Ezra 1: "The Book of Ezra"

okay book of Ezra this is this is actually pretty cool when you read the book of Ezra there's a lot of genealogies in here and stuff and there's a decree and and that kind of stuff but but this this book is actually pretty cool especially the beginning of this of this whole thing let's pray before we get started and then I'll talk to you a little bit about what the books about and then we'll get into it father we come before you again with our Bibles open and Lord we want our hearts to be open to the things that you want to speak to us Lord we think thank you that you're a God who knows all things you're a God who knows the end from the beginning and when you make a statement the things that you say are things that always come to pass they're never wrong and they're they're always exact and Lord is we're going through and we're looking at some of those things in this book father we just pray that our faith would be increased and Lord I trust in you would just be solidified because of the fact that we have a God who knows the end from the beginning we also have a God whose gracious who will bring us home and Lord we pray that as we talked about some of these things that again that you be speaking to us and we ask that you do this all in Jesus name Amen okay book of Ezra named Ezra as actually Ezra is a guy that's mentioned in this book he's most likely the author of this book although he never claimed authorship there's not a passage that says hi Ezra wrote the book you know kind of thing but from Jewish history the Talmud we know that Ezra is the author of this book Ezra's name literally means Yahweh helps or Jehovah helps and that's a that's a good name for him because Ezra was a pretty helpful guy again Jewish tradition the Talmud attributes the book to Ezra there were there are portions that are written in the first person in the sense that I saw these things and obviously because the details that are found you you know that there is an eyewitness to the events that were taking place that was there there's a really strong priestly element to the book of Ezra especially when you get towards the end of the book and basically the book is all about the return of the people of Israel to their land and actually not just the physical return but the spiritual return it's about God taking people who've been cast out of the land turning around and bringing them home and it's it's a cool book because of that Ezra was an educated scribe and according to second Maccabees it's one of the apocryphal books chapter 2 verses 13 through 15 he had access to documents that were gathered by Nehemiah and Nehemiah as the next book in the Bible and he's the guy who rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem that's a cool book - God used as rrah to write the Book of Chronicles first Chronicles and second Chronicles and there's some Psalms like Psalm 1:19 it was most likely written by Ezra he had a real heart and a hunger for the Word of God and so you see this guy in various places mentioned in Scripture he was a contemporary of Nehemiah again the next book and he was according to Jewish tradition the guy that founded what was called the great synagogue and I don't know if I've ever talked to you guys about this but the great synagogue was a place where they the Jewish elders got to got together and canonize the books of the Old Testament and what that means Canon means rod or measuring stick and the idea of canonization is the idea that you go through and you look at these different books you measure whether or not they're divine in the sense of something that's been handed down through a prophet I gather you know by God and that whole thing and you decide what goes in the Canon in Scripture so the 39 books in the Old Testament were set aside as the books of the Old Testament by Ezra and a number of scribes under his under his rule and that again is according to Jewish tradition tradition also says that he originated the synagogue form of worship and what's cool about that is the synagogue form of worship is what the church is based on and so when when you look at the way that the Jews ran the synagogue's when the when the church first started like we were talking in the in the sharing portion when the church first started it was completely Jewish and so the stuff that the Jews were doing as far as the way that they worshiped is the way that the Christians were doing it and so there were some differences after the church came into being women were no longer back in the mother's room they were allowed into the service before that point actually it's Jewish synagogues to this day if you're going to an Orthodox synagogue it's only men in the service and so it's men from 13 years old and older that are in the service and everybody who is under 13 years old or or all of the women are back in the mother's room usually the the mother's room it's like the the women's gallery and so like the women's gallery would be like up there in the bookstore up there in the loft somewhere and they could watch the service while all the men are down here doing the real spiritual things and you know that that kind of stuff and it wasn't until Jesus comes along the church comes along that the women are allowed in the service and so the Jews had Saturday schools for the kids and the Jews had you know again a place for the younger kids in the back and and that was put together by Ezra date of the book is somewhere between 457 and 444 BC Ezra arrived in Jerusalem right around 444 BC that's kind of an interesting period of time because Buddha you know Gotama Buddha he was in India between 560 and 480 BC and so the events that are spoken about in the book of Ezra don't just include Ezra's time in Israel but the return under Rosa as a rubber Bell also and so that period of time 560 to 480 BC is when Buddha is doing his stuff over in India and then Confucius at the same time 551 to 479 BC is doing his stuff over in China and at the same time Socrates you know Socrates he was doing his stuff over in Greece for 72 about 399 BC so some of the stuff that's going on in the book of Ezra is going on at the same time