The book of Ezra. So today we continue on in our Old Testament survey in the book of Ezra, which begins the story of the Jews' return from exile, just as God promised in a lot of the Old Testament, specifically the book of Jeremiah. Yet despite the Jews' return to their homeland, it shows us that something is still missing. Things don't seem to be as glorious as the prophets predicted. There was the new heavens and new earth spoken of in Isaiah. There were the new hearts of God's people that Jeremiah predicted. We went through Ezekiel in this class. The very end of Ezekiel pictures this big, glorious, amazing temple. Where is that temple? It was rebuilt, but it wasn't rebuilt to the glory that Ezekiel seemed to foresee. And furthermore, like we talked about last week in Esther, why hasn't everyone come back? Why are there still Jews remaining in exile? That was a key question in Esther. So the people we met in that book are still in a foreign land. So after the exile, some things are just as predicted and promised, but many of God's promises have yet to be fulfilled. And that's the issue that Ezra and Nehemiah grapple with. So in a real sense, we're Much in the same situation, a lot of times theologians speak of the already not yet framework that we live in right now in New Testament times where God has fulfilled his promises in Jesus Christ and yet there's a culmination that is still awaiting. So there's a sense that there's a kind of an overlap there. So let me pray and we'll dive in. Father, thank you so much for this morning. Thank you for another Lord's Day to worship you. I pray, Lord, that you'd help us to see your word more clearly. I pray you'd help us to know you better so that we can honor you in all the things that we do. Lord, we're grateful to you. It's the name of Christ we pray, amen. So in ancient times, Ezra and Nehemiah was really constituted as one book. So that's really, today we're only gonna get through most of Ezra. But what I really want, and I'm also going to be doing Nehemiah next week, so I really want you to think of it as kind of one thing. So it's not necessarily Ezra split from Nehemiah, it's one unified story, so try to think of it in that light. But today we're going to focus a lot on some background information, and then the beginning of the book of Ezra, and then next week we'll finish Ezra and get through all of Nehemiah as well. But like I said, Nehemiah is really a continuation of Ezra, so we'll think of it as one story split up into two weeks. As for the authorship, most conclude that it was Ezra the priest who assembled it, thus the name Ezra. Though really the final authorship of Ezra and Nehemiah is not entirely certain, it is also closely linked to the book of 1 and 2 Chronicles, so the story of Ezra picks up right where 2 Chronicles ends with the Cyrus Edict. We'll talk about that in a minute, but some scholars seem to think that the Chronicler, which is a name used for the author of First and Second Chronicles also had quite a big say in the book of Ezra and Nehemiah. So before diving in, I think it'd be helpful to give a historical overview of where we've been, as well as a little bit of geopolitical background. If we remember back to the second king's overview, the northern king of Israel, so we had the nation, Israel, they were split. The northern kingdom of Israel was exiled or really kind of subsumed by the Assyrians. And then, remember, there were no good kings in the northern kingdom of Israel. So God's promises to curses were given to them a little bit sooner, while the nation and kingdom of Judah in the south remained for a little bit longer. They had some more good kings and also really the preservation of the line of David within them. But eventually, Judah also was given up to exile, and they were exiled to the Babylonians. Judah was exiled to Babylonian in multiple waves. And really, another key thing to remember there is that that culminated in the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. That's a big thing to remember as we get into Ezra and Nehemiah here. So, Jerusalem destroyed. Israel destroyed. The Temple destroyed. So I'm going to read from 2 Kings chapter 25 verses 8 and 11 to give the scripture reference there. In the fifth month on the seventh day of the month, that was the 19th year of King Nebuchadnezzar. This is 2 Kings. In the 19th year of King Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, the captain of the bodyguard, a servant of the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem. And he burned the house of the Lord, and the king's house, and all the houses of Jerusalem. Every great house he burned down. And all the army of the Chaldeans, who were with the captain of the guard, broke down the walls around Jerusalem. All the rest of the people who were left in the city, and the deserters who had deserted to the king of Babylon, together with the rest of the multitude, Nebuchadnezzar, the captain of the guard, carried into exile. So now, that's where we are. The kingdoms of Israel and Judah are, in a geographic sense, not a spiritual sense, but a geographic sense, really not there anymore. The northern kingdom was subsumed by the Assyrian Empire, which eventually fell to the Babylonian Empire a century later, And now the southern kingdom of Judah has been exiled away from Jerusalem to Babylon. So I put this map on the back of your handout. It's not some detailed map, but we're going to get a little bit into these. The geopolitical history there is real important for really this whole section of