Anytime one studies a Book of the Bible it is helpful to know the writer. (Understand please that the Real Author of all Scripture is God the Holy Spirit!) By writer I mean the human who held the pen, who placed the words on the scroll. And in the case of our present study, it is (nearly universally agreed) Ezra himself.
In Ezra 7:6 he is called a “scribe.” That means … one who is an expert in the Law (of Moses) and (also) an astute student of the whole Bible. As much as was extant in his day.
Our Ezra here is also a preacher, as we shall see.
An expository preacher, one who explains the Text as he delivers it to the congregation.
Furthermore, Ezra is a “priest!”
All scribes were by no means priests!
In Ezra 7:5 our little hero’s lineage is traced all the way back to Aaron, the first High Priest of Israel! Talk about a goodly heritage!
In Nehemiah chapter 8 (that being a companion Book of Ezra) we see Ezra in action. There we see Ezra with the Bible in his hand! Reading an elongated Portion (maybe the whole Book of Deuteronomy) of it publically! Then expositing it (teaching it) to the congregation!
In fact, Nehemiah 8:8 has Ezra and his company “giving the sense” of the Word of God and “causing the people to understand” Holy Writ!
This is preaching/teaching “line upon line,” or “precept unto precept,” as depicted in Isaiah 28:10 and 13. Despised by the world, but loved by the children of the Lord.
This is a pre-figuration of 2 Timothy 4:2 as well. “Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.”
I suggest that in our journey through the Book of Ezra we shall see this man of God preaching and reproving and rebuking and exhorting, a “well-rounded” ministry!
Wow!
“For Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the law of the LORD, and to do it, and to teach in Israel statutes and judgments.” Ezra 7:10, surely now we know a little more about the writer of the Book of Ezra.
An early American Preacher named Phillips Brooks once defined preaching as: “the Proclamation of God’s Word mediated through the phenomenon of human personality.” I would add, “godly” human personality.
If so, Ezra was quite a Preacher!
— Dr. Mike Bagwell
Dr. W. A. Criswell (in our generation) preached systematically all the way through the Bible in a fashionable Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas … taking him 18 years and 6 months to complete the exposition! That’s Ezra style preaching!
Serious minded old Dr. Alexander Maclaren preached essentially through the Bible in Manchester, England in the last generation, taking him forty-six years to do so! At one Church … Union Baptist Chapel in Manchester!
Matthew Henry did the same thing, taking him twenty years to so so, says his biographer.
Long live the “Ezra” types still behind the pulpit yet today!
Amen!