The King's Heart is a River Text: Ezra 1:1-4
Introduction: The God of Surprising Checkmates
We come now to the book of Ezra, which begins where 2 Chronicles leaves off. And it begins with a thunderclap. For seventy years, the people of God have been in exile. The promises of God seemed to have run into a ditch. Jerusalem was a heap of rubble, the Temple was a ruin, and the covenant people were scattered throughout a pagan empire. From a human point of view, the story was over. The lamp of David had been snuffed out. The enemies of God had won. The story of Israel was a tragedy, a cautionary tale for small nations who pick fights with superpowers.
But God does not see as man sees. Man sees the pieces on the chessboard and calculates the odds. God sees the end from the beginning and has already declared checkmate. The book of Ezra is about the surprising, sovereign, and meticulous way God keeps His promises, even when all the evidence points to the contrary. It is a book about how God governs the world, not just in the church prayer meeting, but in the pagan throne room. It is about how the Lord of Heaven and Earth can pick up the most powerful man in the world, a man named Cyrus the Great, and use him as a trowel to rebuild His house.
We live in a time of great political anxiety. We watch the news, we see the decrees coming out of Washington D.C., and we are tempted to despair. We see rulers who do not know God, who are actively hostile to His law, and we think the cause is lost. But the book of Ezra is a potent remedy for this kind of faithless panic. It teaches us that the king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; He turns it wherever He will (Proverbs 21:1). God is the one who stirs the spirits of kings, and He does it for the sake of His people and for the fulfillment of His Word.
This is not just ancient history. This is a paradigm. This is the way God has always worked, and it is the way He is working right now. He is the unseen hand on the scepter of power, the silent whisper in the emperor's ear. And His grand purpose in all this global political maneuvering is the building of His house, the Church of Jesus Christ. All of history is the scaffolding for this one great construction project.
The Text
Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, in order to complete the word of Yahweh from the mouth of Jeremiah, Yahweh stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he had a proclamation pass throughout all his kingdom, and also put it in writing, saying:
“Thus says Cyrus king of Persia, ‘Yahweh, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and He has appointed me to build Him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah.
Whoever there is among you of all His people, may his God be with him! Let him go up to Jerusalem which is in Judah and rebuild the house of Yahweh, the God of Israel; He is the God who is in Jerusalem.
So everyone who remains, at whatever place he may sojourn, let the men of that place support him with silver and gold, with goods and cattle, together with a freewill offering for the house of God which is in Jerusalem.’ ”
(Ezra 1:1-4 LSB)
The Word Above the Throne (v. 1)
The first verse sets the stage by identifying the true king behind the earthly king.
"Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, in order to complete the word of Yahweh from the mouth of Jeremiah, Yahweh stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he had a proclamation pass throughout all his kingdom, and also put it in writing, saying:" (Ezra 1:1)
Notice the engine that drives this entire event. It is not Cyrus's benevolent foreign policy. It is not a shift in geopolitical winds. The reason for this stunning reversal is "in order to complete the word of Yahweh from the mouth of Jeremiah." God had spoken. Through Jeremiah, He had promised that the exile would last seventy years (Jer. 25:11, 29:10). And now, the divine alarm clock has gone off. God keeps His appointments. History is not a series of fortunate accidents; it is the meticulous outworking of God's decreed and spoken Word. The Scriptures are the script, and the kings of the earth are merely actors on the stage, delivering their lines, hitting their marks, whether they know it or not.
And how does God ensure the script is followed? "Yahweh stirred up the spirit of Cyrus." The most powerful man on the planet, the conqueror of Babylon, the head of a vast empire, is being moved, incited, and roused to action by the God he does not worship. Cyrus thinks he is making a calculated political decision. He sees it as a way to pacify a subject people and earn their loyalty. He is being a shrewd politician. But behind his political calculations, the living God is the one pulling the levers. God did not send an angel with a flaming sword. He did not give Cyrus a vision in the night. He simply "stirred his spirit." God's sovereignty is so absolute that He can work through the ordinary means of a man's own thoughts and ambitions to accomplish His extraordinary purposes. This should give us profound comfort. God does not need to suspend the laws of nature or politics to get His way. He uses them.
And this stirring results in an official, written proclamation. This is not a rumor or a backroom deal. It is public, legal, and historical. God's redemptive work happens in the real world, in black and white, on official letterhead. Our faith is not grounded in private feelings but in public, historical acts.
A Pagan's Confession (v. 2)
The content of the proclamation is even more staggering than the fact of it.
"Thus says Cyrus king of Persia, ‘Yahweh, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and He has appointed me to build Him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah." (Ezra 1:2 LSB)
Cyrus, a worshipper of Marduk and Ahura Mazda, opens his decree by naming the God of Israel, "Yahweh, the God of heaven." And he makes two astonishing confessions. First, he acknowledges that his entire empire was given to him by Yahweh. He rightly attributes his success not to his own military might, but to the God of a tiny, conquered nation. Second, he states that this same God has "appointed" him, commissioned him, with a specific task: to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem.