these other guys are in existence in all these other places the reason I'm telling you that is because a lot of times people think of Buddha and they think of Confucius and they tell you think of Socrates is really ancient really really ancient philosophers and they are in comparison with everybody else but they aren't in comparison with the Bible Ezra is a guy who came along after the Babylonian captivity and so we have tons of history that take place belong to on before that and God has lots to say before you get to the book of Ezra and then along comes these you know these snot-nosed kids and other countries and and start doing their thing Cyrus the Persian is a guy who's going to be mentioned in this book and he overthrows Babylon in 539 BC and after he overthrows Babylon he consolidates his empire and then he gives a decree to allow the Jews to return in his first year which is 538 to 537 BC so about 537 BC is when he tells the Jewish nation that they can go back into the Land of Israel the temple and that's one of the things that we see in the book of Ezra the the beginning of the rebuilding of the temple is begun in 536 it's been discontinued in 534 because of opposition and then it's resumed in 520 BC and it's completed five years later in 515 BC it was begun under Cyrus and it's been finished under dryest the first and that's all that's chapters 1 through 6 I'm gonna put up on the screen a list of the King and Persia and so Syrus is the first that one that we're dealing with Cambyses and shmurda s-- are guys that aren't mentioned in the bible darius hassle eros is actually Xerxes Xerxes is the king that Esther is under art of Xerxes is mentioned in the book of Ezra and then the next king after that is durai's ii so that kind of puts it in its historical context and ezra and nehemiah are ministering under the reign of artaxerxes the first and like I said Esther is during the time of Xerxes and so when you go through the book of Ezra it's basically divided into two parts versus chapters 1 through 6 or about the rebuilding of the temple and chapters 7 through 10 is when Ezra actually enters in and that's about the rebuilding of the people so God we builds his temple his the place of worship and then he rebuilds the people the people that are called to worship him and so that's kind of the the overview of the book of Ezra Ezra is a really interesting character because he got his book he's right in his book and the first six chapters have nothing to do with him at all nothing to do with him and it's all about God's miraculous return of the people of Israel and it's all about God's work in the rebuilding of the temple all about the ruble bill how about Haggai all about those guys Haggai and Zechariah and all those guys it's all about the things that God was doing through them and Ezra's penning this whole thing down and better than half the book is about somebody else I kind of like that about this guy he's one of those guys you know you you you have guys in ministry that are out front guys God uses them out front and for whatever reason he puts them up front and so obviously in this context I'm one of those guys but then you have guys who are kind of sitting in the back and they don't necessarily want to be out front but they're guys who are godly and who are interested in the Word of God and and do some of the hard work that actually lasts a lot of the OUTFRONT guys that I've known over the years are guys that can just get up and they can speak in applause lines people get all excited they gotta get all interested and that kind of thing but there's but and not to say that there's no depth but kind of there's no depth and then you have other guys who just kind of sit back and they study the Word of God they implement the Word of God you have it you have it you have guys who are interested in you know not so much in this in evangelism as they are in discipleship and I'm not saying that evangelism is bad you know that I think it's a great thing but discipleship is the goal you bring people to Christ and then you and then you make them people who are followers of Jesus and you you have men who are out front then you have men who are kind of back in the background and they're willing to do many of the hard things that need to happen to make the people of God people who are settled and who are solid and who are godly and were sanctified and who are Saints and that's the kind of guy that Ezra is he's a great guy and so again we're going through the first six chapters and it's gonna be about none of him it's gonna be all about what God did through a bunch of other guys and so let's get into chapter 1 let's go through and read it it's it's not very long so we can read the whole thing and then we'll go back and tear it apart it says now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia 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 saying thus says Cyrus king of Persia all the kingdoms of the earth the Lord God of heaven has given me and he's commanded me to build him a house at Jerusalem which is in Judah who was among who 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 build the house of the Lord God of Israel he is God which is in Jerusalem and whoever is left in any place where he dwells let the men of his place help him with silver and gold with Goods and livestock besides the free will offerings for the house of God which is in Jerusalem then the heads of the father's houses of Judah and Benjamin and the priests and the Levites with all whose spirits God had moved arose to go up and build the house of the Lord which is in Jerusalem and all those who were around them encouraged them with articles of silver and gold with Goods and livestock and with precious things besides all that was willingly offered King Cyrus also brought out the articles of the house of the Lord which Nebuchadnezzar had taken from Jerusalem and put in the temple of his gods and Cyrus king of Persia brought them out by the hand of Mithra death the treasurer and counted them out to shesh Bazaar that Prince of Judah this is the number of them 30 gold platters 1,000 silver platters 29 knives 30 gold basins 