4. Another Return to God’s Kingdom Place
Week 7 • Day 4
This is what Cyrus king of Persia says: “The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and he has appointed me to build a temple for him at Jerusalem in Judah. Any of his people among you may go up to Jerusalem in Judah and build the temple of the Lord, the God of Israel, the God who is in Jerusalem, and may their God be with them. And in any locality where survivors may now be living, the people are to provide them with silver and gold, with goods and livestock, and with freewill offerings for the temple of God in Jerusalem.” - Ezra 1:2-4
After 70 years in EXILE, God’s people were allowed to return to the kingdom place that He had promised to Abraham years ago! The book of Ezra reveals God’s faithful rule as He fulfills His promise of salvation and restoration of His kingdom people. Just look at how the 70 years of exile fulfills this exact prophecy from Jeremiah:
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. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope… - Jeremiah 29:10-11
God shows His hesed love for His people and wants to bring His blessings to the nations through them! He restores their future and gives them hope! At last, could this FINALLY be the generation that experiences the gospel of the kingdom?
EZRA - NEHEMIAH - GOD’S PLACE
Do you remember a time you were wounded? Maybe it was from a hike, a sport, or even in your heart. I remember one time I hurt my knee really bad and needed to have surgery in order for it to be fixed. The initial pain was awful, but then I had to face months of recovery. Everything was upside down and I kept asking myself “what if?” Then finally the day came where I could truly walk, it was glorious!
In a lot of ways God’s people felt broken and cut off, but our God wants to give His family a hope and a future! So how would all of this turn out? Would the people take advantage of the opportunity God had given them to repent from their sin? Would this be the era when the son of man in Daniel’s vision comes to take the throne? When God’s people head back to the promised land led by Zerubbabel (descendant of David), the first thing they attempt to do is rebuild the temple to God’s kingdom place. Here is what happens:
And all the people shouted with a great shout when they praised the Lord, because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. But many of the priests and Levites and heads of fathers’ houses, old men who had seen the first house, wept with a loud voice when they saw the foundation of this house being laid, though many shouted aloud for joy. - Ezra 3:11b-12
Now when the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the returned exiles were building a temple to the Lord, the God of Israel, they approached Zerubbabel and the heads of fathers’ houses and said to them, “Let us build with you, for we worship your God as you do, and we have been sacrificing to him ever since the days of Esarhaddon king of Assyria who brought us here.” But Zerubbabel, Jeshua, and the rest of the heads of fathers’ houses in Israel said to them, “You have nothing to do with us in building a house to our God; but we alone will build to the Lord, the God of Israel, as King Cyrus the king of Persia has commanded us.” - Ezra 4:1-3
We are never told that the Lord takes up His residence in this new temple place. Furthermore, the community is slow to complete the project (see Haggai) while the elders complain that it is not as nice as Solomon’s temple. Instead of the nations being welcome to participate in the blessings of God, they are turned away. Perhaps this is not the gospel of the kingdom that we have been anticipating!
EZRA - NEHEMIAH - GOD’S RULE
Next, Ezra returns to Israel and is passionate about re-teaching the commands of God’s rule. Would this effort restore God’s kingdom rule over His people? Here is what happens:
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. - Ezra 7:10
While Ezra was praying and confessing, weeping and throwing himself down before the house of God, a large crowd of Israelites—men, women and children—gathered around him. They too wept bitterly. Then Shekaniah son of Jehiel, one of the descendants of Elam, said to Ezra, “We have been unfaithful to our God by marrying foreign women from the peoples around us. But in spite of this, there is still hope for Israel. Now let us make a covenant before our God to send away all these women and their children, in accordance with the counsel of my lord and of those who fear the commands of our God. Let it be done according to the Law. Rise up; this matter is in your hands. We will support you, so take courage and do it.” So Ezra rose up and put the leading priests and Levites and all Israel under oath to do what had been suggested. And they took the oath. Then Ezra withdrew from before the house of God and went to the room of Jehohanan son of Eliashib. While he was there, he ate no food and drank no water, because he continued to mourn over the unfaithfulness of the exiles. - Ezra 10:2-6
In His law, God commanded Israel not to intermarry with foreigners (Deut. 23:1-4). At the same time, God’s heart breaks over divorce (Malachi 2:13-16). Here we have both! Tragically, in their zeal to keep the law, we see God’s people sending the most vulnerable women and children away from participation in God’s kingdom family. Perhaps this is not the gospel of the kingdom that we have been anticipating!
EZRA - NEHEMIAH - GOD’S PEOPLE
Finally, Nehemiah’s passion was to rebuild the walls of the great city of Jerusalem. Perhaps if the city walls were rebuilt, then Israel could become the mighty city of people it once was. Here is what happens
They said to me, “Those who survived the exile and are back in the province are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been burned with fire.” When I heard these things, I sat down and wept. For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven. - Nehemiah 1:2-11
But when Sanballat and Tobiah and the Arabs and the Ammonites and the Ashdodites heard that the repairing of the walls of Jerusalem was going forward and that the breaches were beginning to be closed, they were very angry. And they all plotted together to come and fight against Jerusalem and to cause confusion in it. - Nehemiah 4:7-8
Instead of a wall-less kingdom that would bless the nations with peace (see Zechariah 2:4-5), the wall sparks conflict between God’s people and the nations. Perhaps this is not the gospel of the kingdom that we have been anticipating! Even after spending 7 days reflecting on the laws given to Moses, God’s people continued to neglect the Sabbath, their temple duties, and set up markets around the walls. God’s kingdom people had a fundamental misunderstanding of what it meant to live under God’s kingdom rule and in God’s kingdom place. Instead, this generation remained under the power of the serpent kingdom.
