Learning From Opposition (Ezra 4:1-24)

Introduction

A. Preliminaries

Good morning. We continue our sermon series this morning on the Book of Ezra.

If you would please turn with me in your Bibles to Ezra 4:1-4

Ezra 4:1–4 ESV

Now when the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the returned exiles were building a temple to the Lord, the God of Israel, they approached Zerubbabel and the heads of fathers’ houses and said to them, “Let us build with you, for we worship your God as you do, and we have been sacrificing to him ever since the days of Esarhaddon king of Assyria who brought us here.” 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; but we alone will build to the Lord, the God of Israel, as King Cyrus the king of Persia has commanded us.” Then the people of the land discouraged the people of Judah and made them afraid to build

This is the Word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God!

B. Transition to Sermon

I think I said these same words last week, but the style of the sermon will be a bit different this morning. This is a text about discouragement and opposition, and I think we can find a number of lessons in the text about opposition and discouragement and how to respond to it. So unlike my usual three point sermon, I have six lessons, and all of them we will touch on briefly.

Let’s Pray

God, Our Father,

We confess that there is no ignorance as dark as what we think we know. We pray that your Spirit would banish any ignorance of this sort this morning, and that we would let go of it gladly, and without a fight. Teach us from your Word, for we pray in Jesus’s name, and Amen.

(A Prayer by Douglas Wilson)

Lesson 1: The Work of God’s People Shakes Up the Kingdom of Darkness

(and that has consequences)

They start building and then the trouble comes. It first comes in the form of outsiders offering to help--likely with less than savory motives, more on that later.

The point to make at the start is that they have only just started the building of this thing, and already there is trouble.

It is recorded in history that Mary, Queen of Scots, best known for her vicious persecution of Protestants during the English and Scottish Reformations once said “I fear the prayers of John Knox more than all the assembled armies of Europe.”

In that moment, Mary’s fear was not a bug. It was a feature of faithful Christianity. When the people of God are doing God’s work, in God’s way, in obedience to all God’s words, the wicked rulers of the world, and the competing religions of the day start to worry, because it seems that there is a God who is with them, who is keen to give them stubborn strength.

So that is a lesson for us today. Let us not be surprised when our good work is met with real opposition. We tend to think that if we are being faithful in our work, everyone will just like us.

What the Bible shows time and again is that the exact opposite is the case. If we are being faithful we should expect slander and insults. We should expect entire websites to be built warning people about us. We should expect long posts on social media mocking us. That is what we sign up for.

Now that does not mean that all opposition is proof of faithfulness. But it does mean that faithfulness that can find no opposition is not yet fully faithfulness.

Remember that Jesus said

Luke 6:26–28 ESV

“Woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets. “But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.

So we have our expectation. Enemies. Hatred. Curses. And being abused. And what’s the command? Love well. Do good. Bless. (And use the Bible for this, by the way. There are plenty of blessings.) And pray. Use the Psalms for your prayers. All the Psalms, because the Psalms have plenty to say about enemies, and the Psalmist never sinned in writing them.

Lesson 2: We Do Not Apologize for Clarity on Distinctives

Let’s go back to our text

Ezra 4:1–3 ESV

Now when the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the returned exiles were building a temple to the Lord, the God of Israel, they approached Zerubbabel and the heads of fathers’ houses and said to them, “Let us build with you, for we worship your God as you do, and we have been sacrificing to him ever since the days of Esarhaddon king of Assyria who brought us here.” 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; but we alone will build to the Lord, the God of Israel, as King Cyrus the king of Persia has commanded us.”

Now, at first glance this appears to us to be very strange, indeed. The foundation for the temple has been laid. Let’s get to work! So they get to work, and some of their neighbors show up and say “Can we help?” And they get told No. Not only no, but a really strong no. It’s no, and get out.

Underline: You have nothing to do with us.

But note that in verse 1, they don’t just get called “neighbors.” They are explicitly called “adversaries.”