410 silver basins of a similar kind and one thousand other articles all the articles of gold and silver were five thousand four hundred all these shesh Bazar took with the captives who were brought from Babylon to Jerusalem and so you have Cyrus making this to this decree and chapter one I called Colin coming home there is a prophecy that's mentioned in verse 1 it says 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 in writing the prophecy that he's speaking about is found in Jeremiah chapter 25 in verses 8 through 14 in fact why don't you turn there with me and so go to the right book of jeremiah goes Isaiah Jeremiah after after Psalms and all that chapter 25 I want to read read verses 8 through 14 and this is what it says therefore thus says the Lord of Hosts because you have not heard my words behold I will send and take all the families of the North says the Lord and Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon my servant and will bring them against this land against in its inhabitants and against these nations all around and will utterly destroy them and make them an astonishment a hissing and a perpetual desolations moreover I will take from them the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride the sound of the millstones in the light of the lamp and this whole land shall be a desolation and an astonishment and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years then well then it will come to pass when seventy years are completed that I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation the land of the Chaldeans for their iniquity says the Lord and I will make it a perpetual desolation so I will bring on that land all my words which I have pronounced against it all that is written in this book which Jeremiah has prophesied concerning all the nations for many nations and great kings shall be served by them also and I will repay them according to their deeds and according to work to the works of their own hands and so when you go through that prophecy basically what God is saying is you're going into captivity for 70 years after your therefore 70 years I am going to deal with the people who took you into captivity and the reason that God does it you know it's it's one of those things where people go well why would you use the Babylonians to take them into captivity and then after you after they do your will then you punish the Babylonians why would you do that and the reason that God did that is because the Babylonians did it with relish they they just hammered the people of God and it was the same thing with the Assyrians God used the Assyrians to punish the nation of Israel the northern the Northern Kingdom but after the northern kingdom took them into captivity God punished the Assyrians and the reason is the way that the Assyrians did it and they weren't as bad as they used to be they didn't cut off heads and and just leave dead bodies around but you know when when they took Israel into captivity they stuck fish hooks in there in lips then they tied little cords to those then they tied that to ropes and then they tied those ropes to slaves going down the line everybody was walking out of Israel with fish hooks in their lips and they were naked so he made them they made them strip their clothes off put fish hooks in their lips and they dragged them off into captivity that way we have pictures that the Assyrians placed on their monuments of them doing this kind of stuff and it's for those kinds of reasons and the Babylonians did did some of the exact same things with the people of Israel well gods like you know I'm gonna use you as a hammer but then I'm gonna smash the hammer because the hammer hammer too hard basically and so 70 years was the the prophecy specifically Jeremiah 25:11 says in this whole land shall be a desolation and in a sand an astonishment it's up on the screen and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years two things are mentioned in that passage that the land is going to be made desolate and that there's going to be the servitude of the nation - to the to the nation of Babylon there's another passage in jeremiah 29:10 through 14 and it says this for thus says the lord after seventy years are completed at Babylon I will visit you and perform my good word towards you and cause you to return to this place for I know the thoughts that I think toward you says the Lord thoughts of peace and not of evil to give you a future and a hope then you will call upon me and go and pray to me and I will listen to you and you will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart I will be found by you says the Lord I will bring you back from your captivity I will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you says the Lord and I will bring you to the place from which I caused you to be carried away captive and so that is a famous passage and actually that's one of those passages that ends up being everybody's life verse so Jeremiah 10 11 where he says I know the thoughts that I think toward you says the Lord thoughts of peace and not of evil to give you a future and a hope and it's a great verse but it's right in the middle of God's promise to bring the people back out of captivity you're going into captivity for 70 years and after that's done I have a heart towards you and I'm gonna bring you back and that's where that promise is made that's a good promise for a lot of people there are a lot of people who start out with a relationship with God and they end up messing it up they end up doing things or acting in ways that are just dishonouring to the Lord and sometimes you have people who just flat-out backslide and God in His grace on the one hand he'll allow them to go under the backslide and get all messed up so that they have some kind of appreciation when they come back but at the very same time when God brings them back he's letting them know that they've got a future they've got a hope and God's got plans for them this is my my daughter I'm not gonna tell you a bunch about what goes on in her life but my daughter can just be a real mess and there have been some times when she's just blown it big-time and this is