After the outburst of excitement and determination that brought back almost forty thousand exiles back to Jerusalem to rebuild the ruined Temple, resistance and the temptation of an easy life mean that 18 years are allowed to pass without a single brick being laid. Then, as Ezra 5 records, two prophets – Haggai and Zechariah…

Success attracts false friends, but how can you tell, and how should we respond to offers of such false friendship? Ezra 4 describes how the returning exiles navigating exactly those, very contemporary, challenges. And there are a number of truths that become evident: False friends can’t give true help False friendship is expensive to refuse…

Crisis and difficulty has an almost irresistible way of betraying what the real priorities in our lives are. It was so for the returning exiles in Ezra 3. Their behaviour when they returned to the ruins of the Temple show that they had learned: The first work is sacrifice The first need is passion The…

The second chapter of Ezra is one of those passages we often find unpalatable, but in the very emphasis on the details of small places, where the ordinary people lived, which makes it difficult to read issues two challenges to us. Do we, like Israel, have … An understanding of our place in God’s work?…

In Babylon Israel were a people without a state, without a king, and very often, without even their own name. Daniel, Hananiah, Zerubbabel, all were given new names honouring false gods. God’s faithfulness in keeping the promise he made through Jeremiah meant, Remembering their real Name Remembering their real Home

The events of the book of Ezra when the glory days of Israel are long gone, when the Temple itself has been destroyed. It must have felt like God had abandoned them – but God never gives up. To understand that we need to grasp: How hopeless was their situation How inevitable had been their…