This would have been the people of Ashdod, Ammon, Moab, Edom, and a place you might have heard of called Samaria.

These were people who had been intermarrying with pagans for a century and a half.

And this passage is not making some case for ethnic or racial divisions. It’s recognizing that there were stark religious divisions already in play, and that these offers came from people who were not worshippers of Yahweh.

Francis Schaeffer wrote about the distinction between allies, co-belligerents, and enemies. “Allies” are those with whom we share substantial commonalities, and that makes for good potential on working together in many areas.

Co-belligerents are those who differ with us on very important matters, but we could conceivably work together to fight a common enemy.

So this is why I have no problem with us participating in the Louisiana March for Life, even though there’s a strong Roman Catholic presence, Mormon Presence, and Oneness Presence. The Life issue is important enough to march alongside others who are trying to cut in the same direction.

And then enemies are those who, if they did want to work with you, you should be asking questions, and probably saying No. And depending on the occasion and the nature of the work, some people might be enemies or co-belligerents.

But the point is that when we make clear our distinctives, because we want to be clear about who we are and where we are going. And on issues of faith, issues of the Gospel, matters of Christian ethics, definitions of Church Membership--we are not consulting the unbelieving world for these things.

But it seems like--in our text--they were just asking to move some bricks. What is the harm in that, for goodness sake? If the Samaritans want to cover the manual labor, let them!

Pretty much every commentator I’ve read on this has said that the reason why they get called adversaries is because the offer of help was a call to make a covenant. And you can see why they conclude that from the text.

Ezra 4:2 ESV

they approached Zerubbabel and the heads of fathers’ houses and said to them, “Let us build with you, for we worship your God as you do, and we have been sacrificing to him ever since the days of Esarhaddon king of Assyria who brought us here.”

This was an invitation to join their religion. To unite their tribes, you might say. And probably was politically motivated. Let’s make some alliances. Establish some covenants, and in a few months, your Temple can accommodate our gods, too. And that is why Judah’s leaders told them to go pound sand.

Lesson 3: Clarity Brings Trouble

So all that is happening. These people show up. They offer help with strings attached. They get told to go away. Then what happens?

Ezra 4:3–4 ESV

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; but we alone will build to the Lord, the God of Israel, as King Cyrus the king of Persia has commanded us.” Then the people of the land discouraged the people of Judah and made them afraid to build

I remember one of my mentors telling me that it was good to learn two lessons of leadership.

First, a Good leader has to know when to tell people No.

And second, nobody likes being told No.

Clarity brings trouble. It’s why so many preachers and theologians today hide their words in underneath a mountain of un-clarity.

R.C. Sproul used to call it “studied ambiguity.” That is very smart people who work very hard and use a lot of words to almost say something.

I remember when I was in Edinburgh hearing a professor say “I don’t much care for calling the Bible the Word of God. I prefer to say it contains the Word of God.”

Contains? Like...it’s in there somewhere. Who knows exactly where? Certainly not in every paragraph, sentence, and verb tense. But just...in there. Somewhere.”

What nonsense.

But dear saints, we must mark this well. God has spoken clearly. And clarity about all His Words is needed from us. Clarity is commanded by God. And Clarity brings trouble. So I mean this as an exhortation. Whatever the word of God says, let us say, without shrinking back, without wincing. Without any hint of embarrassment. We should not apologize for what God has said, or what sorts of things His words call us to say.

This will make us very uncool. It will make us despised and mocked and hated and maybe even threatened. Look at verse 5, look at what happens next

Ezra 4:4–5 ESV

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, all the days of Cyrus king of Persia, even until the reign of Darius king of Persia.

They got played, politically. They got outsmarted and wicked men made bribes so that the work would get harder, and their purposes would be frustrated.

When God’s people engage themselves in God’s work, God’s enemies get mad, and they don’t sit on their hands. So be it. Let it come. May our children tell stories of our love for God and our courage.

Lesson: 4 The Ordinary Response to Trouble is Discouragement.

