and we get the edict of Cyrus, that obviously is a man by the name of Cyrus, okay? That's not hard. The king after him is a man by the name of Cambesus. Cambesus the second. After him is Darius, after him is Xerxes, whose name is a hashueros. So if you see a hashueros somewhere, you know that Xerxes. Now, this is the Xerxes that's married to Esther, all right? So what you're going to discover that in between chapters six and seven of Ezra, so like in between today's podcast episode and tomorrow's podcast episode, the whole book of Esther is going to happen, okay? So I'll remind you of that tomorrow. Hey, Esther has happened, all right? Then after Xerxes, we're going to get art as Xerxes, which is Xerxes steps on, and then we're going to get Darius the second.

What you're going to begin to realize is that the letters that we have here in the book of Ezra are not based on chronology, but they are based on theme. And there's a reason that they're based on theme and we'll get into that either at the end of this episode or tomorrow, let's keep rocking. Chapter five verse one, okay, the opposition works, okay? 16 years go by and the people stop building the temple. They stop, they're like, this is hard. So the opposition or the resistance actually works. So they are called to rebuild, they are met with resistance, and that resistance actually has the power to stop them in their tracks. And so let's think, what do they need? Of course, they need a politician. They need some construction workers. They need, well, this is all kind of practical things that they probably need in order to restart. Honestly any time I feel discouraged and that's often sometimes I can think to myself Man like there's so many people who can do so many incredible things all I can really do is preach like that doesn't seem like that impressive of a thing to do and sometimes because I'm so Intimidly aware of my own gift. It's almost like I'm too close to it to really appreciate it I'm just kind of like yeah, man I just preach and then I'm reminded that when God's people were stuck I mean could not progress They needed to build the temple God didn't send a construction crew. He didn't send politicians He sent two preachers He preached because the reality is that if you want the people to build the temple You got to build the people and I'm in the middle of building church right now And I think that part of the reason that we're successful is because I don't think about people as a

Resource to build a thing. I think about that thing as a resource to build people I'm passionate about building people and so of course God would send Haggai and Zechariah Haggai and Zechariah begin to preach they begin to preach Encourage and prophesy and what does that do? It turns the heart of the people towards building They now have a heart to build and a lot of times I can feel discouraged like man I wish I had like real hard skills all I know how to do is preach But the Lord keeps reminding me through moments like Haggai and Zechariah That actually the thing that he's graced me to do is Actually the thing that kick starts other people's hard skills and allows them to do what God's called them to do And I know it may seem odd to you that I would get discouraged. You may be Listening to me like no way. He's just saying that well. No, no, no. I really seriously There's a lot of times where I'm like man. I just wish I had other things to offer like all I really do is Like talk like that's it, but isn't it crazy how the one thing that God's asked me to do Actually kicks like kick starts a domino effect of all these other people who have all these other amazing gifts So if you're out there and you have the gift to preach and teach and communicate Please don't let anybody look down on you and don't look down on yourself When God's people were stuck and had no progress He could have sent politicians. He could have sent a construction crew He could have sent an army, but he sent two preachers to prophesy named Hagar and Zechariah All right, next the people are gonna celebrate Passover and I want you to see Passover is gonna bookend The Exodus and the exile why they celebrating Passover well because this is a new Exodus and The same way that they celebrate a Passover when they left captivity of Egypt to go to the promised land They are now celebrating Passover again as they've left the captivity of the Persian Empire to come back to the promised land Next nerdy nugget in terms of timeline. Let me just go back to second Hey guys Zechariah our prophesying because the work has stopped for 16 years now If you need a refresher on Haggai and Zechariah Just literally they've we've already covered them on this Bobbering plan go find the books go find the podcast Recordings from Haggai Zechariah. One of my favorite lines from Haggai and Zechariah is that the people keep saying to their leaders

