Introduction to Ezra & Nehemiah: God's Plan, His Timing, His Faithfulness | Ezra 1:1

All right. Well, as I just mentioned, we're going to be getting into the book of Ezra and Nehemiah. I guess what I should do first is help many of you figure out where that is.

So, it's in the Old Testament. In the Old Testament, there's a chunk of books that are first and second — 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles — and Ezra comes right after 1 and 2 Chronicles. So to help you out, in my Bible it's right there, about a third of the way into the Bible. So there you will find the book of Ezra.

And while you're finding the book of Ezra, let me ask the rhetorical question that maybe you are asking yourselves, and that is: why study the book of Ezra and Nehemiah? We've gotten this far in our lives without it — can't we go the rest of the way without it? What are we going to find in the book of Ezra and Nehemiah that justifies investing time and energy into studying it?

Let me give you a list of ten reasons why we should invest time in the book of Ezra and Nehemiah and how it can benefit our Christian lives today in Dixon, California, 2026.

First of all — and this is at the top of every list whenever we study any book of the Bible — it helps us learn about God. That is fundamental to every book of the Bible. It is God's written revelation to us, and so when we dive into it, we are going to learn more about God. We're going to learn about what God prioritizes, what he wants his people to prioritize.

In the book of Ezra and Nehemiah, we're going to learn very clearly what it means that God is faithful and that he keeps his promises. We've already read a couple of psalms that pointed us to that reality — that God is steadfast, that he's trustworthy, that he's faithful. We are going to see very clear, real-life examples of what that looked like in the life of the people of Judah.

We are going to learn about his timing. This is so relevant for our lives, especially when we are tempted to think that God is taking too long to get things done, and we think, "God, when are you going to do the things we thought you were going to do? When are you going to do the things you promised you would do? It just seems like everything is taking so long. Are you ever going to come through?" We are going to learn about God's timing in the book of Ezra and Nehemiah.

We're going to learn about God's redemption of his people in real history — not theoretical, not potential, but real redemption of real people in real history. We're going to see what it looks like for God to be sovereign over kings and nations, and we're going to see that this morning right from the start, in Ezra 1:1. We're going to see God is sovereign over kings and nations.

We're going to learn how some of our favorite Bible stories, like Esther, and some of our favorite Bible verses, like Jeremiah 29:11, connect to God's unfolding plan of redemption. Everybody loves Esther, right? We talk about Esther regularly as an example of faithfulness and how God used this woman at a very crucial time in the history of God's people, to literally save them from extinction. But we rarely talk about the story of Esther within the context of Scripture and within the context of history. The story of Esther happens right smack dab in the middle of the historical framework of Ezra and Nehemiah.

We are going to learn what it means for people to value the worship of God and the word of God, and to do that at a time when there are lots of outside pressures trying to get them to alter their worship of God, to alter their obedience to God. We're going to see what that looks like. And similarly, we're going to learn what it looks like to prioritize obedience to God above our own earthly comforts.

And number ten — and this is not all we're going to learn, and these are not all the things we're going to see in these books — we're going to learn what it looks like to obey God in the face of strong opposition. We're going to see everything from mockery to lies, physical resistance, and even outright violence. And yet God's people are called to be obedient to him, even in the midst of that.

I want you to think about it like this. Whether you like putting jigsaw puzzles together or not, I think what is universally true about jigsaw puzzles is that nobody likes it when you get to the end and there's one piece missing. There's maybe nothing worse in all of life than getting that puzzle together — you've got, say, a thousand-piece puzzle and you've got 999 pieces right where they go, but where did that piece go? Where is it? You're looking on the ground, under the chairs, dumping out the vacuum cleaner bag — did the dog eat it? Who knows? But it's hard to stand looking at that puzzle with one piece missing.

And that's so often how we treat the Bible. We have these pieces of the puzzle. We haven't even put them in, and we just don't care. "There's this piece of the puzzle, Ezra and Nehemiah — where does it fit in this puzzle? I don't know, and I don't care, because I've got these other pieces over here I really like." We're going to help you put these pieces into the puzzle — see where they fit, see how they connect to the other books of the Bible, how they connect to the rest of God's revealed revelation of himself to us in his word.

