So, Hey my friends it's Matt. This is the 10 minute Bible hour podcast and today we're going to build a temple and by that I mean we're not going to do anything

We're not going to lift a finger We're not going to do any of the temple building. We're not going to take any of the risks that these people took back in the day

I don't really know why I said it like that I'm a little bit embarrassed, but now it's there and we're sticking with it.

We're going to watch other people build a temple and vicariously experience that through

them across the millennia.

That would have been a better way to put it.

We're looking at the three-act structure of the first half of the book of Ezra

where in Act 1, well before Act 1 we get a little bit of a prologue about Cyrus the Great.

He's the great liberator of the people.

In fact, there's even a Cyrus cylinder, a piece of propaganda that he put out that you can still see in the British Museum

where he says that he did this thing that's recorded in the Bible like I sent them home

to rebuild their stuff on this great liberator it kind of was I don't know is it bragging if it's true good for you

Cyrus so we get past the prologue then we get into act one which we looked at

yesterday which is mostly an introduction to how things were and the call to adventure and the people who went

on the adventure and what we can learn about the adventure and what was anticipated based on who

went on the trip and then they get there and they're still in a good mood after their road trip and they

donate a whole bunch of money and they start to conduct sacrifices under the leadership

of the descendant of King David Zerub, and then finally we get to the place where the building actually starts, and the foundation of the temple gets put in place, and I would call this kind of the seam between the end of Act 1 and the beginning of Act 2

because it's the first time we really run into a speed bump, a hurdle. Not everything

feels great as we get to the end of Act 1, which I would say is the end of Israel Chapter 3.

And this difficult moment goes like this. It's the second month of the second year after the arrival back in Jerusalem,

according to Ezra 38, and according to verse 10, the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the Lord.

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