The text in front of us describes the day when Ezra arrives in Jerusalem nearly eighty years after the first group of exiles had returned; eighty years of history have gone by since the original exiles returned to Jerusalem in the beginning of this book.2 That day, the day that Ezra arrived in Jerusalem was probably a day of historic significance.

But that day was not historically significant because of the eighty years that had gone by; that day was not historically significant because of the cultural issues going on; that day was not historically significant because of the spiritual condition of Israel. As important as things like history, current cultural issues, and the current spiritual condition of Israel are, these are not the reasons that this day was so historically important. Look at the text with me…

EZRA 7:1 – 10…

1Now after this, in the reign of Artaxerxes king of Persia, Ezra the son of Seraiah, son of Azariah, son of Hilkiah, 2son of Shallum, son of Zadok, son of Ahitub, 3son of Amariah, son of Azariah, son of Meraioth, 4son of Zerahiah, son of Uzzi, son of Bukki, 5son of Abishua, son of Phinehas, son of Eleazor, son of Aaron the chief priest – 6this Ezra went up from Babylonia. He was a scribe skilled in the Law of Moses that the LORD, the God of Israel, had given, and the king granted him all that he asked, for the hand of the LORD his God was on him.

7And there went up also to Jerusalem, in the seventh year of Artaxerxes the king, some of the people of Israel, and some of the priests and Levites, the singers and gatekeepers, and the temple servants. 8And Ezra came to Jerusalem in the fifth month, which was in the seventh year of the king. 9For on the first day of the first month he began to go up from Babylonia, and on the first day of the fifth month he came to Jerusalem, for the good hand of his God was on him. 10For 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.

I think this day was historically important because of the kind of man that Ezra was.3 All the micro issues of Ezra’s day were certainly significant and very important to address but the day that Ezra showed up in Jerusalem, that day, was important because of the kind of man that Ezra was.

Once I understood that the significance of this day was tied to the kind of man that Ezra was, I began to think about the kind of man that I am and the kind of man that I want to be. What kind of person are you? What kind of person do you want to be?

Ezra was a priest and he possessed great spiritual authority because he came from a very important, very famous family (7:1 – 5); he was a scribe who possessed great political power and influence (7:6); he was a “man of courageous faith” who went straight to the top (to the king) to get what he needed (7:6); he was willing to go the distance and travel a rough road to pursue his calling (7:7 – 9); he was a reformer who was committed to the centrality of the Word of God (7:10); and above all this, the hand of God was upon him (7:6 – 9).4 Suffice it to say, Ezra was a man with big shoes to fill!

#1: EZRA WAS A MAN OF GREAT SPIRITUAL PEDIGREE (VV. 1 – 6)

Most of us skim through the lists of names in the Bible quickly, because the names do not hold a lot of meaning for us. But when you stop and look at some of the names in Ezra’s family tree, you get a sense that Ezra was a man who came from a line of other men who possessed great spiritual authority.

Phinehas was a fiery priest who literally killed a few people because of their desecration of the house of God (Num. 25) and Aaron was the chief priest who started the entire priestly bloodline in the Bible; he was the founder of the priests (Exod. 28 – 29; Lev. 8).

Suffice it to say, Ezra had a great spiritual pedigree; he was related to some of the heroes of the faith from the past who had done some amazing spiritual things. I do not know that I have an awesome spiritual pedigree like Ezra, but I sure would not mind being used by God to infuse that great spiritual pedigree into my family tree. What are you doing to invest in your spiritual family tree?

#2: EZRA WAS A MAN OF POLITICAL INFLUENCE AND COURAGE (V. 6)

The text tells us that Ezra was a scribe who was skilled in the Law of Moses and that the king gave him everything he asked for because God’s hand was on him (v. 6). I do not know about you, but God has not given me the ear of national kings; I have never had the opportunity to ask a king or a president for resources to advance the kingdom of God.

This does not mean that God’s hand is not on me. If you have trusted in Jesus, then you and I both have the hand of God on our lives, and we have all been given the opportunity for influence in other people’s lives.

The rubber hits the road for each of us when we have the opportunity to influence those with great power and at that point, it would be good if each of us were like Ezra and had the reputation for being skilled in studying God’s Word. What are you doing with opportunities to study God’s Word and to influence the people that God has placed you with?

#3: EZRA WAS A MAN OF ENDURANCE (VV. 7 – 9)

The text tells us that Ezra, along with an entire ministry team, made the one-thousand-mile journey from Babylon to Jerusalem in four months (vv. 7 – 9). If Ezra and his little band of brothers and sisters took one day off every week from traveling to observe the Sabbath, then they would have had to travel nearly ten miles a day on foot in the scorching dessert heat to arrive as fast as they did.

Seems to me that the trip would have required a ton of endurance, focus, commitment, ownership, strategy, responsible action, and a clear vision for what lied ahead.

I want to be a man who is known for endurance, focus, commitment, ownership, strategy, responsible action, and clear vision when it comes to my own spiritual journey. I also want to surround myself with other people who are known for their endurance, their single-minded focus on the things of God, their commitment to being who they say they are and doing what they say they will do.

I want to be surrounded by people who take serious ownership in their spiritual journey and act accordingly in a responsible manner. I want to be surrounded by other people who have godly visions for their lives. Does any of this sound attractive to you? What is your part in the things I have just said?

#4: EZRA WAS A MAN OF GOD (VV. 6, 9)

It is becoming less and less popular to say that you are a Christian in America today. I believe we are slowly returning to a time when those who followed God were marginalized and seen as the scum of the earth. To be a follower of God in Ezra’s day would mean that you were viewed as a weak, oppressed, and conquered people; you literally had very little influence over what was happening in the culture around you.