So, if you're not already there, let's get to Ezra chapter 1, verse 1. This is going to be a very unusual message. I actually have no idea how long this is going to take — could be fifteen minutes. Not likely, because I rarely speak for fifteen minutes. Could be two hours. That's also not likely, because I don't usually speak for two hours either. But I don't know how long this is going to be.

Ezra 1:1: "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 into writing."

Now let's just stop right there, because we're talking about putting these puzzle pieces into the puzzle. It's almost as if the people of Judah — when you read this first verse — it's like that iconic line from How to Train Your Dragon: "Yep, that's me. You're probably wondering how I ended up in this situation." That's the people of God, the people of Judah, right here. You don't realize it yet, but I'm going to show you how that is the case. In fact, this is the only verse we're going to consider this morning.

"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 into writing."

So we need to understand who Cyrus, king of Persia, is, and what the word of the Lord was that came through the mouth of Jeremiah. Already you can see in verse one how this is a piece that needs to interlock with other pieces of the puzzle. So let's go to the backstory of this — also known as a brief history of the whole Old Testament.

Let's go all the way back to Adam and Eve, in the Garden of Eden. God gives them an amazing existence — every fruit of every tree and every plant is there for food. It's a perfect environment. They can eat of everything except for one tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God said, "You can't do that." That tree, they decided they would eat. And as a result, humanity — and indeed all of creation — was now under the curse of sin. People are born and people die from Adam and Eve on, and we make our way into the book of Genesis.

The first next big event we find is that wickedness has permeated humanity, and everyone is doing evil in the sight of the Lord. We're introduced to a man named Noah, who the writer of Genesis tells us is blameless in the sight of the Lord — not that he was perfect, but he was not evil like the other people. So he found grace in the eyes of the Lord, and the Lord used him to rescue humanity from destruction. There's roughly — it's hard to say, but a lot of people ballpark — about 1,600 years between Adam and Noah. The Lord causes a flood to cover the earth, and Noah and his family are rescued through the ark. They end up on dry land after the waters subside.

Not long after that, we learn that after the population multiplied, rather than being fruitful and filling the earth as God commanded, the people of the world wanted to make a name for themselves. So they built a tower at Babel in rebellion to God. God cursed them by confusing their languages, Genesis tells us, and that causes people to spread throughout the world.

Then we're introduced to a man named Abraham. Abraham is in his home country, which is interestingly enough very near Babylon, which we'll get to. In Genesis 12:1–3, God comes to Abraham and tells him he wants him to leave his homeland and go to a land God is going to give him. He promises to make him a great nation, to give him this land, and that from him all the peoples of the world would be blessed. He promises to make him a great nation but gives him one son, Isaac — the child of promise, born in the old age of Abraham and his wife Sarah.

Isaac has two sons of his own, Jacob and Esau. His son Jacob — whose name means "deceiver" — lives up to that name. He's a deceiver, a conniver, a manipulator. He wants to work things to his advantage and doesn't really care how it impacts other people. He gets his brother to sell his birthright to him for a bowl of soup, which is strange, but his brother does it. Then he steals his brother's blessing from his father. So his brother Esau wants to kill him, and he has to run away. Years later they reunite, and the relationship is somewhat restored, but Jacob doesn't want to hang around Esau too long, just in case he changes his mind.

After reuniting with his brother Esau, Jacob has an experience one night — he ends up wrestling with an angel of the Lord, with God himself in the form of this angel. After wrestling all night with God, God changes his name from Jacob to Israel, which literally means "strives with God" or "one who strives with God." God reemphasizes the covenant promise that had been made to his father Isaac and to Abraham before him, and promises to bless him.

Jacob has twelve sons, and one of them is Joseph, his youngest son. The older brothers didn't care for him — he was having dreams and visions where Jacob and the other sons were bowing down to him, and they didn't take too kindly to that. So his brothers conspired. Initially they were going to kill him, but his oldest brother prevailed on them, and they decided they would just make it look like they'd killed him — throw him into a well instead. Then they changed their minds again and sold him into slavery to some slave traders passing through. He ends up in Egypt, and through circumstances orchestrated and ordained by God, he rises to power, becoming second in command only to Pharaoh, because through God's Spirit he's able to interpret Pharaoh's dreams about the abundance and then the famine that were coming to the land.

