Ezra 5, 6, & 7

Ezra 5
Haggai and Zechariah show up on the scene and start rebuilding the temple. Darius is now king of Persia and Tattenai the governor of the Israelite province. Tat comes to Hag and Zec and questions their building permissions. Shrewdly, Hag and Zec tell Tat to write to Darius and look back into the history of Persia and the Jews and see if they can find a decree announcing the rebuilding of the temple (they don't mention that later that decree was revoked due to the Israelite's rebellious nature). Israel's opponents obviously do not orally keep stories from generation to generation, or they would know the reasons why the rebuilding of the temple was stopped; so they write to Darius and ask him to search the archives for this so called decree.

Ezra 6
Darius calls a search and finds the decree! (but not any of the other history apparently). He even discovers that the decree also calls for Persia to pay for the rebuilding of the temple.

This reminds of another place in scripture where we are called to be shrewd, Luke 16:1-9. Jesus tells a story about a manger who uses his noggin to make himself money. Then Jesus praises the manager for his shrewdness and says that we ought to win people over with our wealth so that when it fails, those people will invite us into their eternal dwellings, which I take as meaning they will invite us into their innermost being, their souls (they will keep our counsel and consider us friends and perhaps hear what we say about our Lord Christ and follow him).

Haggai and Zechariah lived to serve God and they were actively using their minds to serve him.

Israel then celebrated passover. I imagine these were good times for them, unlike any seen before the establishment of kings in Israel, when each man served God one on one and not through a government or anything else. The Lord was clearly working in their lives so much so that he even turns the heart of the king of Assyria towards Israel (v22).

Ezra 7
"Ezra had set his heart to study the law of the LORD and to practice it, and to teach His statutes and ordinances in Israel" (v10). It appears to me that Ezra was respected by Artaxerxes for being a man who could read, write, teach his people. Art gives an abundance of money to Ezra and anyone who travels with him to Jerusalem. He even commands all the treasurers in the Israelite province to give Ezra whatever he needs. Art gives power to Ezra to appoint judges and magistrates; he even gives Israel the ability to judge others in the province according to their law.

It is amazing to me how much our time is not God's time. Back in chapter 4 the temple work of stopped and it was a full generation at least before the temple work was resumed. To me, that seems too long. If I can't see it in my generation, then I don't see how God is working at all, but I was reminded by a friend that it is clear the God's time is not our time. If we serve the Lord and live for him in our every breath, then his will is done in our lives. I pray that we would all be able to rest in the fact that God is accomplishing his will, but I also pray that we would heed his command to take up our cross DAILY and follow him (luke 9:23).