And yet, Ezra was a man of God who was given all that he asked for by the king and he endured the thousand-mile journey to Jerusalem because the good hand of God was upon him; wherever the presence of God went, Ezra went too (vv. 6, 9). I do not want to be a man who wraps up my spiritual identity in a national flag. I do not want to be a man who claims to follow God but produces barely visible results that God is actually with me.

I do not want to be a man who couches my spirituality in all the things that I protest. I certainly do not want to be a man who is all about what I know. I want to be a man of God who goes everywhere the presence of God goes. What would that look like for you and me to go wherever the presence of God goes?

#5: EZRA WAS A MAN OF GOD’S WORD (VV. 9 – 10)

The text tells us that the good hand of God was on Ezra because his heart was set on studying God’s Word, doing what God’s Word says and teaching God’s Word to others (vv. 9 – 10). So, the centrality of studying, doing, and teaching God’s Word is directly linked to the presence of God in a person’s life. You and I cannot expect God’s presence to be with us if God’s Word is not in us.

It is also worth noting that the study of God’s Word is not just a private discipline; it is also a community discipline (Acts 2:42 – 47, 4:32 – 37). My concern for our church is that, though we say we value the study of God’s Word together in community on Sunday mornings, we have all but almost lost the practice of studying God’s Word in community throughout the week in small groups (except for a small remnant that continues).

This lack of studying God’s Word in small groups throughout the week is an alarming sign to me that we are becoming no better than the majority of the church throughout the West who is consumed with consuming a Sunday experience at the expense of investing in communal discipleship where life-on-life meets around God’s Word.

I desperately want to be part of a community of Ezra’s who are made up of men and women who study God’s Word together, who fight to make the necessary sacrifices to be together, to look into each other’s eyes and to verbally communicate the Word of God to one another. Without this… I fear that we will cease to be a people, a community, of God’s Word… a community of Ezras.

CONCLUSION…

In conclusion, and in light of the grim concern I have just communicated for the church today, I want to ask this again: What kind of man or woman are you and who do you want to be? One author said this about the text we are studying:

“One imagines that the religious life in Jerusalem, from the temple’s dedication to the time of Ezra’s arrival, had taken on outward conformity to the temple’s rituals and sacrifices. There was outward conformity and an external compliance. But it was a public faith only, and it did not relate to the people’s private lives. As we will see [in the rest of the book], one of the issues that Ezra would have to contend with was the flagrant abuse of Israel’s law regarding marriage. The people were outwardly conforming, but inwardly they were living to please themselves. It is a pattern that Israel had passed through before and that the church continues to pass through [today]. Ezra came to challenge – to condemn – religion that is mere formality. He came to call the people of God back to heart – religion, in which obedience to detail is not seen as something legalistic and irksome.”5

I think about the kind of man that Ezra was and my desire to be like him and to be surrounded by people who are like him. I find it invigorating to dream about a community of people who are investing in their own spiritual pedigrees, a community of people who are courageously laboring to influence others around them, a community of people who are known for endurance, focus, commitment, ownership, strategy, responsible action, and clear vision, a community of people who are men and women of God who go everywhere in the presence of God, a community of people who are spending time together in God’s Word regularly.

I want to be part of a community of Ezras. And yet, even when God gives us the unique opportunity to see a human, like Ezra, in the Bible who appears to be a spiritual giant, I also know that Ezra was merely a man. But he was a man who points us to Jesus.

And if you and I can see Jesus as the best Ezra we could ever meet, then I believe we would run across broken glass to become the kind of people that Ezra was. Jesus’ spiritual pedigree makes Ezra’s look like the credits at the end of a movie. Jesus’ courageous influence on people’s lives makes Ezra’s relationship with the king look like a school yard friendship.

Jesus’ single-focused endurance makes Ezra’s 1,000 – mile journey look like a short trip to the grocery store. The presence of God on Jesus’ life and his devotion to the community of God’s Word makes Ezra’s look like child’s play.

And this Jesus, this perfect Jesus, gave his life for you and me and he left the tomb empty, and he gave us the promise of heaven. Satan, Sin and Death were no match for the bloody cross, the empty tomb, and the promise of heaven. If you and I can catch a vision for our crucified, risen and returning Savior, then I really do believe that we will become a community of Ezras.

We will not be like the man who buys his wife red roses though she loves pink tulips and expects her to feel loved; but instead, as we catch a vision for Jesus as the best Ezra ever, then we will be like the man who pays close attention to detail and buys his wife pink tulips because she loves pink tulips.6

Too many of us are satisfied with half-hearted to little obedience. Thankfully, Jesus did not do anything half-hearted or halfway; this is why he is the best Ezra ever! Ezra cannot give you and I the power we need to become the community of Ezras we see in this text. But Jesus can because Jesus was more than a mere man; Jesus was God in the flesh who came down from Heaven to ransom, redeem and to sanctify those who have trusted in him.

This means that by the power of the crucified, risen and returning Christ, you and I can become the kind of people who are investing in our own spiritual pedigrees, who are courageously laboring to influence others around us, who are known for our endurance, focus, commitment, ownership, strategic living, responsible actions, and clear vision.

Because of our crucified, risen and returning Savior, we can become a community of people who represent God everywhere we go as the presence of God goes with us. We can be a community of people who are spending time together in God’s Word regularly. We can be a community of Ezras as we hold fast to Jesus together. – Amen!

1 Unless otherwise specified, all Bible references in this paper are to the English Standard Version Bible, The New Classic Reference Edition (ESV) (Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, 2001).

2 Derek W. H. Thomas, Ezra and Nehemiah: Reformed Expository Commentary, (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: P&R Publishing, 2016), 110 – 11.

3 Ibid., 113 – 114.

4 Ibid., 114 – 118.

5 Ibid., 118 – 119.

6 Ibid., 119.