the Old Testament, but Ezra and Nehemiah for sure. So it's in this context we have books like Daniel describing the workings of God while his people are in exile while Like I said, Judah and Israel are geopolitically no more. In Daniel chapter 5, we have Daniel's account of the interpretation of the handwriting on the wall, which is a biblical account of the fall of the kingdom of Babylon to the Persian Empire, which can also be referred to as the Medo-Persian Empire because of the great influence of the Medes. So I'm going to read a little bit from Daniel chapter 5. So this section is Daniel speaking to Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar, rulers of the Babylonian Empire. So a lot of you guys remember this scene. So there's this handwriting on the wall, and they were looking for someone to interpret it. Daniel said he could do it, and here he is. This is Daniel speaking. This is the interpretation of the matter. Mine, God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end. Tekel, you have been weighed in the balances and found wanting. Perez, your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians. Then Belshazzar gave the command and Daniel was clothed with purple. A chain of gold was put around his neck and a proclamation was made about him that he should be the third ruler in the kingdom. That very night, Belshazzar, the Chaldean king, was killed. and Darius the Mede received the kingdom, being about 62 years old. So here's Daniel prophesying about the fall of the Babylonian Empire, the fall of the Babylonians, and being taken over by the Persians, which are the two maps that we have here. The top, the green, shows what I really wanted to get across with these maps is is the extent, if you look on the, by, where it says Canaan, that's where all of the biblical accounts are happening, and this is being taken over by these massive kingdoms. So you don't see Israel and Judah in that map anymore, you see the Babylonian kingdom. You see the Persian Empire. Now, Judea and Samaria were still part of that for sure, but they were ruled geopolitically-wise by these great empires. So Darius the Mede, He's an interesting character. He's actually not really known to history outside of the Bible. Obviously, this is Scripture, so we know that he was there, and probably we just haven't found any accounts of him outside of Scripture yet, but we probably will. But some commentators, because of that, think that maybe Darius the Mede was actually the name for the throne of Cyrus, who we will talk about, the king of Persia. But either way, he's either a ruler, a king, or very close to the time of the reign of Cyrus the Persian, the king of Persia, who we're going to get into as we discuss Ezra in chapter 1. So the big thing to remember here is that There's a big transfer of these kingdoms. You have the big Assyrian dynasty that subsumed the northern tribe of Israel. Eventually that fell to the Babylonians, where we have King Nebuchadnezzar. And then that eventually fell to the Medo-Persian Empire. And this is a big thing in the book of Daniel. But there's all these empires. And this context is important to remember for multiple reasons, but one is Theological. This is history. Scripture is history. It's not merely history by any means, but God worked through the kingdoms, through the nations, to achieve his ends. So we don't have a religion where it's kind of off in some ethereal realm. God is doing things on earth, on the ground, in history, orchestrating these kingdoms and these falls. And Daniel is an amazing example of that, where we have these... Daniel right there, he is prophesying that the Persian Empire is going to defeat Babylon because of Babylon's sin. Actually, that's kind of all over the Old Testament. But the point I wanted to make is this is very theological. God is orchestrating his ways throughout history. Another really interesting example of this is, we're not gonna get into this now, but eventually this Persian Empire we have here is gonna fall to someone named Alexander the Great, and the Macedonian Empire will spread over a large part of the world. Well, one thing Alexander the Great did, when the Greeks are all over the place, is he taught everybody to learn, he wanted everyone to learn Greek. So here we have, we have Jesus Christ coming into the world around, in a very Greek-influenced world, and now our very own New Testament is written in Greek. I don't think that's an accident. God knew what he was doing. Jesus Christ came at a very specific point in history, and God had that happen for a reason. He orchestrated it. That's the point I want us to remember. And the glory there doesn't go to Alexander the Great. The glory goes to God for what he's done. But he did use even people like Alexander the Great to achieve his ends. So it's entirely appropriate to think through this on our own day. God is at work in the nations now just like he was back then. So all the wars and rumors of wars and all kinds of stuff that's going on now, God knows what he's doing and we can rest in that. So thank you for bearing with a bit of a longer background, but I think that context is important to set the stage for Ezra and Nehemiah specifically. And without at least a brief understanding, you don't have to be an expert, I'm surely not, but it can be a little bit difficult to follow with all these different empires and kingdoms all over the place. I know as I read through the Old Testament, there's all kinds of references to these kingdoms, so that was an attempt to give a little bit of a background. But the history recorded in Ezra and Nehemiah, as we start getting into the book here, spans from the time the So Ezra and Nehemiah spans from the time the Jews began to return to Jerusalem. So remember, they're in exile. And then it goes through about 100 years, to a century after that first return. So Evra himself gives us a bit of historical context as we begin in Ezra. So you can look it right there, chapter 1, verses 1 through 4. The Jews had been in exile for 70 years. As we read this, the Jews had been away from their land for 70 years when you read this. 