Ezra is looking back [Ezra 1:1 – 6:22]. And we will see that he brings a group of people with him back to Jerusalem and they are going to need to be reminded that their calling and their commission is owned of God. And just as God has acted on behalf of his people in the past in accomplishing this great task, so he will act on our behalf in the present. This is in a sense the reason why we have history in the Bible. It is because history reminds us of God's faithfulness to his people in the past, which is then encouragement for us in the present. This is why Christians need to know their history. We need to know our heritage. We need to know those who have gone before us. We need to know not only the stories of biblical history, redemptive history, and the way that God has acted on behalf of our forefathers, but we also need to know how God has acted over the last 2,000 years in the history of the church. Because it is looking at God's faithfulness in the past, that actually encourages and strengthens us and reminds us of his faithfulness to us in the present.

One of the fundamental problems that we face, is spiritual amnesia. We have long-term, mid-term, and short-term memory loss in the things of God. In fact, God acts on our behalf in our own lives and we are supposed to look to those times for encouragement, and for confidence for his faithfulness to us in the present and also in our future—both immediate and far. Our confidence comes from the fact that our God has always been faithful and always will be faithful. And so Ezra sets that up for us. And he says to that generation that returned with him, I want to tell you the history of why we are even here. It is because the hand of our God has been upon us from the very inception of this work.¹

Brian Borgman