When Joseph is finally reunited with his brothers, he tells them, "What you meant for evil, God meant for good" — that all of it was part of God's plan so that God's people could be spared. So Joseph and his family — his father and his brothers — end up moving to Egypt and living there under the blessing of Pharaoh.

In Exodus 1:8, we're told that after many years — even centuries — there arose a Pharaoh in Egypt who did not know about Joseph, who didn't know all that Joseph had done to save the land of Egypt. He saw that the Israelites in Egypt had multiplied and were becoming quite powerful, so before they could realize that power, he enslaved them. To keep them subdued further, he arranged for the baby boys of the Israelites to be killed. In the midst of that scheme, the midwives refused to kill the boys, and Moses is born in this time. Moses' mother and his sister Miriam hide him so he won't be killed, floating him in a basket on the river to keep him away from the Israelite encampment. He's discovered by Pharaoh's daughter and ends up being raised in Pharaoh's palace.

At forty years of age, Moses has to run into the wilderness because he kills two Egyptian soldiers who were harassing and harming Israelite slaves. He hides from being discovered and ends up living in the wilderness for forty years, until God encounters him and calls him to return to Egypt to confront Pharaoh and demand that he let the people of Israel go. God appears to him in a burning bush that is not consumed by the fire, and calls Moses to confront Pharaoh. Moses and his brother Aaron go and do that. Pharaoh resists and objects, and God reveals his power through the ten plagues of Egypt, culminating in the final plague — the promise that the firstborn of every household will die unless the blood of a spotless, unblemished lamb is placed on the doorposts and lintel of the door. The angel of death passes through Egypt; the Israelite households with the blood over their doors are spared, but the Egyptians are not.

Pharaoh demands that Israel leave, and they leave. Then Pharaoh changes his mind and tries to get them back, and that fails miserably. The people of Israel are released from slavery, and God leads them personally as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. He takes them to Mount Sinai, and there, through Moses, God gives the people his law — the Ten Commandments initially, and then other supporting laws. This establishes the Mosaic covenant, or the old covenant, which essentially says: if you obey these commands, you will be blessed, and if you disobey them, you will be cursed — you will experience negative consequences.

Moses then takes the people to the edge of the Promised Land. They decide to send twelve spies into the land before going in — the land God had promised to Abraham back in Genesis 12. The twelve spies come back, and ten of them say, "I don't think this is such a good idea. The people there are really big and strong, the cities are huge, the walls are fortified — I don't think we can do this." Two spies, Joshua and Caleb, say, "No way — let's go in. God's going to deliver this land to us. It's amazing." The people listen to the ten spies who said no, and as a result, God says, "Fine, you can't go in — you're going to spend the next forty years wandering in the wilderness until this whole generation dies off, and then I will take my people into the land."

Moses leads the people to the Jordan River, to the edge of the land, but he can't go in himself — he dies. Joshua, one of the two spies who said "yes, we should take the land," ends up leading the people, taking Moses' place. They go into the land of Canaan and claim the land God has given them, but they don't claim all of it. The land is divided among the twelve tribes, and the book of Joshua ends with Joshua calling on the people: "Choose you this day whom you will serve, but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord."

There's a very important thing that happens in the book of Joshua that foreshadows things to come and ties directly into what we'll see in the book of Ezra: the people don't drive out all the inhabitants of the land of Canaan, and they do not tear down all of their pagan altars. Remember that — keep it in mind.

Joshua dies, and then in the book of Judges, right after Joshua, Judges 2:10 says, "There arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done." That's very crucial, because it means no one taught them — no one taught them about the work of the Lord and all that he had done: how he made the promise to Abraham, how he delivered them from Egypt, how he gave them his law, how he brought them into this land of promise, how he enabled them to claim this land for their own. And yet somehow they don't know any of that. People neglected to teach it to the future generations.

