“Any of you who are his people may go to Jerusalem in Judah to rebuild this Temple of the Lord, the God of Israel, who lives in Jerusalem. And may your God be with you!”
Ezra 1:3 NLT
Cyrus was not a Jew. That being said, he did seek to worship the Jewish God. This may have been a spiritually political move, more than a devoted heart. Either way, it led him to need an outpost for a God that he saw as a very real, and potentially dangerous diety in the ancient world. In this way, Cyrus had inherited a problem from Babylon that must be fixed. His interactions with, a very old Daniel, showed how important it was. This is why the temple was rebuilt. Whatever, less than perfect reasons, the Jews were given the go ahead to work on a place for God. This isn’t unlike the freedom we have in the west to practice and build our faith. The origins of this freedom are certainly imperfect, but they are present, nevertheless. Our question is what shall we do with such freedoms. For Ezra, Daniel, Nehemiah and others, it was restoration of the Jewish temple and Jerusalem. For believers, it should be restoration of the image of God, which has been so marred by our sin.
JOSH McGARY. COM 