Gospel Glimpses in Ezra: Promise & Fulfilment

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In this first video of a three part series, Kwasi Amoafo shares with us glimpses of the gospel in the Old Testament book of Ezra.

In many ways, the Bible is a book about God’s promises and their fulfilment. At the very beginning we find a promise. God promises that one of Eve’s descendants would crush the head of the serpent (Genesis 3:15). And the remainder of the Bible traces out that promise, fulfilled in the work of Jesus Christ, though awaiting the final events of the Son’s conquest outlined in Revelation. Between those two points God makes more promises and partially fulfils many of them too.

After Ancient Israel settled in Canaan, God warned them that idolatry would land them in exile. And it did. However, God also promised to gather his people back to himself, to the land he would give them, where he would bless and dwell with them forever. This means exile would—indeed, it never could—be the last word. God restored his people. He brought them back from exile. And we read about this in Ezra. Only, the fulfilment of God’s promises to Israel were only ever part of the bigger picture. Like the serpent crusher of Genesis, this fulfilment was awaiting the arrival of God’s own Son.

Gospel Promises and Partial Fulfilment

As Kwasi puts it, “In the same way that God fulfilled his promise to return the Israelites to Jerusalem and he used Ezra to play an important role in fulfilling this promise, so also did God through Christ and his work on the cross fulfil his original promise made in Genesis 3:15 to restore and redeem lost human beings back into a relationship with himself.”

Ezra isn’t the fulfilment of God’s many glorious, unconditional promises about the future; Jesus is.

So we see that the Old Testament book of Ezra is a book for Christians. It points us to the great promises God has made, to graciously gather his people to himself. But who will do this? For just like David and Moses, Ezra died. He died, despite the prominent role he played in partially fulfilling God’s promise to bring his people back from exile into a land of their own. This “central figure,” as Kwasi calls him, “points us in many ways to Christ and the gospel.” Yet Ezra isn’t the fulfilment of God’s many glorious, unconditional promises about the future; Jesus is.

“God will fulfil whatever promises he has made to us—to redeem and restore us to whatever he desires for us to be and to do.” We have this assurance in the man who died and rose again, who ascended to the right hand of our Father in heaven. With the ancients we profess that he’ll come again to judge the living and the dead. He’s coming again to gather his people to himself.

Other Content On This Topic

The Story of the Bible // Africa Study Bible
Do the Old and New Testaments Reveal Two Different Gods?
Unlocking Truth: Interrogating the Old Testament Canon

Unfamiliar with the Old Testament books of Ezra and Nehemiah? Watch an excellent video overview by the BibleProject in Kiswahili here, or in English here

Click here to get access to this teaching as well as a free study guide: https://app.rightnowmedia.org/join/thegospelcoalitionafrica

Transcript

The Book of Ezra and The Gospel

Have you ever wondered about God’s faithfulness in fulfilling the promises he has made to you? Have you ever wondered how you can be fruitful with what God has entrusted to you? Well, the book of Ezra has answers for you. This is because the book of Ezra and the central place that Ezra plays in this story point us in many ways to Christ and the gospel. And to how through the gospel God has displayed to us his faithfulness once and for all. As well as how through the gospel Christ empowers us to be fruitful in whatever God has entrusted to us.

First, in the book of Ezra, the story of how God fulfilled his promise to restore his Old Testament people back to their land from exile points us to God’s fulfilment of his promise to redeem us through Christ. Second, the role that Ezra played in that restoration points us to God’s faithfulness in fulfilling his redemption promised through Jesus Christ. Third, the Ezra story portrays the spiritual fruitfulness that God enables, and empowers in the lives and in the work of his people through Christ.

Three F’s

The book of Ezra can thus be summarized by these three F’S of: Fulfilment, faithfulness and fruitfulness. These three F’S give us a gospel view of the book. We’ll look closely at each of these three F’S over the course of our three sessions together. It is my prayer that seeing the gospel in the book of Ezra will encourage and bless you as you come to see how the gospel through Christ, enables and empowers you to be fruitful in whatever God has called you to join him to do in this world no matter what difficulties and obstacles you may be facing in your life today.

A promise Fulfilled

In this first session, we will look at the first of the three F’S – which is fulfilment. We will reflect on how God fulfilled his promise to restore his Old Testament people back to their land from exile and how this points us to Christ and the gospel. Throughout the Old Testament, God warned his Old Testament people through the Old Testament prophets that they would be taken into captivity and exile because of their sinfulness. But God also promised that he would eventually return them to Jerusalem to rebuild the city, the temple, and their nation.

We see this promise in such Old Testament passages as; Isaiah 44:28, Jeremiah 25:12 and most notably, in Jeremiah 29: 10 and 14. In which God says this, Jeremiah 29: 10 and 14b, “… When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfil my good promise to bring you back to this place. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you, and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.” It’s primarily the story of how God fulfilled this prophetic promise made to his Old Testament people to return and restore them to their own land after 70 years of exile.

In fact, God’s fulfilment of his promise is where the book of Ezra begins. The first verse of the first chapter recounts a proclamation by Cyrus King of Persia that, “The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and he has appointed me to build a temple for him at Jerusalem in Judah. Any of his people among you may go up to Jerusalem in Judah and build the temple of the Lord …” Ezra 1: 2-3. So, with this proclamation, God’s people are freed from captivity. God has begun fulfilling his promise to return his people from exile.

Ezra and the Gospel

So, how does this point us to the gospel? And how does this mirror what God did for us through Christ? When we go back to the first chapters of the Bible, we discover that God created the world to be our perfect home but because we were all in our first parents when they sinned and turned away from God in the garden, we are all born into the captivity of sin and we find ourselves exiled from God. The sin of the Israelites and their punitive captivity and exile is therefore a picture of our own captivity of sin and our exile from God. As an Israelite, Ezra was himself in exile but the Lord used him to play a key role in restoring the Old Testament people back to their land.

We’ll look more closely at what that role was in our next session because it presents us with a picture of Christ Jesus who voluntarily allowed himself to be exiled into this world from heaven. And who, in his Incarnation humbled himself to be a human being like us to die painfully on the cross for us – as we’re reminded in Philippians 2: 5-8.

In the same way that God fulfilled his promise to return the Israelites to Jerusalem and he used Ezra to play an important role in fulfilling this promise, so also did God through Christ and his work on the cross fulfil his original promise made in Genesis 3:15 to restore and redeem lost human beings back into a relationship with himself.

Summary

So, for this first session, we can summarize our first F by saying that, for whatever reasons we may find ourselves in a form of exile; in our marriages, our businesses or in our lives in general, the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ so perfectly mirrored for us in the story of Ezra is that God will fulfil whatever promises he has made to us, to redeem and restore us to whatever he desires for us to be and to do. So, let’s take courage from this no matter how much we may be struggling now – wherever God has placed us and with whatever God has given us to do.

Kwasi Amoafo holds a PhD in Theological Studies from Pan Africa Theological Seminary and is a lecturer at St. Paul’s University, Nairobi, Kenya and Global University, Missouri, USA. An ordained Canon of the Anglican Church of Kenya, Kwasi is an author and a church planter passionate about the gospel. Of Ghanaian nationality, Kwasi resides in Nairobi, Kenya and is married with five young adult children.

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