her life verse and the last time that she messed up really bad she was you know we we were having a talk and and there were there were some consequences that was that were coming because of some choices that she made and she was talking to me about this passage and she goes yeah that's my life first and I go I go Bethany do you know where that verse is and she she was she was feeling really bad because she'd blown it so badly I know Bethany do you know where that verse is and she goes well I'm Jeremiah and I read what's being talked about and she goes know and I go that's where the people of Israel had turned away from God and they just abandoned him and they were under the punishment of God for 70 years because of their abandonment of him and God was making a promise that he wasn't gonna leave him that way that he was gonna turn the whole thing around and he was gonna make him awesome once again because he loves them they have a future in a home that's where the verse is and she was like oh and it was it was way more impactful than that but you know it's what my daughter is one of those people that when I talked to her she she just kind of kind of keeps it on the down low as far as her responses go but you know months later she was talking to me about it and she goes dad you know you don't even know how that impacted me and I go well sure I do because that's what God said to the people of Israel they blown it in huge ways they done done things that it just defiled their nation and yet God in the midst this isn't the Book of Jeremiah they're going they're going to be destroyed they haven't been destroyed yet and God's telling them this is your future you're going to be destroyed but then I'm going to turn around and I'm gonna bring you back and I'm going to I'm gonna bless you and you're gonna end up searching for me with all your heart and so on excuse me and when you when you look at the the heart of the Lord in that it's just a very cool thing because for the most apart for it for the most part when you come through the Book of Jeremiah it's just bummer bummer bummer bummer bummer bummer bummer you get to the end and it's like oh if I've been wiped out in the next book is lamentations and it's crying over all the bummers that God had prophesied in Jeremiah that are coming to pass but in them in the midst of it there's this one really cool passage where God makes this promise and you know that's that's something that that's awesome about the Lord he doesn't just leave you and even even when somebody's under discipline he doesn't just leave them because he loves them and there was gonna be a coming home and that's what that's what we're seeing in the book of Ezra there's a coming home Daniel chapter 9 won't you turn there real quick go to the go to the right a little bit more Book of Daniel comes after Ezekiel and in chapter 9 verses one through four says in the first year of Darius the son of Ahaz who heiress of the lineage of the Medes who was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans in the first year of his reign I Daniel understood by the books the number of the years specified by the word of the Lord through Jeremiah the Prophet that he would accomplish 70 years in the desolations of Jerusalem then I set my face toward the Lord God to make requests by prayer and supplications with fasting sackcloth and ashes and I prayed to the Lord my God make confession and said O Lord great and awesome God who keeps his covenant and mercy with those who love him and with those who keep his Commandments we have sinned and committed iniquity we have done wickedly and rebelled even by departing from your precepts and your judgments and the whole rest of this chapter up until verse 19 is Daniel praying for the people of Israel praying a prayer of repentance to God for the things that they had done to him and it's all in anticipation of the fact that the seventy years were almost fulfilled the this is cool this is a cool passage and the reason it's a cool passage is because Daniel was a contemporary of Jeremiah Jeremiah was around when Daniel was taken into captivity and so Daniel was taken into captivity in 606 BC it was during the first captivity of the Jews Jeremiah was prophesying during the time so Daniel knew all about Jeremiah Jeremiah was walking into the palace all the time Daniel's a child of royalty and when he was sent off into captivity he was probably about seventeen years old and so Daniel knows Jeremiah Daniel knows Jeremiah and Daniel picks up Jeremiah's book within Daniel's lifetime and considers Jeremiah's prophecies to be Scripture that's kind of a cool thing and he sees buy the prophecies of Jeremiah that the time is almost fulfilled at this point Daniel is in his 90s when this has taken place and he realizes that the 70 years is almost done and he begins praying and asking God to forgive the people of Israel and so you have the soon fulfillment of that prophecy coming along in Daniels day and then one more passenger what you look at is over in Isaiah Isaiah chapter 44 and I'm gonna tie this all together so don't worry Isaiah chapter 44 at the end of the chapter in verse 28 this is a really cool passage actually Isaiah 40 through 45 just awesome really really cool stuff in this passage verse 28 it's talking about the Lord who says of Cyrus he is my shepherd remember Cyrus we just read about him in Ezra who says of Cyrus he is my shepherd and he shall perform all my pleasure saying to Jerusalem you shall be built and to the temple your foundations shall be laid chapter 45 thus says the Lord to his anointed to Cyrus whose right hand I have held to subdue nations before him and loosed the armour of Kings as what this says in my translation to open before him the double doors or the double gates so that the gates will not be shut see that phrase to loose the armor of Kings this is one of the you know I generally like the new King James Version but this is one of those places in in the New King James where the translation is absolutely wrong what it says in that passage is not to loose the armor of Kings and it doesn't say to loosen the belt of Kings it says to loosen the loins