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. So this is the Cyrus edict that Jacob mentioned last week. Thus says the Cyrus king of Persia, The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and 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." So the Lord stirs in Cyrus to go ahead and begin the return of the exiles back to their homeland. So the Jews are coming home. It's a time of real excitement and hope. It's believed that Psalm 126 was written about this and in this time. So this is Psalm 126, verse 1 through 3. When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream. Then our mouth was filled with laughter and our tongue with shouts of joy. Then they said among the nations, the Lord has done great things for them. The Lord has done great things for us and we are glad. So the redemptive historical context is clear. After the trauma of the exile, the people are reminded that God is still faithful to his age-old promises. The nation has been resurrected, the Mosaic Covenant's being reestablished, but the promised new covenant is not yet here. God's final kingdom is still somewhere in the future. Instead, this post-exilic nation is just one more earthly type of God's work to come. So that is the theme that I want us to think about here. We can summarize Ezra and Nehemiah like this, and this theme is on your handout. God is renewing the covenant by restoring His people, the temple, true worship, and Jerusalem, but It is not the end, and it doesn't fulfill all the great prophecies. Thus, His people still look to the future." So as we go through Ezra this week, Nehemiah next week, that is one of the tensions we're going to be thinking about. God is proving that He is being faithful to the promises that He's always had. And yet, it's just not quite as glorious as you would think it would be, because it's pointing to something greater and more. So the return from the exile was exciting, but it wasn't all it was expected to be. We're back in the land, but not in the new heavens and new earth. Instead, we have a sort of exile in the land. Some people have new hearts, but not everyone. We have a new temple that was just built. We'll get into that, but it's no picture of glory. It all leaves the reader longing for something more, thinking there must be something more to come. So let's keep going through Ezra and Nehemiah, and we'll pick out some themes So Ezra, chapter one, verses five and six. So like I said, it's important to notice about the beginning of the book, the focus on God's faithfulness to his promises. So remember what we just read in Ezra 1.1. Did you catch the reference to Jeremiah? Jeremiah had prophesied that the exile would last 70 years. So I'm gonna read that from Jeremiah chapter 25, verse nine. Behold, I will send for all the tribes of the north, declares the Lord, and for Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, my servant, and I will bring them against this land and its inhabitants and against all these surrounding nations. I will devote them to destruction and make them a horror, a hissing, and an everlasting desolation. Moreover, I will banish from them the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the grinding of the millstones and the light of the lamp, This whole land shall become a ruin and a waste, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years. Then, after seventy years are completed, I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation, the land of the Chaldeans, for their iniquity declares the Lord, making the land an everlasting waste." So there Jeremiah is prophesying that after seventy years, the exile will be over and Babylon will be punished for its iniquity. And just as promised, seventy years later, We have the Cyrus Edict. God moves Cyrus' heart to allow the Jews to return home. We also see in verse 5 of Ezra chapter 1 that God moved the hearts of the people to go as well. 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. God was entirely behind the restoration. It's important to remember, like you can read about some of this stuff in history books, but you don't read this in the history books. God is the one stirring his people. He's the one that stirred Cyrus to issue this edict. Now you can go read about how the Persian Empire had, I forgot what they call it, but they distributed the people all over the place. It wasn't just the Jews actually, but we read in scripture, God is the one who stirred Cyrus to do that. He stirred the people, the Jews that were exiled, to go back. God is the one orchestrating all of the events. I think that's called bussing. Bussing. Oh, OK. There's a specific name for it. I don't remember. It's definitely not bussing. OK, continuing on. The people return and rebuild. So now the people are returning. to Jerusalem, to the land. God is providing, piece by piece, all that the people need to rebuild their community. To start, we read in chapter 1, verse 7, Cyrus the king also brought