Then we have this terrible statement in Judges 2:11: "And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord." Judges presents us with this vicious cycle — sinful rebellion, terrible consequences, crying out to God for help, judges sent in to deliver the people, the people grow complacent, and they rebel again. This cycle happens over and over. The book of Judges is one of the most discouraging and depressing books in the entire Bible because it's so frustrating, and it ends with this statement: "In those days, there was no king in Israel, and everyone did what was right in their own eyes."

We're introduced to Samuel, the last of the judges and the first of the prophets in Israel. Under Samuel's leadership, the people of Israel demand that they're not going to have judges anymore — they want a king, so they can be like all the other nations. Samuel tells them this isn't good, that it's rebellion against God to demand a king, but in 1 Samuel 8:19–20 they insist: "No, but there will be a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations." They want to be like everybody else.

The people choose Saul. He's tall and handsome and strong, but he's rash and headstrong and prideful, and his disobedience costs his family the throne. He specifically disobeys God's instructions regarding the Amalekites — not killing their king, Agag, and not devoting to destruction all their riches — instead they keep it. He also offers sacrifices on the altar rather than waiting for Samuel at one point. Because of this prideful rebellion and stubbornness, God says his family will no longer reign on the throne of Israel.

So God chooses a king for his people through Samuel — David. David is the shepherd king, a humble king. He is also a warrior king, a man of bloodshed, who fights for God and for God's people. He's famous in his sin, famous in his resistance to confess and repent — but then famous in his repentance. God makes a covenant with David that a descendant of his will rule from his throne as an eternal king. This is a promise God makes. So we have an Abrahamic covenant, a Mosaic covenant, and now a Davidic covenant.

David's son Solomon becomes the next king, and there's foreshadowing in Solomon's life that will be unveiled in the book of Ezra. Solomon asks God for wisdom, and God gives it to him, along with riches and influence. Solomon builds a temple for God — prior to this, the people of God had worshiped in the tabernacle, which was just a tent. But what Solomon does that foreshadows things to come is that he marries many foreign wives, and we learn that they turn his heart away from God to worship other gods.

Then we're introduced to Solomon's son, Rehoboam. Rehoboam makes a very foolish decision in how he's going to lead the people of Israel. As he's given the throne, he consults the elders of Israel about how he should rule, and they say, "Your father was very stern and demanding — the people will follow you if you let up, if you're less harsh with them." Then he consults with his friends, and they say, "Your dad was harsh and demanding — you need to double down on that, go even harder, be even more demanding, rule with an iron fist." He decides that's a great idea, and that's what he does.

Ruling with a heavy, demanding hand ends up provoking ten of the twelve tribes of Israel to reject him as king. They separate, divide, and unify under Jeroboam as their king. Jeroboam sets up false places of worship, leading the ten northern tribes into open rebellion against God through their false worship. For roughly 200 years, these northern tribes — which keep the name Israel — live in rebellion to God. They have no righteous kings; even their best kings refuse to abandon the corrupt worship systems Jeroboam established. It's wickedness from beginning to end.

In 2 Kings 17, we're told about the last king of Israel, Hoshea. He's already a vassal of the Assyrian Empire at this point; he seeks help from Egypt and withholds tribute due to the Assyrians. So the Assyrians invade, eventually capture the capital city of Samaria, and deport the Israelites to the far reaches of their empire, scattering them all over. God had warned the people of Israel through prophets like Hosea and Amos that his judgment was coming, that their rebellion would not go unpunished, and that they needed to repent and return to him. But they refused to listen.

The two southern tribes are known as Judah. They last longer than the northern tribes — about 400 years. Like Israel, they had some bad kings, and even a wannabe queen who tried to assassinate the rightful heir to the throne and claim power for herself — a woman named Athaliah. You should look her up; it's an interesting episode in their history. They also had one of the worst kings of all, Manasseh, who ruled for 55 years. Not only did he not tear down the pagan temples the good kings before him had torn down, he rebuilt them. He worshiped the sun, the moon, the stars, and a host of other gods, and built altars to these pagan gods inside the temple itself. He even sacrificed his own sons by burning them alive in worship of these false gods. 2 Kings 21:16 tells us he shed so much innocent blood that he filled Jerusalem from one end to the other, and he led the people of Judah to sin and do evil in the sight of God. He was a bad, bad man.