of Kings that's what it says and so God promises that he's going to loosen the loins of Kings and you know the only thing I can think of is that these guys we're going well loin sounds like a weird translation and so he must mean means something else beside that and so maybe he means the belt and the belt is where you held the sword and it's by this whole attrition thing that they come up with armor it's not armor its loins that's important in a couple of minutes he says I will go before you and make the crooked places straight I will break in pieces the gates of bronze and cut the bars of iron and I will give you the treasures of darkness and hidden riches of secret places that you may know that I the Lord who call you by your name him the God of Israel for Jacob my servants sake and Israel my elect I have even called you by your name I have named you though you have not known me I am the Lord there is no other there is no God beside me besides me I will gird you though you've not known me and then you know the the passage goes on specifically a prophecy that was made to Cyrus 83 years before he was born this this prophecy was most likely given in 683 BC and what I'm doing is giving you the latest date for this prophecy Isaiah prophesied years before this decades before this but the latest date that you can get for this he stopped prophesying in about 681 BC and most likely this was given about 683 BC on the outside okay so on the outside 83 years before Cyrus was born God gave this prophecy it was 97 years before the destruction of the temple so he talks about in verse 28 a Cyrus is my shepherd he shall perform on my pleasure saying to Jerusalem you shall be built and to the temple your foundation shall be late for the temple's foundation to be laid it has to have been destroyed in its 97 years before the destruction of the first temple in this passage it's a hundred and forty-six years before Cyrus freed the Jews and that's that decree that we see in the book of Ezra where Cyrus says that God's you know God's called me to send the Jews back and and that whole thing so 146 years before Cyrus freed the Jews God predicted the events and named the man 146 83 years before he was born 146 years before he was king in this passage he alludes to the battle plan that Cyrus used to take over Babylon Cyrus is the king who took over Babylon he's the one he's the one who destroyed the nation of Babylon he didn't destroy the city of Babylon but he wiped out the nation of Babylon in the sense that he took it over and they became part of the Persian Empire and he says in his passage again thus says the Lord to his anointed to Cyrus whose right hand I've held to subdue nations before him to loose the armor of Kings to open before him the double doors so the gates will not be shut I'll go before you and make the crooked places straight the path the battle plan number one this whole thing with loosing the loins of Kings the the conquest of Babylon took place during a party and what had happened was the Babylonian army had surrounded the city of babylon babylon was a huge city it had monstrous walls they considered themselves impregnable the city was so huge that the Euphrates River went right through the middle of the city and they literally built the walls of Babylon encircling the the city itself the Euphrates River and when the the walls of Babylon went across the river of the Euphrates you Fraidy was a good-sized River and so when across the river there were gates that went down there report call us you know that those things that you always see in castles that went down into the river to keep armies from getting inside at that point there were also walls on the banks of the river and so you had walls all the way around the city of Babylon which was on both sides of the Euphrates River there were walls on the banks of the Euphrates River with gates that opened up two bridges that cross the Euphrates River so that you could get both to both sides of the Euphrates and there both sides of Babylon and so it was this impregnable fortress and so the Medes and the Persians had been surrounding the city of Babylon and they had it under siege and basically the Babylonians had plenty of water you know they could you know you have water you can last forever they had plenty of supplies they literally had fields on the inside of the walls of the city of Babylon they could grow their own food and so they could they could withstand any siege that anybody came up with and the walls were too high to get over and so this is what Cyrus did he went upstream the the city of when the city of Babylon was being built specifically the walls of Babylon over the Euphrates when that was being built what they had done is they had cut a canal that deferred diverted the Euphrates River into a lake and all Cyrus did was he went up and he opened up the canal and it had been you know it had been blocked and buried and that kind of stuff but he had an army and so he took the army up and he opened up the canal he diverted the Euphrates River the water goes down and when the water get went down there was an entranceway into the midst of the city of Babylon now Babylon should have still been protected it's why they had gates on the on the walls of the of the banks of Babylon but these guys were partying and they didn't think that anybody could get inside and so it was a night attack the the the Persian m/r the Persian army came inside found the gates on the banks of the river of Babylon open or the river of Euphrates open and they went into the gates with a surprise attack and took over there all the government buildings they basically took out the government of the city of Babylon in one night wiped them all out and the people of Babylon literally woke up the next morning and did not know that they'd been conquered according to the histories that's how Swift it was that's how decisive it was when that battle plan was taking place when it when it talks about the loins of Kings being loosed there is a passage in Daniel chapter 5 we're gonna return to this later on but in Daniel chapter 5 and verse 6 it says then the Kings countenance changed and