Today’s Scripture: Ezra 1-6
I gain understanding from your precepts; therefore I hate every wrong path. – Psalm 119:104
Who do you think will be president two hundred years from now? Impossible to answer, you say. The person hasn’t even been born yet. It would be like the signers of the Declaration of Independence predicting the election of our president two centuries in advance.
But this is exactly what we have in Ezra, chapter one. Some two hundred years before it happened, the prophet Isaiah wrote that Cyrus, king of Persia, would issue a proclamation throughout his kingdom–and put it in writing–that the captive Jews were to be released to go back to Jerusalem and rebuild the house of the Lord. When Isaiah wrote that, there was no Cyrus, king of Persia. He hadn’t been born yet.
What a record we have here of the love and faithfulness of God! His people were in captivity because they had rebelled against Him and abandoned His Word. But God had not abandoned them. You see, many years before, He had sent His prophets, and they were not heeded. So God sent the king of Babylon, who took the people of Israel into captivity. One way or another, God will be listened to and make people realize that He is the Lord.
Through all the years of captivity, God was at work to bring His children’s hearts back to Him and to bring them back to the Land of Promise. What an amazing record of the reliability of the Word of God. And what a challenge for us to put our complete confidence in it.
Prayer
Lord, by the Holy Spirit’s help, I will obey Your Word. Amen.
To Ponder
The messengers of the justice of God will be sent to those who despise the messengers of the mercy of God.
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