Listen to our bonus season

the study of EZRA

OLD TESTAMENT

IN THIS EPISODE

• Ezra 7:1-10 | Ezra’s qualifications | 2:45
• Ezra 7:11-20 | Ezra receives full authority | 16:55
• Ezra 7:21-26 | The King gives ridiculous amounts of wealth to Ezra | 22:10
• Ezra 7:27-28 | Ezra praises God for his good works and his sovereignty | 34:10
• Big Takeaways. | 37:00

INSTANT TAKEAWAYS

1 | Study is important, but obedience is everything

It can be very easy to spend lots of time studying the Bible and increasing in knowledge. And that is important, we don’t want to remain ignorant. We want to understand what we believe and studying God’s Word is one way to do that. But if we leave it at knowledge and don’t learn to live it out, then we have failed. Jesus calls us to follow him, not merely to learn what he taught. Ezra is an extremely knowledgeable man, but his real success was that fact that he lived out what he learned and he taught others to do the same.

2 | The government is not a reliable, long-term ally for the church

When our agenda overlaps with that of the government, great! Ride that wave! But we must never mistake that temporary alignment with a long-term partnership. Government has it’s own agenda, which will eventually diverge from God’s will and the agenda of the church. So we rejoice when the government aligns with the church, but we never expect that it will stay that way.

3 | Discipleship is often lived out in the ordinary

We often think of discipleship is something radical, and it is. But it often doesn’t feel radical. Most of our discipleship is lived out in the everyday, mundane, ordinary decisions that we make everyday. It’s lived out as we raise our kids, as we interact with family and co-workers, as we talk with friends, as we shop for groceries. Our act of following Jesus is lived out in those everyday moments. And God is always working.

SHOW NOTES

In this episode, we finally meet Ezra, the man. Matt and Neil discuss Ezra chapter 7, where Ezra himself finally shows up. This chapter is shorter, so we get to dive deeper than usual. We see God again working in the heart of a new king to support Israel. Ezra interprets history through the lens of God’s sovereignty. The king gives Ezra a crazy amount of resources and power to Ezra. And we get to spend more time this episode talking about how we live out our faith.