his thoughts troubled them so that the joints of his hips were loosened and his knees knocked together knocked against each other and that's talking about Belshazzar and what had happened in Daniel chapter 5 his Belshazzar decided that he was going to have a party when the Babylon were when the Medes and the Persians were surrounding the city of Babylon it was an in-your-face party for the city of Babylon and in this party he decided to not only mock the Medes and the Persians but he decided to mock the P that his grandfather Nebuchadnezzar had conquered and so what he does is he brings out the the utensils that were used in Temple worship specifically the the Bulls and the cups and those things and he begins eating and drinking out of these bowls and cups and as he's in the midst of this party over by the lampstand and that's what it says in the passage over by the lampstand on the wall behind the lampstand that lets you know it's a specific lampstand you know which lamb stand it probably was the menorah from the temple and so he's taken the menorah from the temple to light his party and over by the lamp stand there's a hand that appears that it's not attached to anything and it begins writing on the wall and it says many many Tekel you farsan you've been found that you've been weighed in the balances and found wanting and your kingdom is going to be taken from you and given to the Persians that's what it ends up meaning and when when Belshazzar saw that hand writing on the wall and he saw the writing on the wall that's when his knees started knocking together and that's what God's talking about in Isaiah chapter 45 in verse 1 when he says you're gonna subdue nations before him and loose the loins of kings he's literally talking about what took place with Belshazzar in that passage and again the gates he talked to in the passage about the gates being opened to open before him the double doors so the gates will not be shut and that's literally how Babylon fell the gates were not shut if they did shut the gates on the on the on the banks of the Euphrates River the Babylonians could have just got on the walls and shot arrows down at him it's why the gates were there and so because of Belshazzar fool at foolishness the Babylonians were overcome by the Persians the fulfillment of Jeremiah 25:11 is really interesting and again that passage talks about the fact that there is going to be a servitude of the nation and desolations determine let me read it to you again this whole land shall be a desolation and an astonishment and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon 70 years and so again two things are mentioned the servitude of the nation and the desolation of the nation and in when you're when you're talking about this whole prophecy God had promised 70 years of captivity well here's the problem when you get into the history where we're at back in Ezra in Ezra chapter 1 when this decree is made it's about 537 BC and the nation of Judah was taken into Kapiti captivity in 586 BC and that's close to 70 years but it's not 70 years and even if you take that's that's when the city of Jerusalem fell in 586 if you take it from the time that Jerusalem was under siege by the Babylonians that started in 589 or BC and so the numbers are getting bigger the farther you go back and so it started in 589 but you go 589 - or yeah 589 - five - or yeah 589 - 537 and you don't get anywhere near 70 years obviously okay and so there's something going on there and so whenever you see something going on like that it's really cool to go back and start checking things out and see what's see what's actually happening and what's actually happening is when God talked about the 70 year captivity again he mentioned two things the servitude of the nation and the desolation of the nation well the servitude of the nation didn't start in 586 BC and it didn't start the 589 BC servitude of the nation started in 606 BC when the Babylonians came in took over Israel as a nation made them basically a client state and started taking royalty away in captivity as hostages and one of the Royal some of the royalty that they took away were Daniel Shadrach Meshach and Abednego so in Daniel chapter one these are guys who are taken away in the first captivity in 606 BC and so you have that well you go from 606 BC and you go to 537 BC and you still have only 69 years right and I you could probably see this up on the wall one of the things that you have and I've already I've already talked about Daniel chapter 9 in Daniel chapter 9 what God does is he tells the people of Israel that they've got they've got a future with him and he starts delineating what that future is and he talks about seventy sevens of years that are determined for the people of Israel and so I don't want to get all the way into this except to say this and I mentioned this during the time that we were sharing 77s they had weeks of years basically and so you they had weeks of days so six days and then the seventh day was a Sabbath and then you started the cycle again another six days and the seventh day was a Sabbath okay so they had a weekly Sabbath so they had a seven-day week just like we do well they had the same thing with years and so they go six years planting their crops the seventh year was a Sabbath for the land you didn't plant anything and you just let it lie and then when you came to the next year the eighth year or the first year in the next cycle you would you would plow it up and you would plant again so basically there were two years that you weren't getting crops off that land if you kept the seven the the seventh year Sabbath and what God said was you're gonna plant your land six years in the seventh year you're gonna let it rest in the six year I'm gonna give you plenty so it will last you for the next two years till the next harvest but you trust me in this you let the land rest and then you you do the cycle again and what had happened with Israel is they hadn't done it this is where you get the 70 years so for 490 years 490 divided by seven you know week of week of week of years is seventy years so they failed to keep the yearly Sabbath for 70 years