Ezra 8:22-23, Ezra 8:31-32

The symbolic phrase "the hand of our God," as expressive of the Divine protection, occurs with remarkable frequency in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, and though not peculiar to them, is yet exceedingly characteristic of them. It has a certain beauty and force of its own. The hand is of course the seat of active power. It is on or over a man like some great shield held aloft above him, below which there is safe hiding. So that great hand bends itself over us, and we are secure beneath its hollow. As a child sometimes carries a tender-winged butterfly in the globe of its two hands, that the bloom on its wings may not be ruffled by its fluttering, so He carries our feeble, unarmoured souls enclosed in the covert of His almighty hand. God is upon us to impart power as well as protection; and our "bow abides in strength" when "the arms of our hands are made strong by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob." That was Ezra's faith, and that should be ours.

I. Note Ezra's sensitive shrinking from anything like inconsistency between his creed and his practice. With a keen and high sense of what was required by his avowed principles, he will have no guards for the road. There would have been no harm in his asking an escort, seeing that his whole enterprise was made possible by the king's support. But a true man often feels that he cannot do the things which he might without sin do. Let us learn again the lesson from this old story that if our faith in God is not the veriest sham, it demands, and will produce, the abandonment sometimes, the subordination always, of external helps and material good.

II. Notice, too, Ezra's preparation for receiving the Divine help. There was no foolhardiness in his courage; he was well aware of all: the possible dangers on the road; and whilst he was confident of the Divine protection, he knew that, in his own quiet, matter-of-fact words, it was given to "all them that seek Him." So his faith not only impels him to the renunciation of the Babylonian guard, but to earnest supplication for the defence in which he is so confident. He is sure it will be given, so sure that he will have no other shield; and yet he fasts and prays that he and his company may receive it. He prays because he is sure that he will receive it, and does receive it because he prays and is sure.

A. Maclaren, Weekday Evening Addresses, p. 37.

Ezra 8:29I may venture, without being unduly fanciful, to take these words as a type of the injunctions which are given to us Christian people, and to see in them a striking and picturesque representation of the duties that devolve upon us in the course of our journey across the desert to the temple home above.

I. Notice, first, what the precious treasure is which is thus entrusted to our keeping and care. The metaphor is capable of two applications. The first is to the rich treasure and solemn trust of our own nature, of our own, souls, the faculties and capacities precious beyond all count, rich beyond all else that a man has ever received. The treasure is, first, our own selves, with all that we are and may be under the stimulating and quickening influence of God's grace and Spirit. The treasure is, next, His great word of salvation, once delivered unto the saints, and to be handed on, without diminution or alteration in its fair perspective and manifold harmonies, to the generations that are to come.

II. A word next as to the command, the guardianship that is here set forth. "Watch ye, and keep them." The treasure which is given into our hands requires for its safe preservation unceasing vigilance. Guardianship is (1) vigilance; (2) trust, like the trust which is glorified in the context, depending only on "the good hand of our God upon us;" (3) purity, because, as Ezra said, "ye are holy unto the Lord. The vessels are holy also," and therefore ye are the fit persons to guard them. (4) And besides that, there is in our keeping, our trust, a method which does not apply to the incident before us, namely, use, in order to their preservation.

A. Maclaren, Weekday Evening Addresses, p. 45.

Reference: Ezra 9:9.—R. D. B. Rawnsley, Sermons in Country Churches, 1st series, p. 240. Ezra 9:13, Ezra 9:14.—J. Budgen, Parochial Sermons, vol. ii., p. 168.