But unlike Israel, Judah did have good kings — men like Asa, Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah, Amaziah, Uzziah, Joash, and Josiah. These good kings did what was right in the sight of the Lord, but with one exception, they did not tear down the high places — meaning they didn't worship the pagan gods themselves, but they didn't stop their people from worshiping them either. The lone exception was Josiah, the best of all Judah's kings.

Turn to 2 Kings 22 just to get a glimpse of what a good king looked like. Verses 1 and 2 say: "Josiah was eight years old when he began to reign." So who wants to be led by an eight-year-old? Well, that's when he started — he reigned thirty-two years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Jedidah, the daughter of Adaiah of Bozkath. "And he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and walked in all the ways of David his father, and he did not turn aside to the right or to the left." He was uncompromising. He did what was right.

Flip ahead to chapter 23, verses 21–25, which help sum up what he did. Verse 21: "And the king commanded all the people, 'Keep the Passover to the Lord your God, as it is written in this Book of the Covenant.' For no such Passover had been kept since the days of the judges who judged Israel, or during all the days of the kings of Israel or the kings of Judah. But in the eighteenth year of King Josiah, this Passover was kept to the Lord in Jerusalem. Moreover, Josiah put away the mediums and the necromancers and the household gods and the idols and all the abominations that were seen in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, that he might establish the words of the law that were written in the book that Hilkiah the priest found in the house of the Lord. Before him there was no king like him, who turned to the Lord with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might, according to all the Law of Moses, nor did any like him arise after him." That's the kind of man he was. He really cleaned house — he got rid of everything that robbed God of his rightful worship.

But then look at verses 26 and 27: "Still the Lord did not turn from the burning of his great wrath, by which his anger was kindled against Judah, because of all the provocations with which Manasseh had provoked him. And the Lord said, 'I will remove Judah also out of my sight, as I have removed Israel, and I will cast off this city that I have chosen, Jerusalem, and the house of which I said, My name shall be there.'"

So if you ever wanted proof that you can't rely on good works outweighing bad works, this is a great illustration of it. Sometimes God's justice demands consequences. What God tells Josiah here is: you did what I wanted you to do, but Manasseh's sins, and the sins of the people under him, were so great that there could be no escaping the just consequences of their actions.

There are a few more kings after Josiah, and eventually, during the reign of a king named Zedekiah, the Babylonians, led by King Nebuchadnezzar, besiege Jerusalem. Eventually they break through the city walls and destroy the temple. They plunder all the treasure in the temple and carry it off to Babylon. All the people they don't kill in the invasion — except the poorest — are taken as captives to Babylon under Nebuchadnezzar.

Nebuchadnezzar was a powerful king, but like every other king, he dies, and Babylon loses its power quickly. The last king of Babylon was a man named Nabonidus. He didn't worship the traditional Babylonian god Marduk, so he neglected the Babylonian capital and spent most of his time out in the desert, outside of Edom. While he was away, he left a man named Belshazzar to oversee Babylon.

We're introduced to Belshazzar in Daniel chapter 5 — and I want to assure you, we are getting to the book of Ezra. We're almost there. In Daniel 5, Belshazzar throws a huge, multi-day party, as debauched as you can possibly be. In the midst of it, he gets drunk and decides, "Let's go get those gold and silver, bejeweled vessels that Nebuchadnezzar took from the temple in Jerusalem, and let's start partying with those — let's serve the wine out of the vessels taken from the temple in Jerusalem." While he's doing that, God appears to him as a hand writing on the wall. The writing states that Babylon has been weighed in the balances and found wanting, and that it had been given over to the Medes and the Persians. And that is exactly what happened that night — Babylon was overthrown quite easily by the Medo-Persian army, which bypassed the city defenses by sneaking in through the water canals and invading from within, easily overrunning the city and overwhelming the Babylonian soldiers.