and so basically when God is throwing them out of the land of Israel he's saying you owe me 70 you were supposed to let the land rest once every seven years seven years for the last 490 years you haven't done it you owe me 70 and so that's why they were in captivity for 70 years and then what God does is he sends gabriel and he says there's another 490 years determined for your people okay and it's divided up into against seventy sevens and he says for the first 69 sevens and I'm giving you a short version first 69 sevens is gonna lead up to Messiah the Prince Messiah the king and after those 69 sevens three things are going to happen cities going to be destroyed there's gonna be desolations for the people and Messiah is going to be cut off being meaning executed for a capital crime well you go back and you look at you look at that seventy sevens of years and there's a starting point the starting point is the rebuilding of the of the city and the wall and that's an important thing we know when that when that was done 445 BC well you take regular years and you go from 445 BC and you go you go forward and it's off and so there's a guy named Sir Robert Anderson who went back and looked at this and one of the interesting things that you have in Bible prophecy is that God uses a 360-day calendar for a year and so you see this in the book of Revelation all the time so the book of Revelation talks about three and a half years and it defines three and a half years as forty-two months which that's how many months in the three-and-a-half years 42 months and 1260 days well you divide you know twelve hundred and sixty by forty two you get 30 day months and what you're talking about is a 360-day calendar and what Sir Robert Anderson did was he went hey what if I took that 360-day calendar because it's the same stuff that's being mentioned in the Book of Daniel in fact that last seven-year period three and a half and three and a half it in the book of Revelation that last seven-year period is the period of time that's that last the 70th week of Daniel and he goes will if it's 1260 days for half of it then it's wet fourteen fifteen hundred and twenty days for the whole seven years and so therefore if that's what we got in the first or in the last seven years then the first 69 weeks of years 483 years then maybe he's using the same calendar and so what he did was he went 483 times 360 180 three thousand eight hundred and eighty days he started from the decree of artaxerxes to rebuild the wall and the city in the wall he went a hundred and eighty you know the the four hundred eighty three years for it and he came to the day that Messiah enters Jerusalem and that's why Jesus said because you did not know this your day again your house is going to be left to you desolate and so the Bible prophesies the coming of Jesus to the day from the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem and the wall so literally to the day and so you know that's a cool thing well you have the same problem with the 70 year captivity when you do this 70 year captivity and you look at 606 BC and you go up to 537 BC what you have is 69 years it's not 70 years and people try to play with that with the history and that kind of stuff and you know inclusive years and that kind of thing and it just doesn't work until you turn the years to 368 years and when you turn the years into 360 day years what you get is 360 times 70 is 25,000 200 days you divide that by 365 point two five you get 68 years 363 days at 68 point 99 years it's up on the screen right you take 606 BC you take away sixty-eight point nine nine years you get 537 BC which is the year that Cyrus made the decree it's it's it it's you know I didn't go through and study it out and get it to the day but you can take off with that it's probably to the day that Cyrus made the decree if the decrees announced as far as the day so the servitude of the nation when the nation first went into slavery to Babylon was seventy years okay then you have the desolations of Jerusalem the foundation of the temple was finished in 520 BC according to Haggai 218 the passages up there consider now from this day forward from the 24th day of the ninth month from the day that the foundation of the Lord's temple was laid considerate and had guys giving a prophecy about that Haggai to eighteen and from the context of the passage we know that's 520 BC so the desolations of the nation began in 589 BC it didn't start at the destruction of the temple it started at the the time when Jerusalem was put under siege because when the Babylonians came in they wiped out everything and one of the things that you don't pick up many times when you're going through and you're reading the the the history of the Babylonians coming in and taking out Jerusalem at the end of Chronicles and at the end of second Kings one of the things that you don't pick up on is that the Babylonians went through the whole land of Judah and wiped out everything and that Jerusalem was just the last thing that was taken so by the time that they got to Jerusalem the whole land has been wiped out everybody that was a craftsman that was an artisan that was anybody who could who could do anything to keep the people of Israel in a place where they could build and flourish as a nation is taken off into captivity before they get to Jerusalem then they get to Jerusalem surround the city that's in 589 BC the whole countryside is waste and now they're around Jerusalem and they just wait for the next three years and then they take the city and they destroy the temple that started in 589 so the desolations of Jerusalem happened in 589 BC so you go 589 BC you add sixty eight point nine nine years twenty-five thousand two hundred days and what you come to is 520 BC and so even though in normal reckoning it would be about sixty nine years to that point when you use the 360-day calendar the desolation of the nation was seventy years just like God set and the passage and so very cool stuff because when God tells you that something's gonna happen on a certain time table God is serious about the time table and he keeps his word on the whole thing you know I