Where did he get this idea? We are not left to guess. The prophet Isaiah, writing 150 years before Cyrus was even born, had prophesied this very event, naming Cyrus explicitly. "It is I who says of Cyrus, 'He is My shepherd, and he will carry out all My desire.' And he says of Jerusalem, 'She will be built,' and of the temple, 'Your foundation will be laid'" (Isaiah 44:28). And again, "Thus says Yahweh to His anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have grasped..." (Isaiah 45:1). It is almost certain that Daniel, who was a high-ranking official in Babylon when the Persians took over, showed these scrolls to the new king. Imagine being Cyrus, and having a venerable Jewish statesman unroll a 150-year-old document that contains your name and your life's work. This is not a king practicing a kind of mushy religious syncretism. This is a pagan king who has been confronted by the raw, predictive power of the one true God, and he is stunned into submission. He is compelled by the evidence to confess that Yahweh is the God who governs the nations.
The Call to Go Up (v. 3)
The proclamation then turns from Cyrus's confession to a call for God's people to act.
"Whoever there is among you of all His people, may his God be with him! Let him go up to Jerusalem which is in Judah and rebuild the house of Yahweh, the God of Israel; He is the God who is in Jerusalem." (Ezra 1:3 LSB)
The decree opens the door, but the people must walk through it. "Whoever there is among you" is a call to faith. The exile is officially over, but it is only over for those who believe it and act on it. Many Jews had grown comfortable in Babylon. They had assimilated, started businesses, built homes. To return to Judah was to return to a desolate land, a ruined city, and a great deal of hard work. It was a call to leave the security of the world for the uncertainty of the covenant promises. It was a test of who truly longed for Zion.
And notice the blessing from this pagan king: "may his God be with him!" God can make the stones cry out, and He can make pagan emperors pronounce benedictions upon His people. The task is clear: "Let him go up... and rebuild the house of Yahweh." The central purpose of this great historical reversal is the restoration of worship. God moves empires not so that His people can be more comfortable, but so that His name can be glorified in the place He has chosen. Politics serves worship, not the other way around.
Plundering the Pagans (v. 4)
Finally, Cyrus makes a provision that is a direct and glorious echo of the Exodus.
"So everyone who remains, at whatever place he may sojourn, let the men of that place support him with silver and gold, with goods and cattle, together with a freewill offering for the house of God which is in Jerusalem.’ ” (Ezra 1:4 LSB)
Cyrus commands two groups to fund this expedition. First, the Jews who choose to stay behind are commanded to support those who are going. Their comfort in Babylon must now serve the cause of covenant renewal in Judah. Second, he commands their pagan neighbors, "the men of that place," to support them with silver, gold, and goods. This is the plunder of the Persians.
Just as God moved the hearts of the Egyptians to give their wealth to the departing Israelites (Exodus 12:36), so now He moves the hearts of the Persians to finance the rebuilding of His Temple. God's projects are never under-funded. He owns the cattle on a thousand hills, and He owns the gold in every pagan treasury. He is perfectly capable of writing His own checks, and He often uses the bank accounts of unbelievers to do it. The wealth of the wicked is laid up for the just (Prov. 13:22), and here we see it happening on a grand, imperial scale. This is not a suggestion; it is a royal command, backed by the authority of the Persian Empire, which is itself backed by the authority of the God of Heaven.
The Greater Cyrus Has Come
This entire chapter is a magnificent display of God's providence, but it is also a shadow, a type, of a much greater reality. Cyrus was God's "anointed" one, a gentile king who came to set God's people free from their physical captivity in Babylon. He issued a proclamation, paid for their journey, and commissioned them to rebuild a temple of stone.
But God has sent a greater Cyrus. His own Son, Jesus Christ, is the true anointed King. He came not to free us from a Babylonian exile, but from our bondage to sin and death, a far more terrible exile. He did not issue a decree written on paper, but has written a new covenant on our hearts. He did not simply command others to pay for our journey home; He paid for it Himself, with His own blood on the cross.
And His commission is not to rebuild a temple of stone in Jerusalem, but to be built up as a living temple, a spiritual house, with Christ Himself as the cornerstone (1 Peter 2:5). The call of the gospel is the call of Cyrus magnified a thousand times over. "Whoever there is among you of all His people... Let him go up." Leave the Babylon of your rebellion and self-righteousness. Leave the land of your exile. The King of Heaven has issued a proclamation of amnesty. He has declared you free. He has paid for your journey. And He is calling you to come and be part of His great building project, the Church, against which the gates of hell will not prevail.
So do not fear the blustering of earthly kings or the chaos of our times. The God who stirred the spirit of Cyrus is seated on the throne. His Word is being fulfilled. His house is being built. And the Greater Cyrus, King Jesus, is gathering His people home.