Which brings us to Ezra 1:1, because Ezra is writing about a Persian king — "in the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia." So in the book of Ezra, the people of Judah are still in captivity in what was once Babylon, but is now under Persian rule — because, due to the shifting sands of world domination, the people in charge aren't always going to stay in charge. A little over 1,500 years of history has passed from Abraham being given this covenant — that God would bless him with a people, a land, and a blessing — to the time when Ezra is writing about what's taking place here. The people of Judah are still in captivity.

We're told that while they're in captivity, in order 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's where the people of God are — in captivity in what was once Babylon — and the king ruling over them has his heart stirred up by God to fulfill a word given through the prophet Jeremiah.

What was that word? Let's go to the book of Jeremiah. Look at Jeremiah 25:11–12: "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." Which is the irony of all ironies — "I'm going to use these people to be instruments of my judgment on you, and then I'm going to turn around and judge them for their wickedness." They don't get away with it. God uses them.

Jeremiah is writing this before Nebuchadnezzar invades Jerusalem, before he destroys the temple, before he takes the people off to Babylon. Jeremiah says the Babylonian king is going to come, destroy the city, destroy the land, and take the people into captivity. We already know that happened. But there's part two of this promise: they're going to be there seventy years. Seventy years is key.

Turn to Jeremiah 29 — everybody's favorite verse, Jeremiah 29:11: "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope." This is a great example of why context is so important, because if you just read Jeremiah 29:10, you know what these plans are. Jeremiah 29:10 says, "For thus says the Lord: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope."

So much better than being a Christian fortune-cookie verse. This lets us know that God had a plan all along — that yes, as Jeremiah said, you will be taken into captivity, the temple will be destroyed, you'll be carried off, the land will be laid waste, and you'll be there for seventy years. But Jeremiah 29:10 says, "After seventy years, I'm going to bring you back, because I have plans for you — good plans, to prosper you, to bless you."

What's so significant, when you read Jeremiah 25 and then Jeremiah 29, is who Jeremiah says would do this — it is the Lord. He would visit his people. He would fulfill his promise, because he has a plan for them — a plan to give them a future and a hope.

So if you love Jeremiah 29:11 — and I know we all do — you're going to love the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, because it's all about that plan to prosper them, to bless them, to give them a future and a hope. This is the plan that God had for his people, which he communicated through the prophet Jeremiah.

So what are you going to find in the book of Ezra and Nehemiah? Ultimately, we're going to see God keeping his promise. We're going to see him doing what he said he would do. We're going to see that God maintains the covenant promises he made with Abraham and with David — that these are not things he decided to change his mind about. He didn't say, "I'm not going to give you a nation, a land, a blessing, and you're not going to have a descendant on the throne — I take it all back." No — we're going to see that these things are still part of God's plan. It's still going to be fulfilled. He is still accomplishing his plan and his purpose, in his way, on his timeline.

In fact, that's one of the things you're going to see in these books: God always has a plan. He's not just shooting from the hip, not just winging it, not just waiting to see how we're going to react or respond. No — he has a plan, and it is being accomplished according to his perfect will. That's what we're going to see in this book.

So we're going to see in the book of Ezra and Nehemiah, God fulfilling that promise of bringing his people back to the land of Jerusalem. They're in Babylon right now, and they're going to go back — and we'll see what happens when they get back.

So why did I want to do that for you? One reason is to help you have context. But also, to give you an example of how the Bible works. Just because you see a book of the Bible in the first third of your Bible doesn't mean it happened within the first third of the chronology. In fact, in terms of timeline, this book should be at the very end of the Old Testament — it happens almost right before the 400 years of silence between the Old and New Testaments. This is stuff that happens at the very end. A lot of history has happened, from Adam and Eve to Abraham to Moses to David — a lot has happened. But God is still accomplishing his purposes. He has not forgotten his people. He hasn't neglected them. Even though they are in these cycles of rebellion after rebellion after rebellion, he still is reaching out to them. He still is calling them. He still is leading them, providing for them, being faithful to them.

So I want you to understand, going into this, that we're going to see that God has a plan and he is accomplishing his plan and his purposes. That's my introduction to the book of Ezra. Let's go ahead and close with a word of prayer.