19 Oct
2025

History Mover

Passage: Ezra 1:1-8, 11 and Jeremiah 29:10-11

“The big powers were Babylon, then Persia – and who cares about a postage-stamp size fief in the political backwater of the Near East? Or the people who used to live there? Only a covenant God does.”

— Dale Ralph Davis, Ezra & Nehemiah

SERMON OUTLINE

  1. The Mover of History
  2. The Mover of Our Hearts

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: 

Describe the difference between good advice and good news. When have you experienced receiving good news or good advice? Describe that experience and its impact on you.

Read Ezra 1:1-8, 11 and Jeremiah 29:10-11. What does these passages show you about God’s character and about being his follower? What challenges, encourages, or sparks questions for you in these passages?

In Ezra 1:1 “the Lord moved the heart of Cyrus king of Persia to make a proclamation.” Again, in Ezra 1:5, those who prepared to go up and build the house of the LORD in Jerusalem were those “whose heart God had moved.” God works in the named and unnamed, the seemingly powerful and powerless. Empires come and go, but God’s promises will never fail. How does knowing God is on the move shape your sense of security and purpose,  no matter who is in political power?
How can we cultivate a readiness to respond as God moves our hearts – individually and as a church? Consider first what hinders us from being ready… the sermon provided three challenges:
– Displacement: a constant drip of new information
– Trace decay: unless a memory is rehearsed and shared, it will decay
– Retrieval failure: a memory is stored but there are no cues to access it
What other challenges you would add to this list? What challenge(s) have you experienced personally?
Read Deuteronomy 11:18-20. Moses was preparing God’s people for the promised land. What instruction did he give them in these verses?
We are called to internalize, share, and regularly recall God’s truth in our lives. In what ways are you already doing this? In what ways does our Sunday gathering help us do this?
God is on the move, we cultivate an awareness and a readiness to respond by the power of the Holy Spirit. This is good news! How are you seeing God move your heart recently?
What from this passage and this discussion is something you want to put into practice or be more aware of this week or praise God for?

 

PRAYER

Share with your group how they can be praying for you: what is weighing on you from this past week? What are you praising God for from this past week?

“This is what the LORD says: “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” – Jeremiah 29:10-11