out the vessels of the house of the Lord that Nebuchadnezzar had carried away from Jerusalem and gave them back to the Jews. This is no small thing. He didn't just let the Jews go back to their land. He gave them all that they needed to use for their worship in the land as well. It probably included a golden altar, a golden table, golden lampstands, basins, pillars, stands, so large that they couldn't be weighed. This was not just like a few things. And this was described, actually, in the things that were described in 1 Kings 7. This is enormous wealth. God is having them take everything that they actually need to restore their worship back to the land. They were irreplaceable, and God has miraculously restored them to the people so that they could reinstitute proper temple worship again. And again, this reminds us of the main theme that we need to remember when we're in Ezra and Nehemiah. God is renewing the covenant by restoring his people, the temple, true worship, and Jerusalem. So he's being faithful to his promises. But it's not the end, and we'll talk about more. It points to something more. So God's restoration is occurring, yet the promises are remaining unconsummated, I guess is a good way to think about it. and not out of a lack of God's faithfulness, but because God has something greater in mind. And remember, consider this tension as we go through. Next week we'll talk a little bit more about the heart of the people in this tension. So move on to chapter 2, verses 2, where we see one of the main figures of the book of Ezra named Zerubbabel. Does anyone know anything significant about the lineage of Zerubbabel? He is mentioned in the lineage in the first chapter of Matthew. He is of the royal line of David. It's very important. Matthew 1.12, and after the deportation to Babylon, Jeconiah was the father of Shealtiel, and Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel, and Zerubbabel the father of Abiud, onwards and onwards to Jesus Christ. So think back to our discussion that we've discussed many times in here about 2 Samuel 7 and the Davidic covenant. God had promised to David that he would have a descendant reigning over God's people forever. But at the end of 2 Kings, when we saw everybody going away off to exile, we saw the last Davidic king carted off as a prisoner to Babylon. And then the nations of Israel and Judah are geopolitically no more. So the fact that it's this guy leading God's people back to the promised lands is very telling. God is still committed. Just because of the exile, God didn't abandon His promise to David. The Davidic covenant still stands and God is still committed to His covenantal promises. Again, God is remaining faithful to His promises of old. He has not forgotten them. There is still much left unfulfilled. But what is the essence of the promise to David? A coming Messiah whose throne will last forever. 1 Samuel 7 says of this Davidic descendant that, So really, Zerubbabel leading this charge of the exiles back is significant because it shows that God is remaining faithful to his promises, even his promise to David. Yet, is Zerubbabel the true Davidic king? No, he's not. He's in the line of David, but he's not the true son that was being spoken of in 2 Samuel 7. So while God, again, while God is being faithful to His promises, it's still pointing to something more. The exiles are returning, and the line of David is returning to the land. That's a big thing. And God is showing He has not forgotten His promise. But Zerubbabel is not the ultimate messianic son of David. So those promises are not yet truly fulfilled yet either. There's still something more to come. Another significant figure, also in verse 2, is Jeshua, or some translations call it Joshua, so I'll just say Joshua. You'll notice from verse 40 that he is a Levite, which means that along with the line of kings, the line of priests is also being restored. As we read in Leviticus, it's the priests who make atoning sacrifices and lead the people into worship, and so the restoration of the priesthood is critical also for restoring the people to a right relationship with God. But we also know, even with that, that the priesthood necessarily, you know, the Old Testament priesthood, sacrificing bulls and gloats, that is a real thing and a blessing that God gave to His Old Testament people, but that itself pointed to a greater sacrifice to come. So still we have God, it's important that God is reinstituting this priestly worship, but even that is pointing to something greater. And I think it's also interesting that With that, you kind of have this prophet, priest, and king thing at play. You have Zerubbabel representing the return of the kingdom, Joshua representing the turn of the priesthood, and then we have multiple prophets that we talk about, like Haggai and Zechariah that we'll mention. So once again, a fulfillment for sure. God is remaining faithful to his promises, but a fulfillment that points to more. So the other things needed for worship besides the priest, besides the king, you need an altar and a temple. We read of their construction by Zerubbabel in chapters three through six. I'll read that real quick. I'm in chapter three, verses two through three. Then arose Joshua, the son of Josedek, with his fellow priests, and Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, with his kinsmen, and they built the altar of the God of Israel to offer burnt offerings on it. as it is written in the law of Moses, the man of God. They set the altar in its place, for fear was on them