Restoration

God’s people were brokenhearted. Their homes had been destroyed, and they had been taken by force to a remote backwater of Babylon called the Kebar River.

God’s people sat by the rivers of Babylon and wept. Their great nation had been reduced to a small community of survivors, and Canaan was a desolate wasteland. They thought about the ruined city of Jerusalem and asked, “How can we sing the songs of the LORD while in a foreign land?” (Psalm 137:4).

Hope in the Valley

God spoke to His discouraged people through the prophet Ezekiel. He was given a vision in which he saw a flying platform carrying the throne of God. It hovered over the temple in Jerusalem but then moved away to the east. The significance was obvious. God had abandoned Jerusalem, but He had not abandoned His people or His promises. His plan to bring blessing to the world now focused on this group of exiles who were living seven hundred miles east of Jerusalem. Far from being in a backwater, these people were right in the center of the will of God.

Later, in another vision, Ezekiel saw a valley of dry bones. It was a picture of desolation and death that seemed to be without hope. But as Ezekiel watched, he saw the bones coming together, being covered with flesh, muscle, and skin, and then rising to life like an army. It was a picture of what God would do for His people. Out of the devastation, He would bring new life.

The Sweet Seduction of Success

Some of God’s people prospered in Babylon. King Nebuchadnezzar placed Daniel and other highly gifted young people on an educational fast track that prepared them for glittering careers. The king gave these young students Babylonian names, arranged for their education in Babylonian literature, and gave them a taste of the high life by offering food from the menu served at his own table.

A thousand years earlier, Pharaoh had persecuted God’s people and made them slaves. Nebuchadnezzar followed a different plan. Instead of persecution, he offered prosperity. His aim was to dazzle God’s people with the opportunities of life in Babylon until they were so caught up in the pursuit of success that they would forget about their distinctive calling as the people of God.

It worked with some of God’s people, but others, like Daniel, determined that however successful they became, they would never forget that they belonged to the Lord and that their highest calling was to honor Him.

Creating a New Community

Seventy years after God’s people were taken into exile, Babylon fell to the rising empire of the Medes and the Persians. The new king, Cyrus, decreed that any Jewish exiles who wished to return to Jerusalem were free to do so.

A group of about fifty thousand people caught the vision of creating a new community in the city of God and returned under the leadership of Zerubbabel (Ezra 2:64–67). After rebuilding their homes, they built an altar and began offering sacrifices as God had commanded Moses. Then they rebuilt the temple. It was a wonderful achievement that marked a new beginning for the people of God.

A View from the Fifth Mountain

God’s people were full of enthusiasm, but they had little understanding of God’s Law. When a priest by the name of Ezra came to visit, he was appalled at the spiritual condition of the people and set about the task of shaping the community by teaching God’s Word (Ezra 7:6).

Some time later, God raised up another leader named Nehemiah. He saw that although the temple had been completed, nothing had been done about the walls. The great city of God had no defenses and had precious little infrastructure. God put it into Nehemiah’s heart to do something about these things (Nehemiah 2:1–18).

When the walls were rebuilt, the people gathered in the public square to worship God. They called on Ezra to bring out the Book of the Law. Ezra must have had great joy in teaching the Word of God to this community of people who were committing themselves to a new life of faith and obedience.

Jerusalem was filled with the sound of music and singing. God’s people were back in God’s city, and they rejoiced because God had given them great joy (Nehemiah 12:43).

Something Missing

But something was missing. For anyone who had seen the grandeur of Solomon’s temple, the new one was a big disappointment. When the foundations were poured, younger people cheered, but older people who remembered the old temple wept (Ezra 3:12–13). The new building seemed like a poor shadow of the great temple that had once attracted the attention of the world.

The small community of returning exiles simply did not have the resources for a building on the scale of Solomon’s temple, and God sent the prophets Haggai and Zechariah to tell them not to “despise the day of small things” (Zechariah 4:10; see also Haggai 2:3).

But there was one overarching problem. The Most Holy Place had once housed the ark of the covenant where God’s presence had come down. The ark was the meeting place of God and man. But the ark had been destroyed, and it has never been recovered. So the Most Holy Place that had once housed the symbol of God’s presence became a conspicuously empty room.

When Solomon’s temple was dedicated, nearly five hundred years before, the cloud of God’s visible presence filled the building. But nothing like this ever happened in the second temple. God’s people sang songs of praise. They offered prayers, gifts, and sacrifices, but they were left longing for the presence of God and the fulfillment of His promises.

That continued through another long, dark valley. For four hundred years, God remained silent. Then one day, God spoke to an elderly priest named Zechariah as he was doing his work in the temple. He would have a son and name him John. His great task would be to prepare God’s people for the coming of the Lord. At last the time had come. God was about to fulfill His promises to Abraham and to David in the most extraordinary way.