Ezra #4 – Opposition

William Carey, the great Baptist missionary and linguist, arrived in India in 1793. The first convert came after seven and a half years. Then the work seemed to accelerate, and Carey began translating the scriptures into the native language. But in 1812, after almost 20 years of labour, a fire broke out, which destroyed the printing house with presses, paper, books, and manuscripts.

This is Carey’s response:

The Lord has laid me low, that I might look more simply to him.

Rebuilding a life that has been ruined through circumstance or sin is precisely what God has done for us in Jesus. God is in the business of restoration; from beginning to end, Jesus is the master rebuilder of human lives.

Chapter 4 of Ezra reminds us that this restoration has it’s enemies and that the opposition can be deceitful, bold and persistent.

It also warns God’s people of the temptation that comes with opposition. The message is this: The stirring of God needed to begin the work is also needed to complete it. What is begun in the Spirit must be carried to completion in the Spirit.

Sometimes, the unbelieving world hates you …subtly

Now when the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the returned exiles were building a temple to the Lord, …they approached …and said to them, “Let us build with you, for we worship your God as you do…. (Ezra 4:1-2)

This is hatred under the guise of friendship. “Hey, we’re all in this together. It’s for the sake of worship, or the planet, or the world…”

No it ain’t. The means matter. It matters how we build and who we rub shoulders with in order to see the expansion of God’s Kingdom. It matters where and how we get our daily bread and our wealth (Genesis 14:23).

Separation is sometimes both necessary and also urgent. Sometimes, a narrow focus and intolerance are the way to faithfulness.

But Zerubbabel, Jeshua, and the rest of the heads of fathers’ houses in Israel said to them, “You have nothing to do with us in building a house to our God. (Ezra 4:3)

Notice that not a single shot is fired throughout this whole period of opposition. The battle was a battle waged with words. Subtle words.

Some things come to you and seem friendly but aren’t. Some things come to us, and we are free to use them (Like King Cyrus’s offer to finance the journey home.). So, How do you tell?

Well, one way is to ask a few questions. What strings are attached? Does it involve a compromise?

The kind of opposition the returning Israelites faced was initially subtle and seemingly harmless, but it’s deadly. And you have a responsibility to tell them apart.

The world wants to weaken your Christian position, and unless you learn to say no, you will be weak and eventually fall away. You may never deny the Lord publicly, but your compromises will increasingly lead you away from the security and salvation in Jesus Christ.

Sometimes, the Unbelieving world hates you …obviously

Then the people of the land discouraged the people of Judah and made them afraid to build and bribed counselors against them to frustrate their purpose… (Ezra 4:4-5)

The intimidation here is bold and aggressive.

Turning up to the work site, placards waving proved effective, and the Jews stopped work. Intimidation can be powerful. Anyone who has tried to share the gospel with workmates or family knows this.

Sometimes, the hated isn’t obvious to us. But sometimes, the reason the hatred isn’t obvious is that our allegiance to Jesus isn’t obvious. Some things come to us and are openly hostile, but this is usually because we are openly and unashamedly Christian. And when we are, then the opposition often becomes equally obvious and nasty.

What shall we do?

We must learn to press on in faithfulness to God’s Word. We must learn to build in season and out of season. If we don’t, we will not bear fruit because, and this is the third point…

The unbelieving world hates you …persistently

Then the work on the house of God that is in Jerusalem stopped, and it ceased until the second year of the reign of Darius king of Persia (Ezra 4:6-23)

In chapter 4:4-5 we saw that the people became discouraged, afraid and frustrated. This didn’t happen overnight.

After about 20 years of persistent harassment, they gave up rebuilding the Temple and returned to building and securing their own houses. This, as we will see, is another way of saying they turned away from the Lord in order to seek their security and prosperity elsewhere.

In Ezra 4:6-23 the flow is interrupted and Ezra inserts a whole list of attacks and charges brought against the Jews, which covers about 80 years of opposition. That’s persistent!

Such opposition can be hard to bare, and it’s important that we understand the reason for the hatred.

The enemies of God feared the collapse of their way of life if God’s people prevailed. They claimed economic reasons (Ezra 4:13). And they were quite right to worry.

The building of the Kingdom of God necessarily entails the collapse of all other empires. “Thy Kingdom come” means “Your Kingdom go…”

So, that’s the earthly scene. Let’s now take a look at the spiritual backdrop.

The Jews had been effectively worn down to the point where they no longer had the heart to work. We should be willing to admit this same dilemma in our own lives.

We cannot find the security and the prosperity we desire from the work of our own hands, no matter how hard or how long we work. And that is a large part of the main point. For it’s at this point that
God steps in.

In the days of Ezra, God stepped in with the prophet Haggai. He who steps in to remind us that opposition brings with it a particular form of temptation. It’s a temptation to abandon the work of God and seek comfort from the work of our own hands.

Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins? (Haggai 1:4)

That’s God’s charge against the Jews in Haggai. “This is a fine state of affairs, you have all gone on your merry way to feather your own beds while my House – and therefore My honour and glory are laid aside in disgrace!”

And so God, in His mercy, knowing that His glory leads to our ultimate joy thwarts our plans. In the case of Israel in Ezra’s day, He does it by bringing on some nasty weather (Haggai 1:5-11).

The two things that we are taught here are, first, that given our inclination to secure our own comfort above all else, God, because He loves us, disciplines us so that we might learn to look more simply to Him.

Second, we need God with us – we need Him here.

Ultimately, the Temple isn’t going to be enough. • The Temple will be rebuilt, but it will also be knocked down again.

This presents us with a problem. The dwelling place of God must be among man for man to be secure – but how? How can we have any security if every time we build His house, it gets knocked
down?

Thank God, for he has made a way. God sends Jesus, also called “Emmanuel” – God with us. Jesus, as man, suffers the discipline of God through the cross and, as God, now dwells with men through the Spirit and will one day return to dwell with us forever.

For this reason, we don’t begin with the gospel and then move on to other things. We need it til the day we die.

The stirring that begins the work is the stirring needed throughout the work. And for this, He has given us His Holy Spirit, which now works in the believer for his discipline, comfort, and ultimate victory over all opposition.

The comfort given to the Israelites, the impetus for their return to work for the Kingdom of God was simply this, from Haggai in vs 13, “I am with you says the Lord…”. By this word, God stirred up the
people to return to work, and they did.

Persistent opposition calls for persistent faith. And, since this faith is a gift, its strength can only be maintained to the degree that God is with us.

And so, We return daily to, and walk daily with, Jesus, the meeting place of God and man. We keep coming back to this altar daily to find the grace and power to endure.