Bible study · Ezra 5:1-17
Ezra 5: Who gave you a decree?
Read Ezra 5:1-17 before you meet.
In a few lines
Ezra 5 starts the building again with prophets, not a king (5:1-2). When the governor asks, "Who gave you a decree?" (5:3), the work doesn't stop: "the eye of their God was on the elders of the Jews, and they didn’t make them cease" (5:5); and the elders answer, "We are the servants of the God of heaven and earth" (5:11).
The verse to carry
“But the eye of their God was on the elders of the Jews, and they didn’t make them cease until the matter should come to Darius, and an answer should be returned by letter concerning it.”
Ezra 5:5
To talk about
1. The building had stopped, and it began again when the prophets spoke "in the name of the God of Israel" (5:1-2). What has God used to get you moving again on something that had stalled?
2. When the builders were questioned, "the eye of their God was on the elders of the Jews, and they didn’t make them cease" (5:5). When have you kept going with something God gave you to do while you were being questioned, and what helped you?
3. The elders said, "We are the servants of the God of heaven and earth" (5:11), and in the same answer told plainly how their fathers had provoked God (5:12). What would it look like for you to say who you belong to, and be honest about failure, in the same breath?