Faith Comes Through Hearing
A Bhutanese woman champions the gospel in her home village with the help of audio Bible recordings. Following Christ’s Leading Many years ago, a lady named Choeden followed her husband away from their remote mountain village in Bhutan and traveled to a larger town in search of work. In the town, Choeden met a Christian […]
A Prayer of Confession
Read: Ezra 9 As soon as I heard this, I tore my garment and my cloak and pulled hair from my head and beard and sat appalled. (v. 3) The book of Ezra suddenly gets very personal! This section is written in the first person as Ezra shares his reaction to the news of the nation’s […]
A Priest’s Arrival
Read: Ezra 7:1-10 Ezra had set his heart to study the Law of the Lord, and to do it and to teach his statutes. (v. 10) Eighty years after the first group of exiles had arrived to rebuild and resettle Jerusalem, another company of Jews returned to their homeland. This group included priests, singers, gatekeepers, and […]
A Passover Observed
Read: Ezra 6:13-22 And they kept the Feast of Unleavened Bread seven days with joy, for the Lord had made them joyful. (v. 22) Seventy years after Solomon’s temple was destroyed by the Babylonians, the new temple (called “Zerubbabel’s temple” by historians) was finished. It had taken 21 years from the laying of the foundation to […]
A Project Renewed
Read: Ezra 6:1-12 Concerning the house of God at Jerusalem, let the house be rebuilt. (v. 3) The work of rebuilding the temple of God and the city of Jerusalem came to a screeching halt with the edict from King Artaxerxes. For years no progress was made, and inertia settled over the project. Then the word […]
A Pernicious Lie
Read: Ezra 4:17-24 Then the work on the house of God that is in Jerusalem stopped. (v. 24) Alfred Lord Tennyson once wrote, “A lie that is half-truth is the darkest of all lies.” Certainly, it can be one of the most difficult to squelch. You can refute a blatant lie with the facts, but a […]
A Pattern of Opposition
Read: Ezra 4:1-16 Then the people of the land discouraged the people of Judah and made them afraid to build. (v. 4) The apostle Peter reminds us, “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you” (1 Peter 4:12). Still, we […]
A Place to Begin Again
Read: Ezra 3 The people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people’s weeping. (v. 13) In many ways, we are still dealing with the impact of the Covid pandemic. While schools, churches, and businesses have reopened, we’ve found that some things will never return to what they once […]
A Proclamation from the King
Read: Ezra 1 The exiles were brought up from Babylonia to Jerusalem. (v. 11) Exiles: those forced to leave their native country—banished from their homes against their will. For the Jews, exile began when, in 597 BC, Nebuchadnezzar conquered Judah, destroyed Jerusalem and took captives back to resettle throughout the Babylonian empire. This captivity was a […]