Here you have got the king of the Empire and he is requiring that all of the resources of the Empire be put to work on behalf of the worship of the true God of Israel. How did that happen? There are two answers here. Ezra 7:6:
Terry L. Johnsonthe king granted Ezra all that he requested…because the hand of his God was upon him. Now, the hand of his God was upon him.That is repeated over and over again…Here is why these things are happening, because God's hand is on Ezra. So, that is the one reason…The other reason is what I am emphasizing at this point, because we are looking at the kind of person that God uses. It was not just that God's hand was on him, it is that he requested and he had the nerve. He went to Artaxerxes and he told him what he wanted. He made the request. It could not have been an easy thing to do. To go whatever path he made through lesser and then higher officials, and then to Artaxerxes himself. He made the request; he took the initiative. He saw that it got done. Someone needed to do that. Someone had to take the bull by the horns and see that it got done. Things will go nowhere unless people do those sorts of things. Unless they see a need and meet it, unless they see a service and they provide it. Unless they see a ministry opportunity and fill it. And this is what Ezra does. He is a person of initiative. No kind of passive piety here...He is not going to just sit back and wait and say, "if God's going to do it, God's going to do it on his time in his way. We are just going to have to wait on him.1
6 this Ezra went up from Babylonia. He was a scribe skilled in the Law of Moses that the LORD, the God of Israel, had given, and the king granted him all that he asked, for the hand of the LORD his God was on him.