This pattern may feel so repetitive to you by now, but the Old Testament is written this way to describe who we are as humans. I am sure there have been plenty of times where you have said “that will never happen again”, or “Lord if you give me _____, I will never____”. I am constantly reminded of this kind of rebellion not only in myself, but as I raise my kids. As a parent, there are consistent moments of correction yet my children do not always listen. I show them what to do and what not to do, but they still want to touch the stove even when it’s hot.
Yet no matter how much we may mess up or try our best to just fail again, God in His mercy is still moving His kingdom story forward! Who would be the son of man that would come and put a stop to this ugly pattern of sin?
THE CHRONICLER - ONE LAST KINGDOM REVIEW
Surprisingly, the Hebrew Bible concludes with the collection of Chronicles. Have you ever noticed that reading the books of Kings and Chronicles back-to-back can feel so repetitive? That is because they are meant to be. However, when you read the Old Testament in the order of the Hebrew Bible, the Chronicles now become instrumental pieces of literature written to restate the history of Israel one last time before heading into the silent 400 years and the New Testament.
The Chronicler approaches Israel's history from a bird's-eye perspective centuries after the Babylonian Exile. The anonymous author has a fuller picture of the entire Old Testament and uses his perch to restate genealogies, retell the stories of David, and zero in on the stories of Judah’s kings to prove that the one we have been looking for - the seed of Adam and the woman, the descendant of Abraham from the tribe of Judah, the Moses-like prophet from the line of David, the Good Shepherd, the Suffering Servant, and the Son of Man - has still not appeared. While it may seem that the Chronicles are repetitive, the author places minor nuances in the stories to emphasize that the promise made to David had yet to be fulfilled.
At last, we come to the end of the Hebrew scriptures! I hope you have learned a lot along the way, namely that understanding of the Old Testament drives you to a desperate longing for the promised serpent crusher and his kingdom.
Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” - Luke 24:44
That is why it is no coincidence that the Hebrew scripture ends with a message of HOPE for this promised messiah! At the tail end of Chronicles, we are reminded of the gruesome events of the Babylonian exile.
Therefore he brought up against them the king of the Chaldeans, who killed their young men with the sword in the house of their sanctuary and had no compassion on young man or virgin, old man or aged. He gave them all into his hand. And all the vessels of the house of God, great and small, and the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the king and of his princes, all these he brought to Babylon. And they burned the house of God and broke down the wall of Jerusalem and burned all its palaces with fire and destroyed all its precious vessels.
He took into exile in Babylon those who had escaped from the sword, and they became servants to him and to his sons until the establishment of the kingdom of Persia, to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed its Sabbaths. All the days that it lay desolate it kept Sabbath, to fulfill seventy years. - 2 Chronicles 36:17–21
In case you were wondering why the Lord decided upon a 70 year exile, now you know that it was because the land of the promised place had missed 70 sabbaths. If the Israelites were supposed to let the land rest every seventh year, that means for 490 years, the land had missed its sabbath rest. Let’s pull out the calculator one more time!
The Babylonian exile was completed in 586 B.C.
Ancient Hebrew 360 day calendar → 490 years x 360 days = 17,6400 days
17,6400 days = 483 years and 105 days on the modern Gregorian calendar
586 B.C. + 483 years and 105 days = 1070 B.C.
1070 B.C. is approximately the beginning of the monarchy in Israel along with the return of the ark of the covenant (see 1 Samuel 3-7)
The suggestion is that the exile cleansed the land of all rebellion from the moment Saul took the throne all the way until the completion of the Exile. Additionally, the 490 year motif also triggers thoughts about Daniel’s prophecy of the return of Israel! Lo and behold, the Chronicles recounts the Decree of Cyrus which brought Israel back into the kingdom land and set in motion a timeline of rebuilding started by Nehemiah’s generation. As we await the promised Messiah and deliverance from sin, pause for a moment and compare the last sentence of the Hebrew Bible to Ezra 1:2-4 listed at the very top of this entry!
Now 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 the Lord his God be with him. Let him go up.’ ” - 2 Chronicles 36:22-23
You will notice that the last sentence of Chronicles is cut off. It is as if the Chronicler is telling us to start the countdown as we long to meet the son of man!
Share the Gospel: Even though Israel returned from Babylon to their promised land right on schedule, they still could not defeat the kingdom of sin! Ezra and Nehemiah showcase makes us question whether this return is the gospel of the kingdom we have been looking for. The Chronicles remind us one last time that the gospel of the kingdom would be fulfilled through the promised son of David!
