Calvary Church is dedicated to doctrine, and we want you to experience the life change that comes from knowing God's word and applying it to your life.

So we explain the Bible verse by verse, every chapter, every book. This is expound.

Book of Ezra, Chapter 5 is before us. Chapter 5 and 6, Lord Willing, are the two chapters that are before us.

And we're going to pray, and then we're going to jump in. I know we've already been singing and praying

and doing all that, but this is a prayer that releases you if you don't think that you can sit

through an entire almost hour of Bible study. If you think, I'm going to have to get up, move

around, or I'll see if I like it, and then I'll move. You can think that through right now. And as our heads are bowed and eyes are closed, and we're praying, you can move to the very back row. And then you're not a distraction right in the middle where somebody is forced to watch you get up and find an aisle and get out. I understand if there's an emergency.

We're here to help if there is.

Short of an emergency, we stay seated.

Father, thank you for the opportunity to get into the book of Ezra,

to look at these men and women that were called to leave the home of Persia

travel hundreds of miles with a vision to rebuild Jerusalem.

And in Ezra and in Nehemiah on the weekends,

we have been looking at this time period.

Father, I pray that you would, by your spirit, zero into those areas of our life that need your Holy Spirit, pointing things out, extricating things from our lives, changing our ways of thinking. We commit this

time to you. In Jesus' name, amen. Now, if you look at the picture behind me, and I'm not going to

go through it, because you've seen pictures like this before that I've had up. This is a picture

that I took about 5.30 in the morning. The

sun was not quite up. The sun would have risen on my back and would have struck the city of

Jerusalem. I'm taking this picture from the Mount of Olives. But it is springtime, whatever year I

took this, in Jerusalem. Springtime in Jerusalem. As we open up

the Book of Ezra, imagine it's 535 BC. It is springtime in Jerusalem.

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