because of the peoples of the lands, and they offered burnt offerings on it to the Lord, burnt offerings morning and evening. So what I'm trying to bring out is God was doing everything that was necessary to restore proper worship back to the land. He punished, as we talked about a lot through this survey, There's that tension of God's punishment for sin, his curses for sin, but also the ultimate promises that were unconditional. God was true to his promises for curses for disobedience, and now he's bringing them back, and he's blessing them in the sense of he's giving them back all of the things that they need for proper worship, but at the same time, as we've been talking about it, points to something more. In chapter 4, we start reading about the construction of the temple. And in chapter 4, it's got an interesting tidbit, I guess, not tidbit, but an interesting point here. In chapter 4, we read of the opposition of some unfriendly neighbors. So as Zerubbabel and Joshua begin the rebuilding of the temple, there are some people in the land who had been there all along. They didn't go off to the If in exile, and they're probably just a lot of descendants from some of the other people, not necessarily Jews. And they asked if they could join in the rebuilding project. Zerubbabel gives a hearty no, you may not. We'll get into the specifics of why next week, but the point for now is Zerubbabel gives a hearty no. He's really trying to maintain the distinctness of God's people. the distinctness of the Jews being the Jews and the Jews being God's chosen people. He doesn't want that to be intermingled. So he said no. These neighbors, they're very upset with Zerubbabel. They write to the leaders of Persia and claim, well, I'm just going to try to get back at them. If the Jews try to rebuild this temple in the city, this is what they're telling the leaders of Persia, they're not going to follow your laws, Persia. They're not going to pay tribute to you. So the king responds by saying, oh, maybe you're right. So he orders the Jews to stop building the temple. And this is the context that we read of prophets in the minor prophets like Haggai and Zechariah. And in their prophetic works, they're really essentially telling the people in Zerubbabel to buck up and go ahead and build the temple. Do what God wants you to do. So Haggai, chapter 1, the first, chapter 1, verses 1 through 6, I'm going to read that. In the second year of Darius the king, Persia, in the sixth month, on the first day of the month, the word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai the prophet to Zerubbabel, the son of Sheathiel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua, the son of Jehoshaphat, the high priest. Thus says the Lord of hosts, these people say that the time has not yet come to rebuild the house of the Lord. Then the word of the Lord came by the hand of Haggai the prophet. Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses while this house lies in ruins? Now therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts, consider your ways. You have sown much and harvested little. You eat, but you never have enough. You drink, but you never have your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And he who earns wages does so to put them in a bag with holes. So Haggai is upset that they're letting these unfriendly neighbors get in the way of doing what they should be doing, which is rebuilding the temple. It also speaks to the Lord wanting them to rebuild this temple, despite its lack of glory, as we'll talk about. So they do. They go ahead and rebuild the temple. It was completed around 516, about 20 years after the people returned to the land. And with the temple complete, they finally celebrate Passover again, in chapter 6, verses 22. Chapter 6, verses 22 of Ezra. And they kept the feast of unleavened bread seven days with joy, for the Lord had made them joyful and had turned the heart of the king of Assyria, really referring to Darius, the king of Persia, which had conquered Babylon, to them. So that he aided them in the work of the house of God, the God of Israel. It's only fitting that the worship resumes in the land. Sorry, this is not me quoting anymore. It's only fitting that the worship resumes in the land at the temple with a Passover meal after God brought the people out again from under the oppression of the Gentiles. So the temple is rebuilt. Worship has been restored. They are even celebrating the Passover again. So they're kind of back to the way it was in a lot of ways. But in a lot of ways, they're not, which is what I want to point out now. Look back at chapter 3, verses 12. All is not right. 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, so that the people could not distinguish the sound of joyful shout from the sound of people's weeping. For the people shouted with a great shout, and the sound was heard far away." So there are Priests and Levites and heads of fathers' houses, older Jews who had seen the first house. What's the first house? Yeah, Solomon's Temple. They saw the foundation being laid for this new house, and they're weeping. Why are they weeping? What's that? Yes, exactly. It was kind of pathetic. So there's just this, you know, everything's being restored. But it's just so meh, almost. It's very kind of anti-climactic. And as we get through the rest of Ezra and Nehemiah, there'll be other anti-climactic, you know, in one sense they're a triumph, God is doing something, He's bringing them back, but then in another sense they're kind of pathetic. What do