Did you catch that?

Ezra 4:4 ESV

Then the people of the land discouraged the people of Judah and made them afraid to build

That is how we usually respond to discouragement. But Ezra’s whole purpose in writing this down is to say “Do you see? Do you see how easy it was to throw us off task? All it took was a few verses of opposition, and we got scared.”

And that is the ordinary and common response to trouble. When the going gets hard, people get tired. And they want to quit. Satan sets us up for it all the time.

In fact, in The Screwtape Letters, Screwtape talks about how easy humans are to discourage, not even with opposition, but just with how hard ordinary work can be. He says

Work hard, then, on the disappointment or anticlimax which is certainly coming to the patient during his first few weeks as a churchman. The Enemy allows this disappointment to occur on the threshold of every human endeavour. It occurs when the boy who has been enchanted in the nursery by Stories from the Odyssey buckles down to really learning Greek. It occurs when lovers have got married and begin the real task of learning to live together. In every department of life it marks the transition from dreaming aspiration to laborious doing. The Enemy...refuses to carry them, by their mere affections and habits, to any of the goals which He sets before them: He leaves them to “do it on their own”. And there lies our opportunity. But also, remember, there lies our danger. If once they get through this initial dryness successfully, they become much less dependent on emotion and therefore much harder to tempt.

The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis. Letter II.

Do you see what Screwtape is saying here? He is saying that God puts challenges and glories before us. And he says “Go on then! Strengthened by my Words, and full of my Holy Spirit, go and pursue glory for my Kingdom!” And we say “Yes Lord! Amen!” And then we get to work. And a few weeks pass. And then we start looking around thinking “Wait a minute. This is hard. This isn’t fun anymore. This is kind of boring, even. God would never call us to hard things. God would never set boring goals before us! The Christian life is just one exciting thrill spasm after another, right? I guess the Holy Spirit must not be in this. Let’s go find something else.”

That’s why Screwtape says “Make sure you don’t let them realize that every great endeavor has to budget for some dryness and boredom. Make sure they think that trouble means they should just be discouraged and give up.”

So what should our attitude be? That’s the next lesson.

Lesson 5: Trouble? Get used to it.

What happens over the course of the rest of the chapter is some really brilliant political moves on the part of Israel’s enemies.

They write to the new King. Artaxerxes. This is not Cyrus who sent them home to Jerusalem. This is the new guy.

And here’s what they write

Ezra 4:11–16 ESV

(This is a copy of the letter that they sent.) “To Artaxerxes the king: Your servants, the men of the province Beyond the River, send greeting. And now be it known to the king that the Jews who came up from you to us have gone to Jerusalem. They are rebuilding that rebellious and wicked city. They are finishing the walls and repairing the foundations. Now be it known to the king that if this city is rebuilt and the walls finished, they will not pay tribute, custom, or toll, and the royal revenue will be impaired. Now because we eat the salt of the palace and it is not fitting for us to witness the king’s dishonor, therefore we send and inform the king, in order that search may be made in the book of the records of your fathers. You will find in the book of the records and learn that this city is a rebellious city, hurtful to kings and provinces, and that sedition was stirred up in it from of old. That was why this city was laid waste. We make known to the king that if this city is rebuilt and its walls finished, you will then have no possession in the province Beyond the River.”

This is an absolutely brilliant political move. It has evidence for their case, and not a small amount of flattery in the King’s direction. They write to the King saying “Do you know what fools your predecessor let move back in? If you let them keep doing this, they’re going to break totally free of you, and you’re going to lose your tax income.”

Now, ancient records indicate that the Jewish province amounted to less than 5% of the total tax revenue of the Persian empire, but that was still enough to cause the King to act with a total cease and desist order. And by the way, very little of those taxes found their way back tot he provinces for infrastructure or social benefit. Something we might just say we know a thing or two about today.

