Introduction: Ezra is a post-exilic book that tells about the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem.
Ezra 1:1-11 — A sovereign God uses this world’s sovereigns to bring to pass His promised, predicted, and predestined plans and purposes.
Our world is not in the hands of world rulers, but world rulers are in the hands of God.
Ezra 1:5 — God raises up the spirits of all He raises up to build His house.
It is Christ, not us, who builds His church, but it is through those called and compelled by Christ that He does it. (Matthew 16:18)
Ezra 2:62 — Our royal priesthood is invalidated and our Christian profession polluted without proof of our second birth and pure spiritual pedigree. (1 Peter 2:9)
Although our country once had “birthers” who claimed that a foreign born Barack Obama was disqualified for the country’s presidency, what the church needs is “second-birthers” who contend that all who are not spiritually born again are disqualified for the Christian priesthood.
Ezra 3:1-6 — God’s house begins with the building of the altar, for where there is no sacrificial worship of the Lord, no solid foundation for the Lord’s house can ever be laid.
It is not the pulpit, where the clergy offer sermons, nor the choir loft, where the choir offers songs, but the altar, where the congregation offers itself as living sacrifices, which is the core of the church. (Romans 12:1)
Ezra 3:10-13 — In our day, like in the day of Zerubbabel, the young rejoice over the perceived grandness of the present-day house of God, while the old weep remembering the previous glory of the past house of God!
The contemporary church has replaced that Old Time Religion with Show Time Religion, and in doing so has exchanged its former glory with frivolous glitz and glitter.
Ezra 7:10 — Preparation of the heart is a prerequisite to the practice and preaching of God's Word. Only those who love the law of the Lord will live it, and only from those who live it can others learn of it.
A seen sermon is far more influential than a spoken one, since it is far harder to forget.
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