we do with that? That is the whole theme of this book of Ezra and Nehemiah. The temple meant so much, God even, as we saw in Haggai, He's telling them to rebuild it. But there are some there that remembered what the first temple looked like, and so this new temple, not coming even close to what God's people knew before, it was discouraging. So we can see, I think we should see it as a sign that God is not finished. This return from the exile is not a culmination of redemption history. In fact, it is pointing to something more. It's the big point to remember is God's promises are, he has not forgotten his promises. Everything that he said he was going to do, he will do. And he's making that abundantly clear by all of these returns. But this post-exile nation is, like I said, a type of the greater nation to come. So this is the tension. He has not abandoned them despite their sin and everything he's promised he will do. He's showing, He is showing that He, what He will in fact do. But the, what does this lack, everything I just said, what does the lacklusterness of this return mean? Lacklusterness. It shows that there's more. God is proving He's faithful, yet He's leaving them longing for more. We'll explore this more next week, and next week we'll especially get into, you know, what is, there's something big that I haven't quite mentioned yet. I mean, I briefly said it, but sin. So God is returning His people back, but even if He's returning His people back from their exile, what has still not been addressed? Sin. Sin has not been dealt with. The Old Testament ways of dealing with breaking of the Old Covenant are back. They're being instituted again. You can have temple worship and sacrificing of bulls and goats and calves to atone for their breaking of the Old Covenant, but as we read in Hebrews, that does not solve the problem of sin. so there's something more to come, and we'll get into that next week. What thoughts do y'all have? I finished a little bit earlier than I was anticipating, but that was one of the things that jumped out to me big time. That's one of the reasons I spend a lot of time on the kind of geopolitical component, because it's striking how theological the geopolitical component is. Like these things, you can go read about Alexander the Great or all of these different things, but God is moving in history and even in scripture telling us how he is going to move in history before he moves in history. And then you can go have secular historians talking about Cyrus the Great and everything that he did. And then we have God telling us in his word how he orchestrated all of these things. And I think that's, like, we don't have necessarily Cyrus the Great in scripture now, but, I mean, kingdoms of this world in scripture the same way we did then, God is still doing the same thing now, so when you see all the things that are happening over the world right now, God is doing things specifically for his purposes, for his church. Yeah, good thought. Well, it wasn't that far off. I mean, yeah, Alexander the Great was in the 300s, I mean, 300 BC, which is really, that's a strike, that sort of jumped out at me studying this, is kind of what you're getting at, is God working, Our Christianity is set apart from other religions. Think about Buddhism, where it's all about achieving nirvana, and everything's just limited to the spiritual world. Whereas, we look at history from the Christian lens. God has been doing all of it. He reveals himself, and he works in real life. It's not some ethereal, otherworldly thing. He's doing everything in history. Even our word of God is really a history book, not merely a history book by any means, but it is a history book. That's how God has chosen to reveal himself through things like that. Think about how he used Cyrus the Great. Yeah, it's wild to me. Right, exactly. Right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, he's claiming them for his own. Right. Exactly. Right. So I think we could say the same now, like my servant Putin, in a lot of ways, you could say, you know, that sounds weird. Don't take that too far. But. But my point is God is using all the kingdoms of the earth, even now, to achieve whatever ends. We're not maybe as privy to it at this point. But he's doing things purposely. Exactly, yeah. Right. Yeah, that's how I met my servant, Putin. Yeah, good stuff. Any other thoughts? We still have a few minutes if you want it. If not, we can pray it out. Okay, well, next week we'll go through the rest of Ezra and go through Nehemiah as well. But thank you guys. I will pray and then we can go on to our worship. Father, thank you so much for the way that you have orchestrated all things, Lord. And Lord, I thought even as I was preparing this, I wanted to use terms like chess pieces and puzzle pieces, but it didn't seem right, Lord, to portray it in that way where you are not operating in any sort of reactionary way. Father, you are not moving pieces reacting to an opponent. You are orchestrating things. You are the one who guides the world. You know exactly what you're doing, and you're not reacting to anybody else. You are guiding all things in all moments. They are all under your hand, Father. And we are grateful for that. I pray, Lord, that you'd orchestrate this day as well. Help us to do all things in a way that honors you and pleases you. Lord, we're grateful for the faith that you've given us to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, your glorious Son. We love you, and it's in the name of that Christ that we pray. Amen.