We're poor. We're poor. We can't build God's temple because we're poor We can't build God's house We don't have the resources and one of the things that Haggai and Zechariah both make very clear is not a no You've got it twisted. It's not that you're poor and that's why you can't build God's temple You haven't built God's temple. That's why you're poor and can I tell you something as somebody whose mom Was on welfare as someone whose mom started tithing off of her welfare check Man, I watched my mom prioritize God's house and as my mom Prioritize God's house guess what God did God used that house to bless her son with a job in ministry So it's not that we're poor. We can't build God's house No, no, no, no, no a refusal to build God's house will keep you poor and my family broke poverty the curse of poverty and one Generation because my mom was tithing off of her disability check and offer her welfare check I know it's natural to assume I'm poor. I can't prioritize God's house. Well, my mom was poor We're actually launching, you know a top givers group at the garden. That's the church that we're planting right now It's that top givers group is gonna be called the vineyards that I need to give in order to be a part of that group? And I said, no, actually, I don't like a culture of, you have to give a certain dollar amount because I've got a friend in Atlanta, I've preached for him a bunch of times, named Pastor Michael Turner, he's an amazing guy. He tells a story about his mom, his mom is a single mom. And she was a top giver at the church, but she was a waitress at a restaurant. And all she did in order to become a top giver was she tied offer her paycheck and offer her tips. But on the weekends, she decided all the tips that she made on Friday and Saturday would go to God's house. So she became a top giver, not because of equal gifts, but because it equals sacrifice. God's never asking, well, if you give $25,000,

you're gonna be a part of this group in church. And no knock on churches who do it that way. But we've just decided at the garden, we're gonna do it in a way that anyone from any socioeconomic background could be a part of the vineyard. 'Cause it's not about giving a certain dollar amount, it's about going above and beyond the 10%. If you're willing to go above and beyond the 10%, I don't care if you are a waitress at a restaurant or if you manage a brokerage account at a stock exchange. I don't care what you do, to me, it's the sacrifice that matters, not the dollar amount. All right, last couple of nerdy nuggets. Question, anyone notice how Ezra has not yet been mentioned? Ezra's nowhere to be found. Well, we're gonna get introduced to Ezra tomorrow in chapter seven, okay? Because this entire first wave is all about Zorubable, insorubable's mission to rebuild the temple. Tomorrow, we're gonna get into the next section. And I want you to remember, Ezra and Nehemiah are all one book, okay? So tomorrow, we're gonna get into the section of Ezra chapter seven verse 10, which is gonna really focus on the third wave of returnees to Jerusalem led by Ezra. And then after that, the day after tomorrow, we'll start with Nehemiah and Nehemiah chapters one

through seven, we'll all be about a third wave of the exiles coming back home. Remember, there were three waves of deportation, 605 BC, 597 BC and 586 BC. Five waves of exile. I mean, sorry, three waves of exile, okay? Three waves of exile, 605 BC, 597 BC and 586 BC. Three waves of exile, therefore, there's gonna be three waves of return. Those returns are gonna be with Zorubable, with Ezra and with Nehemiah. And not only do the people need to return, but they need to rebuild and they need to repent. So tomorrow, the focus is not gonna be on rebuilding. The temple is gonna get rebuilt in the reading that we've covered today. And the focus tomorrow is gonna be on Torah, obedience. Ezra is going to lead a spiritual awakening. Now, last thing I'll say before we wrap up today. Sambley, the weight is over. My brand new book, "Crushing Chaos", is out now and available everywhere books are sold. Literally, today, I walked into a Barnes and Noble and I signed a bunch of copies at a physical location. So, you can grab this book at a physical Barnes and Noble or you can go to a books a million or Amazon or anywhere books are sold and grab a copy. If you enjoy reading the Bible from an ancient perspective, if you understand that the beauty of scripture is actually knowing it in context,

then you'll love this book. And if there's any chaos in your personal life, I think that reading the Bible from an ancient perspective can actually help to crush the chaos in your life. I think this book is gonna be a New York Times bestseller. I really do. I think we wrote a good one. I think you should get a copy today. All right, back to the episode. This is honestly a little bit of context, but I knew that if I start it with it, it would take too long. So, I wanted to get through all the nerdy nuggets first and now I'll give you context, okay? Ezra 1 through 6, Ezra 7 through 10 and Nehemiah 1 through 7 all follow the same format and it's a four-part format, okay? Each of these sections are gonna start with a king making a decree. So, in Ezra 1 through 6, it's Cyrus who commissions the rebuilding of the temple. In Ezra 7 through 10, it's Artaxerxes who commissions Ezra to establish the law of God. And then in Nehemiah 1 through 7, it's Artaxerxes who grants Nehemiah permission to rebuild Jerusalem, okay? Second, the returned Ezra lights are gonna face opposition. That's the second thing that's gonna happen in the pattern. Third is that the returnees, the return Israelites are going to have to overcome that opposition, okay, and then fourth, this one is tough. We're going to get an anti-climactic resolution, an anti-climactic resolution.