just ran out of time so we'll pick up the rest of this next week but one of the things that's really interesting and every time that I talk about this stuff a 360 day calendar it's really interesting when you go back in history that every culture had a 360-day calendar and so when you're talking about the Babylonia you know 360 degrees in a circle you know where it comes from it comes from the calendar and when when you're talking about the Babylonian calendar or when you're talking about the Greek calendar or when you're talking about the Roman calendar all the calendars were less than 365 and a quarter days every single one of the calendars be for 700 BC were different than they were afterwards and so something weird is going on when you when you look at ancient history I've been told and actually when you when you research this if you get on the internet you start looking it up they'll tell you that the Egyptian calendar was actually a 365 and a quarter date calendar long before 701 BC and it's false I've looked at the I've looked at the the translation of the documents and the things that are involved in that and it doesn't say that it doesn't say that all the calendars were changed including the Egyptian calendar so that means something and here's what it means it means that the year the year was obviously shorter here's a here's the thing with you know a calendar when we when when you look at a calendar the reason that you know that the year has changed is because you went down to the store and you bought a calendar and you know you pick up your your cell phone and it says today is whatever today is I don't even know what the day is but but it says what whatever day it is and you you're following the calendar and that's how it changes for most of us that is not what happened in ancient times in ancient times they knew how to make a calendar so even though we might not know when the year ends they did and the way that you determine that is why where the Sun sets it's a simple thing it's all you got to do is you know take two marks you take a place where you're gonna stand you take another mark you take a mic stand and do this you know two mic stands and you could line them up where the Sun setting and you take one mic stand and you make it you make it so it it doesn't move around you take the other mic stand and you move it around wherever the Sun setting and what's gonna happen is in the winter the Sun is gonna set further and further south that's why the days get shorter okay and so you go to the furthest south south and you mark that spot and then you watch where the Sun sets from that point on and it's going to set further and further north until you get to June 21st and then it's going to go to the furthest north that it can go and you mark that spot that is half a year the furthest it goes north the first furthest it goes south is half a year when that cycle goes back the other way because after June 21st the days start getting shorter when it goes back to the same mark at the very beginning that's the whole year anybody can determine how long it takes to get around the Sun and that's all you have to do these guys were an agricultural society they knew how to do this stuff and so the idea that they did not know how long a year was is nonsense it's nonsense something changed between the the times previous to 701 BC and the times after that the book of Genesis when it determines the length of the flood it talks about the the the time that the flood was rising and it determines that in months and you find out in the book of Genesis that they're using a 360 day calendar in the book of Genesis and so all the way from Genesis to the time of Hezekiah they're using a 360-day calendar two notable events took place between those two points there was a time when there was a long day of Joshua and the Sun stood still in the sky for a period of time and then during the time of Hezekiah there was a period of time where the Sun actually went backwards in the sky and it was a certain number of degrees backwards that's astronomical changes in the position of the Sun relative to the position of the earth in the Land of Israel astronomical changes are taking place and it's probably an indication that something major was going on in the solar system and it's after that point specifically after Hezekiah sundial went backwards that they start changing calendars and so that's where the 360 day year came from so just for your edification so kind of cool anyway the whole the the whole beginning of the book of israei of Ezra is about going home I like that I think that's pretty cool there are times when we've strayed when we when we've gone down the wrong path gone down the wrong road just blown it in certain areas and I can always go home and it's a cool thing that's what these people are doing so let's probably get you out of here and we'll pick it up next week Lord we just thank you again so much for your love for us thank you so much for the fact that even when we may be disobedient - you still have plans for us you still have a future you still have a hope for us you you still have a heart that wants to bless and God we thank you for that we thank you that we live in days that are pretty much like the times that the people of zerubu Bell were living in where prophecy is being fulfilled around us left and right we can see things happening that are indications of the fact that we're in the last days that that cool things are going to be taking place in the not-too-distant future and Lord as as we're in these times Lord we just pray that you'd make us effective that we'd be useful God that we've finished the race that we started and that we finish strong or we love you and we want you to be honored by our lives and by our words and so Lord we give ourselves to you and ask that you would do this all in Jesus name Amen all right god bless you guys

Channel: Calvary Chapel Tri-Cities

Views: 15,289

Rating: 4.7740111 out of 5

Keywords: Old Testament, the Bible, Jesus, Calvary chapel, Steve whinery, God, Ezra

Id: DST32yBrTh4

Length: 54min 5sec (3245 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 18 2018