Indeed, as we are witnessing today, taxes is a profoundly sensitive subject, and a lot of people will do just about anything to keep the money from drying up. Our Lord Jesus certainly knew what he was saying when he said “You cannot worship both God and Mammon” because nothing earns the worship of men quite like their money. Especially the money they don’t have yet.

The King commissions an investigation, and what do you know. They weren’t exaggerating.

Ezra 4:19–22 ESV

And I made a decree, and search has been made, and it has been found that this city from of old has risen against kings, and that rebellion and sedition have been made in it. And mighty kings have been over Jerusalem, who ruled over the whole province Beyond the River, to whom tribute, custom, and toll were paid. Therefore make a decree that these men be made to cease, and that this city be not rebuilt, until a decree is made by me. And take care not to be slack in this matter. Why should damage grow to the hurt of the king?”

So Judah gets trashed in a letter to the king. They get given a royal cease and desist.

They get discouraged. And they give in without any sort of fight.

How do I know that?

Because there is one thing missing in this chapter. One really important thing that we go for 24 verses without a mention. And that is prayer. They never cried out to God. They got threatened. They got discouraged and they retreated. They should have planted their feet firmly and raised a rousing chorus of Psalm 2: “Why do the heathen nations vainly rage? What prideful schemes are they in vain devising?” They should have cried out in prayer.

Do you know why we gather for prayer on Sunday Nights? It’s not to feel extra spiritual. And it’s not even simply because God has called us to gather and pray (though he has, and we should not wonder at the weakness of our churches when we do not pray together).

We gather to pray on Sunday nights because we mean to fight discouragement. When God’s people pray together, and when patterns of prayer together are part of their lives--look, I’m not saying all their trouble goes away. But I am saying God builds up a resistance to discouragement. He gives them an immune system against discouragement.

He doesn’t protect them from every negative circumstance. He gives them something to do and a way to arm themselves when negative circumstances come. We should expect trouble, and when we see it around the corner, we should say “Oh, look, here it comes. Good. God’s going to use this too. Let’s pray.”

For,

Acts 14:22 ESV

...through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.

But unfortunately the work came to a standstill.

Ezra 4:24 ESV

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.

Lesson 6: God Lets it Happen

One of the interesting things to note about this chapter is that by the time Ezra was written and published, the readers would have obviously been looking (back) on their own history, and there was plenty of trouble and discouragement in their own day.

And Ezra is essentially inviting them to look back on their history so he can say to them “Are you surprised?” This is kind of what we are about!

Are you surprised that there’s trouble? There’s always been trouble. Our name is Israel. The word means he who wrestles with God. Did you think with a name like that, that there wouldn’t be trouble?

But that’s a sobering thing. To have trouble happening in your own day. And then to look back 100 years and say “Oh look. There’s always been trouble!”

And God lets it happen. And he even lets it happen for a long time. A long time without intervention or good leadership or spiritual renewal.

What are we to do? We must trust him. Because he has a purpose in it. Tim Keller once observed that the cross does not mean that we will never face trouble. But it does mean that we are never permitted to face trouble while saying “God has no purpose in this.”

You might not know the purpose, and you might never know. You want to know. We always want to know. But God doesn’t always tell us.

But the reality is, to quote Derek Thomas

Hardships make us strong in ways that ease and luxury do not, and we should view a season of trial as God’s gymnasium in which we are being trained for battle.

--Derek W.H. Thomas

But we must acknowledge that we have not been given permission to despair, and we are not to despise the time in which God has placed us. We must keep marching on with stubborn gladness, with loud laughter, and with plodding steps, like the main character in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, which he wrote from prison. Christian is constantly beset by trouble, constantly tempted to despair, but his calling is to stay focused on his goal of the heavenly city.

John Geree, a Puritan writer once wrote that a Christian man must have “His whole life accounted a warfare, wherein Christ is his captain, his arms praises and tears. The Cross his banner, and motto Vincit Qui Patitur, ‘He who suffers conquers.’”

In the name of Jesus, Amen.

Slide at the end