So for today in Ezra one through six, we're going to get a mixed response to the temple. Some people are going to be happy that the temple is built. And some people are going to weep that the temple is built because you may already realize this, when the temple of Solomon was built, the fire from heaven came and filled it. When the tabernacle of Moses was built, the fire of heaven came and filled it. The smoke came and filled, the pillar of cloud, like literally, I mean, the priests couldn't even do their jobs. And so Zerubbabel is going to build this temple and no glory is going to enter it until a couple named Mary and Joseph bring baby Jesus to Zerubbabel's temple in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. In the opening chapter of the Bible, baby Jesus is going to get brought to the temple. Remember, Simeon and Anna, they're a prophet and prophetess, they can't believe that the king has now come to the temple. And so the glory is not going to come in the form of fire or smoke, but the glory is going to come in the form of God incarnate in the person of Jesus. And so, when you get to the end of today's reading, which is the end of just one section, you should go like, okay, I'm so glad they overcame the opposition. And that response was lackluster. And this is why in Zechariah and in Haggai, the prophets are going to be saying to Zerubbabel is not that power, nor by might, but by my spirit, says the Lord God. Sorry, Zechariah and Haggai are also going to say, do not despise the day of small beginnings. Why? Because there's people in the crowd weeping that the temple has been constructed. And they're weeping because the temple looks kind of puny in relation to what they knew as a previous temple, 70 years prior, which leads us seamlessly into our timeless truths for the day. Do not despise the day of small beginnings. How encouraging. Of course, Haggai and Zechariah would say that to Zerubbabel. Hey, man, you ran your race. You did your job. There was an assignment that God had for you, which is to rebuild the temple. And at some point, you've got to ask yourself the question, do you want applause from heaven or do you want to pause for people? Because if you want to pause from people, then you're going to get real discouraged. You're going to be, you're going to despise the day of small beginnings. But I promise you that the temple of Solomon and the tabernacle of Moses are going to encounter something that your temple Zerubbabel is going to encounter something or experience something that these better temples or bigger temples never experienced. And that's that Jesus at the age of eight days old and twelve and thirty, three are going to walk through the halls and walk through the stones that you've laid down. Jesus, the king of kings and the Lord of lords is actually going to walk through Zerubbabel's temple, not Solomon's temple, and not Moses tabernacle. And that, that'll make me want to not despise the day of small beginnings. There's this, I call this the Mandela effect. Well, not I. Everybody calls it the Mandela effect. You can Google Mandela effect if you don't know what I'm talking about. There's kind of low key conspiracy theories of like communal false memories. These things that we all think happened at some point, but they actually did it. Like the spelling of Bernstein bears or the spelling of Chick-fil-A or whether or not there was a cornucopia of fruit for the frugal loom logo. Anyway, one of these Mandela effects is from the field of dreams. And everybody thinks that the line from that movie is if you build it, they will come. But actually, if you go watch that movie, the line is if you build it, he will come. And man, if I could go back in time and say something to Zerubbabel, that's what I would say. Sir, if you build it, he will come. We don't build it so that people will be happy. We don't build so that people would applaud. We build so that God can say, "Well done, my good and faithful servant." So if you're in ministry, if you're rebuilding your life, or whatever your season is right now, maybe your season is marked by rebuilding in resistance.

I would say the same words that Zechariah and Haggai said is Zerubbabel, don't despise the day of small beginnings. Maybe just maybe. If you remain faithful, then heaven will applaud your work. Maybe not people, but definitely heaven. That's the goal. That's the goal. And that's not just true for Zirubable, Haggai. I love you guys. I'm so proud of you, especially if you're on a streak. Tomorrow, we're going to finish up the book of Ezra. We got day 341 here, the Bible Department podcast, Ezra 7 through 10. It's going to be fantastic. And then we got Nehemiah. I can't wait. I see you tomorrow. Love you. Peace. Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department podcast. If this episode was helpful, how about you leave a comment, share with a friend, and subscribe so that you never miss an episode. To learn more about the show, head to thebobbledepartment.com. We'll see you right back here tomorrow.